at the Water's Edge


Living life and learning all I can along the way!

The Guest Bedroom – Furniture & Crafts


We recently inherited some new bedroom furniture from my in-laws.  I’m actually pretty excited about it because it’s one of those convertible sets where the “bed” can become either a crib or a full-sized bed.  So, when we need the use of a crib, we have one already.  And, in the meantime, we finally have a double bed for our guests.  We previously only had our two twin beds in the upstairs guest room.  The room housing this new furniture is on its own in the lower level of our house, and has a separate bathroom right around the corner so guests don’t have to share ours.


Before we moved in...guest bedroom & bathroom
The guest bedroom and bathroom today
The room is quite tiny, though, and a bit odd.  Story has it that the original owner of our house finished off this room himself—and, apparently he thought the room deserved a drop ceiling and fluorescent lighting to give it that nice industrial touch.  The room also has wood paneling along most of it, which, fortunately, has been painted – and there is a ledge that runs along two of the walls, about halfway up.  When we re-did the doors, we ended up changing the way the door swung open.  It used to swing open right toward the middle of the room; we changed it so it now swings against the far wall and doesn’t feel so in the way as you try to enter.  Unfortunately, this change also made the door swing right in front of the light switch.  We’ll worry about that one later.

My main concern was trying to fit all of the furniture in the room – since we don’t really have a place for an extra dresser elsewhere in the house.  Surprisingly, we got it all to fit – including the gilder chair.  It’s so nice to finally have some semblance of order in this room.  It served as an office when we first moved in, then became a guest room for several house guests over the summer of 2010; after that, it became the “project room”.  You know, the place where all the project stuff just gets dumped.  After over a year of that, I think this room looks great!  

Glider chair & dresser / changing table 
Armoire
It's a little tight, but it works!
 The next step was finding some bedding that I liked.  I had an idea in my head of what I wanted, but of course couldn’t find it.  So, I got the closest thing to it.  I wanted something that had a sort of branch pattern on it, and ended up with this:


It photographs blue, but it's really more of a seafoam green

The accent pillows are my favorite part!
My favorite thing about this set was actually the little bird on the decorative throw pillow. I decided that I wanted something decorative on the wall that played off this bird and the branch pattern from the comforter.  I had a couple of ideas, but I didn’t really decide what I wanted to do until after coming back from the craft store and laying everything out.  I ended up using some upholstery fabric as my “canvas” and glued on real branches.  I then fashioned leaves out of green fabric that matches the accent green from the throw pillows and stitched them in place along the branches.  I chose bluish hues for the birds that played off the main comforter color with some slight variances.  I simply cut those out of fabric and hand sewed them in place.


probably the most unique thing I've ever made, at any rate...




If I wanted something unique and different, I succeeded!  And it does nicely incorporate the colors and the theme from the comforter set.  I probably won’t spend too much more time decorating this room, but I am hoping to get a few accent pieces to place on the dresser and armoire so it doesn't look so bare.

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ABOUTME

Hi there! My name is Dana and I live in West Michigan with my husband, Tom and our dog Copernicus. I created this space as a place to share the things I learn along this journey I call life. I work in marketing and I'm a sort of Jane of All Trades, interested in all things nature, gardening, cooking, exploring and learning new things. This blog is a conglomeration of my interests, hobbies, life and life lessons. Thanks for stopping by!

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