Mountain House Mondays: How I’m Making Neutrals Work in the Upstairs Guest Bedroom
Welcome to another session of “where we are” in the mountain house, this time up in the guest bedroom. This is the room I was going to do something interesting in because, you know, of its “guest” appearance and while it’s not done, it’s not really showing signs of that right now so it’s time to start thinking about it. But first, one must revisit the past.
This room is upstairs, opposite the kids’ room with a bathroom (now) where that door is above which used to lead to a closet. It had orange peel walls, an odd bump out on the wall on one side and two new-ish but not ideal windows. The closet was MASSIVE and it begged to be a bathroom (suite) instead.
It was carpeted which we secretly loved but otherwise had nothing noteworthy about it. The bedrooms were where we thought we could do some moodier colors. A hilarious story that happens to me twice a year could be titled “You have months to pick a paint color, wait I need to know it right now because the painters are coming tomorrow so what is it?” I knew it was coming. I knew that a decision was going to have to be made. But I pushed it off, and I was out of town when my team picked this blue which I have historically loved.
One of our first posts about the design of the mountain house was talking about moody colors and I did really want to paint some of the bedrooms a tone. But BOTH rooms that we painted are already painted back to white. This one was painted Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue which I love but it felt SO WRONG. Every time I turned the corner and saw it I thought “oh no. no. no. no.”
Why was it so wrong?
A. The wood doors (from Ross Alan Reclaimed Lumber) and windows (from Marvin) were so gorgeous that I just wanted to stare at them and the darkness really detracted from the beauty of the wood.
B. The rest of the house has such an airy and bright vibe and all of a sudden that felt like a dark cave.
C. I have used that color too much at this point and it reminded me of past projects.
D. It was too dark, and in an eggshell finish, it was too shiny. Plus, with the white ceiling, it was too high contrast which made it feel too chopped and busy.
If you can’t tell, I was REALLY not into it. Brian and my team tried to convince me to live with it for a bit, but every time I walked in there I HATED it.
Plus, we had the flooring issue. If you are wondering if mixing flooring finishes in a bedroom is a new thing, rest assured IT’S NOT. The wood that we used on the flooring throughout was a beech wood from a 300-year-old barn in the midwest and we flat out ran out of it. We could have pieced this room together from off cuts or waited for a similar barn to fall and reclaim. But over the holidays, we didn’t know what to do so we had them put the leftover carpet from the kids room in this room so that it was usable for now. People were SO CONFUSED and I had to explain every time that this is not a “new thing.”
Running out of the wood (temporarily or permanently) was my excuse to carpet this room. After having the kids room in wall-to-wall carpet sold us on the concept for comfort reasons. So we chose a lighter version of the same Stark carpet for this room.
A hilarious behind the scenes insight is that we THOUGHT we ordered the light gray version of it, not this more wheat toned carpet. When I first walked in, I was like “I like it, but DID I JUST LITERALLY PUT BEIGE WALL-TO-WALL CARPET IN A ROOM???” I looked nice, but it wasn’t the plan.
As you can see above, the room is NOT done and no, there is no base moulding for now but will likely be a quarter round. Also, I have a product request for all you wood mills out there: make a squared-off version of a quarter round. I want the function of it (to hide wobbly house seams/gaps) but be more modern than the rounded version.
I’m not really selling the beige here but in person, it’s actually strangely pretty. When I walk into that room, it feels like a winter wonderland. The light is so pretty. The windows and doors are the star. And the carpet makes the room feel really big and bright and soft.
So what is the intent for this room?
Well, everything up there is mostly just a stand-in for what we need (the gold is far too glam for the mountain house). The daybed is from the Portland project by Katy Skelton and while it looks really big I also really love that it provides another twin bed in a room. We have so many friends with a small kid or two, many of which would want to sleep with mama so this would be a room for three or four. Plus, I love that daybed so much, but I MIGHT use it in the play loft instead. We’ll see.
Before I went on my weekend with my Oregon friends, I asked my team to pull together neutrals (if not beige) rooms that I could get behind (and in) and so what you’ll see below is some imagery pulled for me. I’m still not totally sure of the direction, but you’ll get the point.
Can I make a beige and white room interesting? When you are in the room you don’t NEED any color, it truly is so pretty and simple as-is, but I want it to be special and to tell a story.
So that’s where we are with the upstairs guest room. I literally haven’t had a chance to even THINK about what bed, nightstands, lighting, etc., are happening in there but writing this post certainly helped. And yes we designed the windows to perfectly fit a king bed in between so it makes sense to put something tall and important in there.
So that’s where we are with this room.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
I already know that you guys are going to want to know if we put the thick memory foam under this carpet as well (like we did in the kids’ room) and I’ll tell you YES. I will forever put in bouncy memory foam underneath my future wall-to-wall carpet. Wow. That’s not a sentence that my 25-year-old self would have EVER written or felt proud of. WELP. Life. xx
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