The Two Year Process Of Building A Working Guest Room // A Before Tour

Okay so, lets talk about the major first world problem that has been this room. I first posted about this room in december of 2012--- a tour of the mostly empty, very incomplete, but very used space. You can see the real before in that post too--- stained beige carpets and pink and purple walls---oof, it was not fabulous. As soon as I moved in, I pulled the carpets (in all the rooms actually) and painted the walls white. I also added a yellow accent color to the molding of this room (but that's gone now). In our bedroom, I not only pulled the carpet, but with lots of chemicals (yaaaaay, side eye) and razor blades (and the help of my dad), I also cleaned up the terrazzo and then put a sealant on it to preserve the natural floors in this house. But with this workspace, I absolutely didn't want to spend the energy doing that since this room had no real plans for a makeover and I had no idea what I wanted. So this space stayed mostly as is--- a very used workspace. I'd make things in here, Marlowe would paint in here, there were endless projects in here and I ended up using this space as a cookbook photo area since it gets most of the light in this house (except in summer, because in summer there is only rain). So really, as much as I'm about to complain about my own personal design issues, this space has been a great and easy space. And since it was kept pretty empty, it was pretty easy to transform and use for well.... just about everything.
But not very long ago-- I finally had enough with this room. Actually, I had enough with this room a few times. As much as I like the flexibility of this space, I'm absolutely one of those people who likes things in order--- all the time. (I know, you're like "no duh, drea"). But this last tme of being fed up was that LAST time. Enough was enough, I was ready to invest in a working space that I loved. And well, after much back and forth about the pictures for my book--- and how the lighting still wasnt right and just about everything else-- I was done with the temporary space. I had guests coming in from California and so I took my 'picture area' out--- aka basically tidied up and moved the desk to the wall and started clearing and organizing the space into a temporary guest room. Soon after our guests left (wah, tear), I knew I didn't want to set up the photo area again and I wanted to finally turn this space into a structured (but still working) room.

I also decided I wanted this space to be different than the other spaces in my home-- I wanted something white, off white, cream, and tones of brown, and that was it. No other colors. I wanted a serene and natural room. That week I magically found a (third) blue floral sofa (my 5th one total)--- but this sofa, unlike the others, was a pull-out bed! JACKPOT. One hundred dollars, a very difficult transfer from my dads truck to my house, and a few fabric tears later, it was mine. Here's the thing though--- a blue sofa in no way fits into a neutral room scheme. Ya know? (Told you this room has been a petty problem). And many frustrating weeks of trying to make this serene image work in my head and moving things around and agonizing over organizing--- I realized, I am a color girl and nothing but a color girl. I was pushing myself so hard to make this image in my head, but I couldn't do it.

I've been talking about how a home is never finished--- and it's really not, and so the past few weeks and month--- and really the past two years has been a process---- figuring out how to make what I want work with the money I had, the effort I wanted to put in, and the things I needed, etc. A week or so after the couch, Alex and my dad helped me install white-ish floors into this space. And since then I've spent an embarrassing amount of hours organizing my closet and peg board--- if I had to guess, I'd say a good 20 hours total or peg and closet organizing. Yes, I'll fully admit to my addictive and obsessive personality. Hi, it's real.
The space still has a few details I'd like to add (every space and room does, doesn't it?!), but it's coming together--- FINALLY--- quite beautifully, if you ask me. While we don't paint in here anymore, it's still a very functional and useable space for work and projects, but it finally has the structure my anxiety needed. Oh, and it's finally perfect for guests! I'll be posting photos soon-soon of the basically finished space--- but before I do, I thought I should share these photos of the very real in-between ;)

(previous temporary guest set up--- fancy, I know)

See the before photos of this workspace HERE
&what it looked like during the cookbook process HERE

some of these photos were taken by Hannah Mayo--- the nicer ones ;) I'll be sharing the after photos soon, shot by her too :)