Guest Room Makeover - ORC Week 4


Update: I finished my One Room Challenge! Check out the progress week by week here: 
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4 - this post
Week 5
Week 6 (The Final Reveal!)

You know how sometimes things have to get worse before they get better? Keep that in mind (please) when you see what my guest room is looking like on week 4 of the One Room Challenge:

I know, I've got some splainin' to do. Last week I had moved this small sofa into the guest room and the space looked at least semi-presentable for our friends who came to stay with us for the weekend.

And then a few days ago my new roman shades went up! 


I'm really happy with the shades and loving the thick textured fabric (Calico Corners' Jensen Cloud) that they're made with:

Then it was time some paint so the roman shades that just went up, had to come down. Our guest room is one of the darker rooms in the house but instead of choosing a really light paint color, I went with one that is quite a bit darker (Pratt & Lambert's Ever Classic) than what was there - I've found this tip by Donald Kaufman about painting dark rooms to be so true:


"A light colour will never come to life in a dark room, but a rich, deep colour can make a dim, somber space feel warm and luminous - even though it receives no natural light."

After getting a gallon mixed and painting a bit of it onto the paint chip (because this girl has been burned by incorrectly mixed paint before..), it didn't look like the color I thought I was getting. They mixed up a second gallon and it didn't look any closer. But it wasn't exactly the same as the second gallon either. Ugh. 
I could have gone back and had them color match the paint chip but I was sick of messing with it and needed to get going on my painting so I decided to go with what I had. The first coat is done and the color looks much more gray on the wall than I expected but I think it's good!:

I also got a little bit of work done on our old armoire - I inherited it as a TV armoire but since there is no closet in our guest room, I need to use it for hanging clothes. I removed the stationary shelf in the middle of the armoire,

added a closet rod, and hung up some of the personalized hangers that I made for our guest room last year:

I also ordered these ring pulls from Home Depot (for under $5 each):

to use in the makeover of this IKEA chest:
This next week will be a busy one - I need to slap a second coat of paint on the guest room walls, makeover my IKEA chest, paint the armoire, find a bedskirt, and figure out which decorative pillows to use on the guest bed. That'll leave the last week for getting stuff up on the walls and adding finishing touches. 

Thanks for checking in on my ORC progress! Now head on over to Linda's blog {here} to check out how everyone else's space is coming along.