Ultimate Renovation Project – The Guest Room

So I have been waiting to write this post for quite some time now and I am so glad the renovation is done!

My Aunt lives a few towns over from me. In February when my grandmother died and she was over our house she made a passing comment that I couldn’t drop. She said something about her one back bedroom (which is always forget is there) and a reference to Hoarders. I said to her there is no way she is a hoarder and it’s not as bad as she thinks it is. My sister and I decided to help her clean out the room because she got overwhelmed when she tried and I love to make people purge (I made my sister cry once).

So the next weekend we went over her house to start the clean. She told us anything in the room we could sell at a garage sale the money was ours (another incentive). The room had a lot of things in it but I still don’t think it was Hoarders quality. We cleaned it out in a day and had a lot of boxes, bags and items for a garage sale!

After we cleaned the room out my Aunt had a great idea. My cousins wedding (her son) was coming up soon (this weekend!) and she needed a guest room for family to stay. So we decided to renovate the extra room and turn it into a guest room.

And so our adventure begins….

This was the room after it was cleaned out. The boxes are all for the garage sale. It had old brown/yellow wallpaper and a tan rug. The bed frame was built into the ground (a trend throughout the house).

We actually started the renovation that night. We decided we already had enough garbage out front might as well get the rest out. We pulled up the old carpeting, foam underlayer and tack strips and threw them out. Then we started knocking out the built in bed frame with a sledgehammer.

After that we had to work on the wallpaper. We used DIF and a scorer at first but then realized the paper was almost falling off naturally.

Under the wallpaper we found a surprise. Still don’t know what it means but it’s a blast from the past!

We had originally thought we could keep the old molding that was there up, but realized how old and deteriorated it was we decided to remove it. The people that built the room though didn’t make the drywall go all the way to the ceiling. We were hoping we could just remove the molding, but had to replace it because of the gap around the room. We also had to spackle a lot of holes in the walls that came down with the wallpaper.

After the room was completely cleaned out we were ready to paint! The walls had not had paint on them in years so it took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of paint to cover.

My Aunt chose a pretty bright yellow for the room. Once the two coats of paint went on the room started changing dramatically.

After the paint went on we started being frequent guests of Home Depot. We bought molding and a laminate wood floor to install. The looks the men gave my sister and I when we told them we were doing all the work was priceless. I almost want to go back with before and after pictures to see their faces again haha.

The molding was not the easiest to put up. The walls were uneven and had that big gap by the ceiling. We also didn’t miter the corners but I was able to use spackle and paint so there was no gap. After the new molding went up we painted it with a coat of primer and also painted the celling to match and brighten up the room.

Next to tackle was the floor. We had never put a laminate floor down and heard mixed reviews about how hard/easy it was. We watched a few instructional videos, but knew we could handle it. We had to lay down the bottom base layers and then we started on the right side of the room. It went smoothly until we hit the closet. Cutting crazy corners and fitting pieces into small spots was not easy, but we got through it and the end result I think makes the room.

We took the guy from Home Depot’s advice and got the molding around the room. When we redo our cousin’s room (September) we will probably just have the flooring go all the way to the wall because with corners and doors the molding looks weird in some places, but still looks good.

My Aunt got furniture from Bob’s, which we put together, and the room was almost complete. She wanted to use the closet as her linen closet so we got shelves from Container Store and then the room was done!

I really think the room came out great! We got black furniture and decided to use different accent colors to bring more colors into the room. The purple, black and yellow complement each other without being too much. The cost was definitely not cheap, but the amount of money she saved on labor was well over $1,000 I imagine. They wanted $300 extra just to put down the floor! We still want to build a radiator cover, but that will be my next project. And we will be renovating another room in her house later this year. Can’t wait!