Be Our Guest; Bedroom Transformation, Guest Project

I love bead board, we had it all over our Logan Home.  So when I saw this transformation from L-Blogger at Tell'er All About It, I knew I had to show you.


Our makeover of the Guest Bedroom continues! After deciding upon a plan and then painting our room, we went forth with installing the showstopper in the room: the beadboard accent wall! We love beadboard and have already installed it on the back of our kitchen island to great effect and popularity! But we liked it so much in our kitchen that we decided that the beadboard needed a sequel….so why not the guest bedroom? Since we had one wall in particular that was such a bold color (Glidden’s Spiced Gingerbread if you’re curious), we also thought it would be a good idea to temper all of that bold color with something very classic, crisp, and clean, so we felt beadboard would be the perfect solution! I also loved the idea of incorporating what is known in the Craftsman style as a “plate rail”. It’s actually very similar to a chair rail, except it’s raised higher on the wall (about two-thirds of the way up the wall)so that you can display (duh!) plates and other trinkets! Typically they’re put in dining rooms, but I just had an inkling that putting it in a bedroom would look tres-chic! Kind of like the inspiration photo below:

So we decided to do just that! Only instead of a knotty pine finish, we decided to paint the beadboard white and instead of putting it all around the room, we’d take inspiration from the photo above (and others on the internet) and simply do it on one wall. Hence, our Guest Bedroom looked a little unfinished once we finished painting last week:

Hey, no sense in wasting paint if we’re just going to cover it, right? And since we knew we were also going to install crown molding and replace the baseboards, it allowed us to skip that pesky step of taping! UGH!

Now if you’re looking for a step-by-step tutorial on how to install beadboard, fortunately, we’ve already tackled that! You can check out this link to go see the process. And honestly, once you’ve tackled installing beadboard once, it’s actually pretty intuitive and fun to install, so you’ll get the beadboard fever and want to install it everywhere! Trust me, it just looks too damn good not to! But word to the wise….it is pretty time-consuming, which explains why so few builders will put it in their homes nowadays. But the polish it brings is just top-notch!

One difference between the kitchen beadboard project and the bedroom beadboard is that we had to “cap it off” as in the photo at the top of this post to create the plate rail. We took two equal-sized MDF planks (about 1×3) to create a shelf. But before we hung that on the wall, we used a dado blade on our table saw to create a little “channel” on the back side of one of the pieces of MDF so that it would overhang the beadboard and cover up any rough edges, like so:

(we ended up having to use two pieces of MDF set end-to-end, so the photo above just shows you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes action before it was entirely installed). After we installed the “rail”, we simply set the other MDF plank on top of that to create a little mini shelf:

…and while the above shelf looks very professional and pretty, we wanted to take it up a notch, so we purchased about the smallest piece of crown molding you can buy and installed it underneath for a more polished effect:

…and then all we had to do was paint, paint, paint….oh, and, yes, MORE PAINT!

Fortunately, the type of beadboard we purchase comes pre-primed, which is helpful. But as you can see, it gets filthy dirty while you’re installing it, so don’t bother painting it before you install it. We had to use hammers, knees, grubby hands and dirty shoes (there may or may not have been some kicking involved) in order to install those suckers on the wall. But the effect just simply can’t be beat….

(Second Post)

It’s finito! The Guest Room is finally finished and we can finally break out the good china and start singin’ “Be Our Guest” like the Broadway singers we are….not! Not only does this transformation look like a million bucks, but it smells better than its former “Smoking Allowed” persona! It’s certainly not “new carpet” smell, but that will come later when we finally shell out the big bucks for new carpet (probably sometime in 2011-2012). We also have the satisfaction of knowing that we didn’t spend an arm and a leg for this gorgeous transformation – though we did *use* our arms and legs….and backs and knees and feet….ouch! We’re still hurtin’ from this transformation and glad that it’s over! But what about the big reveal?! Ok, fine – here it is! Remember what this dull Builder’s Buttercream painted room looked like before we moved in?

Well, here’s what it looks like as of now…after our Ben-Gay inducing transformation and without the benefit of sunshine to brighten things up a bit:

Isn’t the beadboard-plate rail combo just dee-lish? And doesn’t it just provide a certain little some’n some’n to that room? The plate rail is probably my favorite part of the whole room – architecture *and* organization in one?! Seriously H-A-W-T! And what’s even better, is that this project has been weighing heavy on our minds ever since we broke out the Monty Python references back in September with the proclamation of our Quest! And here we are, close to 6 months later and it’s *finally* completed! And it couldn’t come soon enough – Dr. J’s Grandmother is coming to visit this month and we wanted to be sure to get it all ready for its proverbial close up in time for her anticipated (though brief) arrival! But enough about that, here are a few close up shots of the Guest Room in case you can’t make the flight out to the Pacific Northwest…

 

 

 

We still need to hang some artwork and play with furniture arrangement a bit but overall, we’re super excited about the results and can’t wait to welcome guests to our new digs when they come to visit! We still can’t decide if the bed on the beadboard is a permanent home or if we should put it in front of the window for an added sense of drama and a better view to that gorge beadboard! Eventually, when we go to sell, we’ll probably “stage” it so the bed is in front of the window so that potential buyers can look at the pretty woodwork, but the room does flow better this way. But seriously, You Tell’Us! How did we do and would you want to come visit us in the Pacific Northwest now that you have a swank bathroom and spiffed up guest bedroom to sleep in?!

I really do want to come and visit!

It is beautiful and you guests will love it!

Don't you agree?