Decorating Damsel: Luxury Guest Retreat

These are the photos of our guest room in our home. We are fortunate enough to have enough space to be able to have a dedicated space for guests, so I really wanted to dive-in. Don't let that fool you though! If you know me & follow my posts, you will know that this too was done on a teensy-weensy budget. I could have gone far less expensive though. We bought the dresser & bed new when we moved in. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE it, but I've since come to ADORE vintage finds, & if I had to do it all over again, I would have much preferred to find some vintage steals & transform them.

The feature wall: all paint. It took an entire day (sun up to around midnight!), but it was SO worth it. The room (to start) was painted that bright shade of green (all 4 walls). I am having a love-affair with the color grey however (& have been for a couple of years). I knew I wanted to keep the green in some form or another, & add grey & the color palate began from there. I drew inspiration from one piece (read further below for details), & ASIDE from the grey color, used existing cans of paint that I already had stored in the basement (F-R-E-E!). Erik, my right-hand-man/hubby/soul-mate & I grabbed a laser light, aimed & got our straight lines. We would level it on a ladder, & then I went along the laser lines with blue painters tape. Once I had taped the line straight, Erik went from top to bottom with a credit card to REALLY adhere it to the wall, so NO paint would "bleed" through. The lines are CRISP & perfect. This looks like wallpaper from far enough away. Let me just tell you - it took a LONG time, but it was EASY work. I will not HESITATE to do this treatment again in our next home. :)

These two printed pillows, from IKEA, were my inspiration. I had my eye on them for a LONG time, just KNOWING I had to hurry-up & design a room around them (or at least buy them) before IKEA stopped selling them. The room was either going to go yellow & grey or apple-green & grey, and since I'm not a huge lover of yellow (very particular about which shades), I favored the apple-green. It JUST so happens that the striped pillow in the middle matches the pillow & my chosen color palate, so I bought that pillow cover from IKEA as well. The far back Euro shams are from IKEA as well. The middle white throw pillow, coverlet, sheets, & comforter are all pieced-together from Kohl's. I don't DO bed-in-a-bag. I'd much rather suffer through hunting for the perfect pieces than ever succumb to buying a bed-in-a-bag.

While I DO love this room & pieced it together from various sources, this is the one room in my home that is weighed-heavily with IKEA finds. I don't know if anyone lives as close to one as I do. They are affordable & have nice things. BUT if anyone knows IKEA like I do, they will know a ton in this room came from the store. That is my only regret. I really do prefer a more collected look.

This is an old trunk that I had for years. It is a cheapy. I didn't HESITATE to spray paint it! It is PERFECT in the room!

Yes, I DO love spray paint. And I LOVE the color apple-green. It is sprinkled in smaller doses in my formal living room & foyer. But here, it saturates the room to marry with the grey & liven-up the otherwise calm & neutral room (grey, white, beige & APPLE GREEN). So, the metal scroll & set of 3 scrolls are all spray-painted.