Our Guest Room & Home Office Makeover Reveal

I’ve been teasing a home project for a few months now, and I’m so excited to finally share it with you!

In preparation for Baby, Luke and I decided to do some rearranging of rooms. My pink office (which I love) is turning into the nursery for many reasons; mainly because it’s farther away from the stairs and large enough to fit bulky baby furniture. Therefore, my office space needed to relocate.

A few years ago, we finished our guest room makeover (check it out here), and it served its purpose. However, with me needing to move out of the current home office, that room needed to be dual-purpose: home office and guest room.

As a quick reminder, here is what the guest room looked like before.

As much as we loved having a dedicated guest room, it honestly isn’t super necessary. A lot of our friends and family live close by, and we only have out-of-town guests a few times a year. However, Luke and I didn’t want to give up a guest space completely, so we started brainstorming creative ways to make our small room functional, cute, and multipurpose. After deliberation and lots of research, we decided adding a Murphy bed would be the most ideal solution (a bed that literally folds up into the wall when it’s not in use). That way, we could still have a guest bed but it wouldn’t take up a lot of room all of the time!

Enter: Luke’s talent and creativity.

Fun fact, our house technically could be two separate apartments if we really wanted it to, so our guest room has the wiring to be a kitchen. Combined with the fact that our house is almost 100 years old, the room needed more than just a quick paint job. It needed some TLC.

Some people would’ve just repainted the room, moved in office furniture, and called it a day. Not us. We (Luke) used this opportunity to remove outdated molding and paneling and figure out what to do with plaster walls that can’t easily be spackled. Thus, board and batten entered the chat.

I literally cannot take any credit for the handiwork. Luke and his dad did all of it without any outside assistance. I know, I’m impressed too!

The one thing I did help with is choosing the paint color. I know blue is not really “on brand” for me. The idea of having two pink rooms (the nursery and this home office/guest room) was appealing, but it felt a bit boring and pointless. Why have two pink rooms when there are so many other colors to choose from!? So, I aimed to find a paint color that complimented my pink office furniture but felt calming as a guest room color. The shade of blue we chose is Something Blue by Sherwin Williams (inspired by Fantasy Blue by Benjamin Moore which is used in Elin Hilderbrand’s home office, IYKYK), and the white paint is Bit of Sugar by Behr.

Once the board and batten was installed and the painting was finished, it was time to build the Murphy bed. Apparently, Murphy beds can be super expensive if you buy a ready-to-go Murphy bed kit, so Luke opted to do it himself, which ended up being way cheaper (yet definitely more time-consuming). He found directions on how to build one online and bought all of the wood and supplies at Home Depot and Lowes.

Our basement became Luke’s workshop for a few months, so I wanted to keep it real and show that home projects can be messy!

Once Luke finished building and installing the Murphy bed, we replaced the ceiling fan (thank goodness because the old one was ugly), and I was able to move my office set up into the room.

There are still a few details to finish, but since it’s at least functional for what we need it to be in the short term, our focus is now on the nursery and getting that ready to go! There are a few things left to complete, but I honestly couldn’t wait another second to show you! In case you’re curious, here’s what’s left on the list for this room:

Installing a built-in bookcase next to the Murphy bed (by the window)
Putting the shelves back into the closet (for now, a bookcase is holding stuff but that’ll be removed eventually)
Hanging up the art that goes above my desk, along with a few other decor pieces around the room. That wall is plaster, so it’s a bit of a pain to hang things up. We’ll get there eventually.

As we make progress on the room, I’ll definitely provide updates and photos. If you’re a homeowner, you know that there’s always a project to do, and this room makeover is no different! However, I’m so thankful for how this room turned out and love that it’s multipurpose without sacrificing cuteness. Also, a HUGE shout out to Luke and Mr. Mark (my FIL) for their long hours and dedication to this project! They are the real MVPs!!