One Room Challenge - Guest Room Reveal

Some may say it’s been a while since I talked about our guest bedroom on the blog, and perhaps it’s taken longer than expected to finish. Others will say that I completely forgot about it and am now scrambling to write a follow-up post. Well, both schools of thought are right!

You see, when we started our makeover of this room, we thought it would be a super quick fix. If you need a reminder of what it looked like before, you can check out my previous post. We didn’t need to paint; we just needed to move things around, clean it up and add a new ceiling fan. Easy, right? Well, my friends, let me walk you through our journey…

The Easy Stuff

This Kallax is everything! It holds so many books and stuff. I had originally thought maybe a smaller one would have been a better fit, but once we put everything in, this was definitely the best choice!

When we looked at the disaster that was this room, we knew we wanted it to have more storage for all of our books and be a place to play music…well, for me to play my guitars, clarinet and violin. We also knew we wanted to have a small bed or couch in there to relax and enjoy a book or play music.

We measured and decided we wanted to get the largest Ikea Kallax shelf unit possible for all of our books and assorted things. We knew we wanted this, but we didn’t want to pay shipping costs to Oshawa or travel all the way to Toronto to pick it up. That’s where Peter’s boss came in to save the day! He was moving offices around the same time as we were fixing up the room, and he happened to have one he was willing to part with (thank you, Jay!). Not only that, but he also gave us an old camera and a projector to decorate the room.

In addition to the new shelf unit for our books, I wanted some storage for our bedding. So, I removed the (broken) doors of the closet and the shelf inside it. Peter build a small shelf for the bottom of the closet area so that it was all levelled, and we purchased two smaller Kallax shelving units through sellers on Facebook Marketplace. Again, our laziness got the better of us, and we really didn’t want to have to battle the Ikea crowds [read: Peter didn’t want to go to Ikea, so he had to find them somewhere else]. As for the broken doors, we replaced them with new curtains instead.

As for that bed/couch, my parents had a daybed they no longer needed and gave it to us. Perfect! We barely spent $100 on this revamp so far, and it wasn’t taking us much time to pull everything together, or so we thought…

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Ceiling Fan

This fan became Peter’s arch nemesis, but in the end, I was able to take control of the situation and we were able to put it all together and get it working. Who runs the world? Girls!

Everything was going along smoothly until it came time for the new ceiling fan. That new, stupid instructions, hard-to-build ceiling fan. To say that every swear word wasn’t said at least thrice during our attempts to build it would be a flat out lie. I think we even created some new ones along the way. This beast of a ceiling fan that hated our lives took us FOREVER to build, and part of it was because we kept giving up and putting all the pieces back in the box. We would say, “OK, next weekend we’ll build it; when our minds are clear,” or “Oh yeah, that fan, we should really build that soon.”

I’ll admit, we bought it from Canadian Tire without really doing any real research on ceiling fans. I just liked it and it was on sale. Hindsight is 20/20, and while we wish we had done the research before we purchased it, what’s done is done. We needed to get this bad boy built.

Well, about a year later, WE FINALLY BUILT THAT BEAST! The swear-filled build took us more hours than we’d like to admit, but it’s up, AND it works!

Final Touches

While I hope to make new drapes whenever the lockdown is over, this room is finally complete! Woo hoo!

Now that the major things were done, we added a painting that my mother made and Bob’s Burgers’ main characters’ printed designs. I also added a touch of red to the room with a wall clock that I purchased from HomeSense. Another little hint of fun was using my various POP! Funkos as shelf decorations. For example, my books of and by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg are accompanied by the action figure and POP! Funko of her likeness. Other characters on the shelves include Snoopy and Woodstock, the characters from Inside Out, Toy Story and Despicable Me, and a few historical figures like Vincent Van Gogh and Albert Einstein.

Next up for a One Room Challenge? Our master bedroom. It needs some love! Stay tuned to the blog and my social media channels about that makeover.

In the meantime, tell me about your recent One Room Challenge in the comment section below!

Until next time…