Country Cleaver Guest Room Grand Reveal with text

One of the thing I was so looking forward to when we bought our house was that we would finally have a real guest room! We don’t have many guests, but I attributed that to the fact that we lived in an apartment for so long. When we did they were often relegated to the office on an air mattress, or the couch. Without a formal guest room I didn’t see a lot of appeal in having friends stay over. Back when I first moved into my apartment I had two futons that functioned as the guest space in my one bedroom apartment, and when Ben and I moved into a two bedroom our second bedroom became the office. There was barely enough room for both, as we each had our own desks for studying (Ben) and blogging (me).

But as we have been in our house nearing on a year and a half, I have been aching to give the office a guest room makeover. It’s still in the works, but the bulk of it is done so I can show you the guest space we have created in our guest room reveal.

As any couple does, we have very different ideas on how we want to create a space. Ben is very careful to have each piece picked out, understood, coordinated, and a full visual complete before jumping in. Me… I’m the exact opposite. I can  visualize everything in my head and see a space I want to create, having a difficult time articulating my ideas. Storyboarding and yes, Pinteresting my visions are the best for me, but when I showed Ben the “ideas” I had, he wasn’t really quite able to back the “this isn’t the specific table, but this look is what I’m going for” mantra I kept espousing.

Eight, nine, thirteen months later we were still going back and forth. I had certain criteria for the guest space and sleeping situation. It couldn’t take up too much room, as we have my desk, and yes, even some unpacked boxes in the room that we still haven’t been able to unpack yet. (Ben is supposedly working on a second book case to house these nursing school books, and all of our pictures to hang are in these boxes.)

The office is an L shaped room right across the hall from Emmett’s room, with the space of our laundry room taking up the missing corner of the room that would have made it square.

With the odd shaped layout we will need to do a little creative rearranging of things, and hopefully the room will give us some space to move the nursing chair out of Emmett’s room in the coming months, freeing up space for him to be able to play in there, and us to have a possible reading chair in the office.

When it came to picking out what I wanted in the room, I found the perfect daybed at IKEA. Lucky for us, we have one nearby. I spotted it when we were moving into the house and we had gone to pick up a few things as we got settled. Ben wasn’t so keen on it, as it was black, and thought it was too industrial for our “look”. I saw it as a blank canvas that could be made more industrial, or more “cozy” depending on the beddings we agreed upon (read: I picked). As I write this looking for the link to the bed it is no longer listed on the IKEA website. No joke, I bought this bed two weeks ago, and now it’s GONE! Such a tease. But if you are looking for the bed I got (just in case it comes back), search for the FYRESDAL day bed. You can find others like it on Wayfair, and Joss and Main if you search black metal daybed.

In the end, after looking at other options, I kept coming back to this one as the choice. When this bed was available, it came in two selections, one as just the frame, or one with two mattresses. I didn’t want to go searching around with what little time I have for mattresses, so I selected two firm foam mattresses from the Meistervik line.

For the linens, I picked the Alvine Kvist duvet cover and pillow case set from IKEA. I liked that it was a single color floral design so it would pair well with any of our sheets that we have, or the white and gray that I ended up picking out.

Since everything in life is complicated, I didn’t want to have to worry about loading Emmett into the car, taking him down to IKEA, picking everything up, and trying to Tetris each piece into the back of my Outback with an infant. So, at checkout I opted for delivery. Because we are relatively close, it was only $40. That was 100% worth every penny to save my time, and mostly my sanity.

For the night stand, my weekend rambling visit to Target yielded this cutie. From the house Threshold line, this little Berwyn End Table came in at $70, but totally worth it. The little green plant was from the dollar bins (because who can resist those?!), and the clock was a World Market find from a couple years ago.

For assembly day I got lucky, and with 15 minutes of unpacking and planning I was able to put together the whole bed myself in about two and a half hours. The mattress come squashed, rolled up, and vacuum sealed for easy transport. And it made it really easy to maneuver them into the room from where the delivery guys dropped them off, and into the guest room on the other side of the house. Once unrolled they take about 72 hours to fully “reflate”, and I can see a big difference in the two days the bed has been together.

If you’re curious as to the fitted and flat sheets I bought, I just went with a high count white sheets, and gray pillow cases for contrast. But this is where it gets tricky. Because the daybed has a trundle and can become a queen, I had to strategize the size of the sheets I bought. I put a twin fitted sheet on each of the two mattresses and just stacked them up so it looks like a regular twin bed when it’s all put away. For when it does get used as a queen bed, for visitors, I bought one queen flat sheet. Putting the bed together, I just tucked the flat sheet in extra far so that it resembles a twin flat sheet when it is away and not being used. One of my biggest annoyances is too much sheet when I am sleeping, so I wanted to make sure it fit the parameters of a size smaller twin sheet. That way when we do have more than one guest, or a couple, we can just use the queen fitted sheet and queen duvet. Similarly I folded the duvet under the top mattress as well to give it the illusion of a twin comforter.

And lastly, my most favorite piece on the bed, is Emmett’s custom baby pillow. My best friend gifted me a custom pillow that commemorates Emmett’s birthday from Ollie and Maeve. I’ve known Aileen of Ollie and Maeve for a few years and she has been a creative inspiration. I sent her all of Emmett’s little details and a color scheme and she gifted us with this treasure that has pride of place on this bed.

These make a wonderful gift and I am so proud to display it. Emmett loves it, too!

So there you have it. I’ll be hanging up some of my photos from the Palouse when I get some time, but for now, anyone want to come visit and break in the guest room?

If you want to see some other home renovation ideas, come see what we did with our laundry room!