Our Anne of Green Gables Guest Room Reveal

You guys!!!! I was going to wait to do this post next week, because we have one more little piece to add to this room, but I am so excited about it that I just cannot even wait. I cannot. And since life feels the need for a tiny boost these days, I'm going to feed my excitement and show you our room, even though I'm missing one more little tiny piece. You can just imagine it, okay?

When we moved into this house four years ago, I was excited to have a dedicated guest room that was truly a private space for people who might need a place to stay. But we spent all our time and energy putting our personal touch on the rest of the house, and by the time we got to the guest room, we were kind of tired. Tired of painting. :)

So we sort of threw a few things in there to make it functional and revealed it to the blog world as seen here. We had a few guests along the way, and they all said it was cozy and lovely - and no one complained. But it wasn't what it could be, and I knew that.

A couple of years ago, in the fall of 2018, we got a call from our church, asking us if we could host a missionary in town for a week. We didn't have enough notice to properly overhaul the room, but we did try to spruce it up a little bit so it looked like it had some thought put into it. We unveiled it to the blog world here, and I thought it was a pretty good makeover on a tight budget of time and money.

But it still wasn't what it could be. I still had dreams for that room. Dreams that involved a paint job.

Enter the great quarantine of 2020.

We have time at home for the first time in - well, ever, really, in our whole marriage - and we're both healthy right now. Ryan thrives on projects, and he suggested we give that room the boost I've been wanting to give it the last four years.

So we started with the paint. I wanted gray paint. (Gray paint, by the way, is becoming the bane of our existence. Stay tuned.) So we picked out a lovely shade of gray. It was gray on the paint chip. It was gray in the can. It was even named Smoke Infusion. I mean, how gray is that????

And then one day, whilst I was deep in a Zoom staff meeting, Ryan started applying it to the wall, where it applied a firm shade of sage.

I love sage. I wasn't mad. I was confused, but I wasn't mad. But I was suddenly unsure that any of the accessories I had picked out for this room would work. They weren't anywhere near sage.

A funny thing happened, though. The longer we painted, the bluer it got. Not gray. Not sage. Blue. Robin egg blue that had a tint of green or a tint of blue, depending on the angle and the light.

"Boy, that sure is some ambidextrous paint," Ryan said.

What??? I laughed until I cried and then told him ambidextrous meant you could use both your hands as your dominant hand. But I understood what he meant.

Back when I was planning this whole room, before the ambidextrous paint showed up, I thought it would be the loveliest thing in the world to have a room inspired by Anne of Green Gables. A lovely warm, inviting, cozy little place that would cause anyone who stays in it to forget all the cares of the world.

I felt this could be accomplished best with the use of a proper quilt for bedding. And as I hunted through Amazon for a good Anne of Green Gables-y quilt, I found this. As my sister said, it had my name written all over it.

But as you can see, I wasn't sure it would work with the  ambidextrous sage/gray/blue paint. I had started to look for alternative quilts, none of which thrilled my soul like the Princess Rebekah quilt, but Ryan encouraged me to order this one and we would just see. The paint was just ambidextrous enough that it might work! And if not, we could send it back, he said. So we ordered it. And what do you know? It worked!

I also ordered (with birthday money) three darling little watercolor paintings from an Etsy shop that captured three amazing scenes from the movie. I was so excited for them. They were authentic - coming from an artist who lives ON Prince Edward Island. I mean, how much more Anne could I get??

Overall, I was really excited at the number of things we already had that we were able to repurpose. We didn't buy much for this room, yet we had a pretty dramatic transformation.

Because I can't wait a moment longer, I'll show you the before and after pictures and fill you in on the details.

Before:

After:

Details: The lamp was already in the room. We just moved it to this side to be near the bed. We kept the same bed, which is from IKEA. It sits/stores as a twin bed, but it pulls out to double in size and become a king bed. Perfect for a guest room. We also kept the same art above the bed, which is a poster in a poster frame - both from Hobby Lobby. (It still had enough of an island feel for me to allow it to stay. The bedding, which I already talked about, is new, and we got the king size quilt so it will still work when we have the bed pulled out. It came from Amazon - and came with the shams you see there. The pillows behind the shams actually came with our couch, but there are SO MANY that if we keep them all on the couch, we have nowhere to sit! So I built out the back of the bed a bit with those pillows. The tray and mugs were gifts and were already there. The mirror came from the other side of the room. I got it YEARS ago for $20 on clearance at Hobby Lobby, because it was damaged. Shortly after Ryan and I got married, we spray painted it black, ad it still worked like that! This shelf came from the other side of the room, too. We bought it right after we moved here - from a local consignment shop. It's made of reclaimed barn wood and used to be red. We spray painted it turquoise to accent the colors in the quilt. This shelf is our kid-central shelf. All the baskets have games and toys we've collected for when kids come over, and the bottom shelf has books I've gathered from the Goodwill and garage sales. I did color code them. :)

Before:

After:

Details: I have always felt sad for our guests that we haven't had a TV in the guest room. As a girl who falls asleep with a TV, I know it can matter! We found a little one on sale, so we decided to make that our splurge for the room and get it. Ryan spent a day crawling around in the attic, running wiring down the walls so we don't have to have cords hanging down. Isn't he wonderful? The shelves were moved here from the other side of the room. They're from IKEA, too. They're filled with little treasures we already owned - books and pictures and such. We did spray paint a couple of the frames with the same turquoise paint we used on the wooden shelf, just to pull in a pop of color. The bird pillow was a gift from my sister a few years ago, and it was MADE for this room. It sits on a basket of throw blankets we keep in there in case any of our guests get cold. We took down the curtain rod, spray painted it, and moved it higher up on the wall, and ordered these turquoise sheers from Amazon. We are getting a small bench that will go under the TV - and that's the one piece we're still missing. I think it will complete that side so nicely.

Before:

After:

Details: That window next to the TV used to be over by the bed, and it also used to have a yellow frame. It actually came from our old house in Marion, and I kept it because it had been my grandparents'. Ryan built out the frame so it was thicker, painted it, and we hung it above the black shelf that you can see above the red shelf in the before picture. We added some flowers to make it look a bit like a window box!

Before:

After:

Details: The 3 frames that had been hanging beside the closet were relocated above, and my beautiful new art prints now hold the vertical spot.

I. Just. Love. This. Room. I walk in it multiple times a day to just sit and enjoy.

Here are some closer details! Here are my three art prints. Oh, how I love them. They are (in order) Anne with Matthew, Anne with Marilla, and Anne with Diana. Or, as Ryan said, "Matthew, Mark, and Luke." I really need to have him watch that movie.

 A closer view of the window/window box. I'm sorry you missed Ryan shopping for these flowers via FaceTime so I could choose the ones I wanted. We spent less than $20 on all the new flowers (and floral cubes) in the room. I was happy with that!

 More flowers...and my Anne of Green Gables collection, minus book #1, which I'm currently reading.

 More flowers...

 The bed tray...and a few more flowers...

 I already had most of these flowers. Just filled in a few.

 And the bird and blankets!

Braeya approves.

So that's it! Guest Room 3.0! We love it so. (Even Ryan!)

Can't wait for our first visitors. Maybe yet this year?