For the first time in my life I have a guest room. When you have a big family, you don't have a guest room. If you have guests coming, you do a quick glance in each of the kids' rooms, figure out which is the cleanest, move THAT kid into the a sibling's room for the duration, and give the cleanest room to the guest. Or if that's not practical you give the guests the family room or the front room, whichever has the most comfortable couch for sleeping and hope they do okay there.
But since we had a room that was only collecting stuff when we didn't know where to put it, I wanted to create a guest room. Carebear and I (with the help of Melissa, watching the babies) cleared out the garage (so we could sand and paint furniture, which is now a nice warm milk chocolate color), cleared out the landing so we could clear out and sort the contents of the room, boxed up all of the contents that belonged to others (to be stored until they can be collected by their owners), peeled all the stickers off the bed frames (hundreds!), sanded and painted two under-the-bed dressers and a bookcase, prepped and painted walls (three of them are light brown and one is mossy green), vacuumed the ceiling and the carpeting, and re-assembled all the furniture and made up the beds with new linens, comforters, and plenty of pillows. We also put down a small green area rug.
When we were at the store selecting the colors, the woman doing the mixing warned us that the room would be pretty dark. She's right, it is on the dark side, but it's not a depressing dark, it's a restful dark. It's like being in the forrest kind of dark. But the ceiling and ceiling fan are white, and when the drapes (about the same color as the moss green wall) are open, there is plenty of light in the daytime. There's also a little black gooseneck lamp on the bookcase, which is located between the two twin beds (which used to be bunk beds, but are now separated with an under-bed dresser beneath each.) That way if guests want to read in bed, they can do so in comfort and they don't have to try to stumble back to bed after turning off the overhead light in a strange room. There's also a clock radio on the bookcase and a wooden bowl full of toiletries that guests may need, like new toothbrushes, toothpastes, sample sized deodorants, and that kind of thing. Plus there are a few books and magazines in the shelf below.
The closet has been cleaned out as well, and the shelves contain all of the games that we own, which are a lot more accessible now that they're on shelves instead of packed into a chest where you forget they're there. The chest has been moved to the guest room too, and is filled with extra blankets in case they're needed. It's located at the foot of one of the twin beds and doubles as a handy place to put a suitcase in case guests don't want to unpack into the drawers. At the foot of the other bed is a small lidded basket that holds towels and washcloths. There's plenty of hanging space and hangers in the closet.
I just feel like now when people come to visit they have a space of their own where they can rest up from whatever running around they have done and a place where they can close the door and have some privacy, which is so much more comfortable than crashing on the futon in the front room.
The Wizard and I figure we'll probably be in this house for about another ten years. Might as well make it as comfy as possible for ourselves and whomever is here with us.
