The AO House: Guest Bedroom Sneak Peek

I have not posted on the AO House in a bit, mostly because of my lack of picture-taking, but there has been progress. Subtle progress, but progress nonetheless.

We passed our one year mark in the house in April and we are very happy with what we've accomplished in a year. It's still not done, but the items on our list are much more manageable now than, say, ripping out a kitchen, so Carter and I are eager to wrap up our pesky to do list this summer.

One room that has been totally neglected this year is our second guestroom (we call it the "back bedroom"). We have two guest rooms on the main floor of our house - one bigger (in the front), one smaller (in the back). 

The back bedroom before we got our hands on it - charming space, no?

The bigger room was easy to put together as it inherited our past bedroom furniture - so I was set with bedding, colors, etc.

But the back bedroom did not have a set identity. I had a black wrought iron bed, a yellow toile quilt and an ivory-ish china cabinet that we decided to use in the room for storage. Those items actually worked well together, so I was going for a yellow/black French toile-ish kind of room and thus painted it several shades of yellow until I realized that the look was all wrong for our house.

So, after painting it five zillion other colors, I finally decided on a very light gray, and loved it. I'm not sure where I pulled the gray from, as I had nothing inspiring the choice, but I just liked it. So the walls have been a light gray for a LONG time now, but nothing else has happened in that room (although it has seen some guests!).

Then, a month or two ago, I had one of those serendipity moments. I was looking through some boxes and found a gorgeous textile that was given to us as a wedding gift. I had it packed away because I wasn't sure what to do with it - and to be honest, I wasn't sure if it was a blanket or a tablecloth (could kind of go either way), but when I spotted it, I thought it might be perfect for the back bedroom bed, if it fit. Sure enough, I laid it on the bed as a bedspread, and it was perfect (the bed is a full).

The blanket has thus set off the inspiration for the room, and lucky for me, the light gray works perfectly with it. I'll be tackling this room over the next month, but I thought I'd show you where I'm headed with some of the items and ideas I have in mind.

Here is the blanket that inspired the color palette for the room:

It was a perfect match to the light gray paint I had chosen (Mineral by Behr), and coupled with my black wrought iron bed, I thought a palette of reds and gray would be lovely.

There are two small windows in this room. So as to not overwhelm the small space, we decided to put up white wooden blinds coupled with decorative pelmet boxes (but no curtains). I really like the look of the crisp white blinds against the gray paint, but they definitely needed a little color. I chose Braemore's Liang Toile in silver - a deeper gray than the paint color - to cover the boxes.

And I trimmed them in red pom-pom trim to give them a little whimsy and some color. Here is a peek at the results:

These pelmet boxes are a nice DIY project - read how we make them for our house here.

As I mentioned, the bed will use the inspiration blanket as a bedspread, and the sheets are white, but I thought I'd mix in some fun pillowcases to the white bedding, so I bought a set of these pillowcases in red:

They are from Carleton Varney's collection for HSN, and you can get them here.

And the final sneak peek item, you've already seen. My chandy find from Lucketts:

I plan to give it a coat of red paint to really pop in the room.

We still have the china cabinet that I plan to paint a dark, glossy gray and use as storage for guest linens. That will be my first project in large furniture painting - we'll see how it goes!

Hopefully I'll get to tackle finishing up the details of this room soon so I can show you a full reveal :)