interior design: Ottawa interior decorator: Sweet purple dreams ~ A guest bedroom makeover

It’s Victoria Day here in Canada… yippee, a holiday!! And it’s also Metamorphosis Monday, hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. Double the fun!!

We used to have a guest bedroom on the main floor and another one in the basement. Neither room was particularly functional – the furniture layout in the upstairs bedroom room was awkward. The only wall where the bed fit properly was the wall with the main door, so there was no proper focal point walking into the room. The basement bedroom was small, but the layout was pretty good and it was nicely decorated. But nobody ever wanted to sleep in it — maybe it was the unfinished ceiling looming above them while they were lying in bed… ;-)

When we had the hardwood floors refinished last summer, we had to empty out all the rooms on the main floor. It was the perfect time to do some rearranging… what was the upstairs office before is a bit smaller than what was the bedroom, but the layout was much better suited to a bedroom. So, we switched the rooms around. As for the downstairs bedroom – I decided to turn that room into my office.

This is the only shot I can find of the upstairs room when it was still an office…

Yes, that’s a wolf wallpaper border. Yes, I’m the one who put it up. Yes, I knew what I was doing!! Hey, come On, it isn’t THAT bad!!! Is it?!?!

This was the bedroom in the basement. All the furniture moved upstairs… the bed and night table in the picture, as well as a highboy and dresser.

I decided to start fresh with a new colour scheme when I found a couple of beaded purple cushions at HomeSense that I absolutely HAD to have. They inspired the colour scheme for the room…

Trying out different cushion and sham combos and a bed skirt. Only the purple cushions and the comforter stayed…

The furniture is just cheapo stuff from Loblaws. But it looks good and doesn’t get much wear and tear, so it’s fine for a guest bedroom. I just changed the knobs from stainless steel to glass (from Lee Valley) to add some glam…

Hubby and I made the upholstered headboard a few years ago…

We just updated it for the new guest bedroom with leftover chocolate brown velvet from the headboard in the master bedroom. The fabric for the original headboard cost $4.00. The whole headboard cost about $80 to make. The base of the bed is an old platform from a waterbed — reduce, reuse, recycle!!

I finally decided on an ICI Dulux gray called Veil for the walls. It’s a nice light gray without any blue undertones — a hard gray to find!!

Veil 00NN 53/000

I’d seen this wallpaper on the Graham & Brown web site and loved it. I ordered a sample, and… it matched the colour of the purple cushions perfectly!! The pattern is called Darcy and the colour is Amethyst…

Let’s just say that hanging the wallpaper was… an adventure ;-) Actually, it wasn’t too bad. I was the lucky one who rolled on the gooey wallpaper paste, hubby was the lucky one who stuck it to the wall :-) Sorry the picture is fuzzy — the camera doesn’t seem to like all the circles…

And the finished purple guest bedroom…

We replaced the original brass & mirror sliding closet doors with these brown & frosted glass closet doors from Home Depot — a HUGE improvement!!

I’m SO happy I finally painted the hallway doors dark brown!! Not only does the colour make the doors look richer and more substantial, the colour ties in perfectly with the closet doors.

The mirrored mirror is from HomeSense. I’d wanted one for the longest time, but didn’t have a place to put one. Till the redecorated guest bedroom!! I bought the lamps about five years ago, but never had a good place to put them — till now :-)

You may have seen my chair recovering project here. The chair was my grandma’s, and I really wanted to use it in the room. It’s the perfect size to fit into the corner, has great lines, and gives guests a place to sit down or they can put their suitcase or clothes on it. This is how the chair started out…

All we did was remove the old fabric and replace it with this shimmery charcoal fabric…

The new & improved chair…

It just needed a hit of purple to finish it off. I couldn’t find any ready-made cushions that were small enough, so I bought a piece of purple crushed velvet for a few bucks and had these two little cushions made…

A close-up…