Guest Bedroom: an update and project.

 Goal #3 on my house goal list for this year was to become ineligible for the hit TV series Hoarders by cleaning and decluttering my guest bedroom. Things had gotten pretty intense. I started the declutter process a few weeks ago and quickly realized this was going to be a long-term project. Three hours and several piles of Goodwill clothes later, I had only made a dent. Needless to say, I was left uninspired. I walked out and left it for a few weeks.

Then the other day I was at Gary's Antiques on Central (as I so often am) and spied this enamel top end table. My heart goes pitter-patter for enamel so I took a quick picture of it, thinking I could do another "browser window shopping" posts (like this one!) and moved on. I came home and couldn't stop thinking about that stupid little table.

Needless to say, these pictures show that I came up with some reason to have that table. And that reason? I decided it would be FAB in my guest room. And like that I was pumped once again for some cleaning and organizing.

Here's my end table in its "before" state:

 The paint is chipping, the bottoms are dirty, the inside of the drawer is cob-webby, and let's just say this must be a paint experiment gone wrong:

 .. and that is why I am so excited to have it! I love little projects. So I'm waiting to paint the legs until I get the room cleared out and painted (I guess that counts as a little motivation). I am pondering paint colors and it really depends on what I end up doing with the room. Right now Rustoleum's Jade and Berry Pink (here) are the winners but we'll see.

I am planning on painting the room a light turquoise and have bought white fabric and pink ruffle trimming to make curtains. Here is the color I picked with the ruffle trim:

The color is SW6212, Quietude - it is a sort of grey turquoise. I painted our back hall the Rainwashed color - it actually is a little blue-er than the picture portrays.

So with some direction, I headed back in to tackle the guest bedroom. Here's what we started with:

After spending some time going through clothes, I had gotten the bed pretty cleared off during my first bout at cleaning:

What you can't see is that the clutter is still there. So this most recent session was spent rearranging the room. It got worse before it got better:

 (Much. Worse.)

 So I finally rearranged things, putting my new sewing table (on the right, a find from Summer Ave. Antique Warehouse) and my end table in the room. If you look carefully, you can see in the right side of the picture that the wall is a whiter color than the rest of the wall - that used to be a doorway, making the current set up impossible. I gained a lot of space by losing that (and another) doorway.

So now we have a better arranged room that still has too many clothes, too much "crap", and a HUGE dog kennel. But it is getting there.

On another note, when we re-do this room for real, I need to get a different light in there - it is so dark all the time.

But for now, baby steps will do. Progress is progress.

In putting clothes away and donating to Goodwill,