One month later...

It has been a month now and I have gone through LOTS of changes to get to this point...the paint has been bought (opps pile at Home Depot, $3 a gallon of Glidden paint - in just the colors I needed!)  I am off this morning to buy the boarder for the room and the blinds.  Just how did I get to this point?  It wasn't easy!  Last month when I heard my friends, Virginia & Leo, were coming from Portland, OR to visit (his first - her second) I knew that I had to redo the guestroom.  On my 1st trip to Lowe's I went nuts and picked up EVERY paint booklet they have and decided that I would go with Laura Ashley's colors - Apple2  or Jade3 & Chalk Pink.  (I tried to scan these colors in but it didn't work - Jade equals the color of this back ground and apple was a little brighter, Chalk Pink looks almost like this but much less bright.  I just can't make that color here!) 

My next trip was to the wallpaper store.  The first thing I picked up looked like this.   I brought home 8 different border samplers and used some on the inside of my linen closet and chose one for the grandkids room and at that point I decide to use this one for the guestroom.  I was going to sponge the lower half of the room the 2 greens (by the way GREEN & PINK delight me - my entire house is variation of greens & pinks) in the paper and do the upper half with the pinks in the flowers.  I thought I could get   bamboo strips to run as along the top & bottom of the paper which would be chair rail height.  Then last Sat. morning I went back to the wallpaper store to get my paper.  I thought I would check to see if  it had a matching paper (it does - just leaves - which is going to be used in our master bath).  I collected about 8 more samples and as I was paying for the grandkids room border I looked up - & spotted the PERFECT border for the guest room. 

I was so excited when I found it, I was looking for something tropical to inspire my guests about their trip to Florida and something cool that would blend in with our own sub-tropical paradise that the room looks out on!  This paper has a lot more than what you see here, but you will have to just imagine.  On that Sat morning I woke up with a BRIGHT idea - matchstick shades.   Only instead of using them only on the windows I would use them on the lower half of the wall and make it look like a hut in there.  Off to Lowes to see how much the shades are there (I know Pier One has them but I didn't want to spend my entire allotment).   They didn't have any, they had a textured paper that I thought I could do a faux finish on and it was on sale for $4 a quadruple roll.  Then I made a mistake & walked into the plant department, just to check to see if they had the shades there (they didn't).  Well, I left with $52 in plants & no paper.  The next morning I thought why not just do a faux finish so I got out a sample board and did it.   It looked ok, the fence looked great but the sky at the top didn't look good, but I could have gone with different colors of blue.  But I just wasn't happy.  By yesterday (Friday) I had decided to use the green and pink theme again.  Only this time I would put beaded board up 5' painted green, then the border and then the pink.   Well, as we all know bead board is expensive, didn't find any wall paper that looked like it and so I just headed to Home Depot and bought the paint.   Last night on HGTV I saw an idea of using a darker paint on the edges of the walls to make an antiqued look.  So my goal today is to sponge on the green light & dark for 5' and glaze the pink for 3'.  I will still be putting the border at eye level.

This is a rough sketch of the layout of the room. (It worked - there is a lot more room!) Just take your time & draw the furniture in all different positions and it really helps to figure out how you want it (without breaking your back). As you can see, I just used a pen & drew it - there are several. I decided on this one.