A Bottle Of Water, A Chocolate Mint, and Thou: Seeking The Perfect Guest Room

  
Okay, I know I said I'd take you on a ride straight up the side of a mountain today.

But that was before I knew I'd be taking my Dad to the doctor.  

Our trip on the Duquesne Incline will have to wait.

Meanwhile . . . .

Do you love guest rooms?  Who doesn't?
They keep guests out of your own room, and they never get messy.
Well, almost never.

The Lettered Cottage blog is hosting a weeklong link party ... about Guest Rooms!  So, I dug up this old post about our yellow guest room and joined in.  If you've seen this one already -- and lots of you have -- then you may want to just skip on over to The Lettered Cottage, for the  "Guest Bedroom Re-do" party.  Go visit; be inspired!

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 With two guest bedrooms, and a third available in emergencies if the guest doesn't mind sleeping in the midst of one or two or 12 boxes, we love to have overnight company at That Old House.

The small yellow room at the back of the house is our first, and I think our coziest, guest room.

When we bought the house, this little back room was lavendar,
with floral wallpaper borders and pink woodwork.

Oh, my eyes!  My eyes!
:-)

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Now . . . gone are the Barbie colors, and if you knocked on our door 
in the middle of the night and needed a refuge. . . .
this is where you would stay.

Come in. . .

Don't you just love guest rooms? They never get messy.

The Yellow Room is our smallest bedroom, so we maximize guest storage (does that
wording make it creepily sound as if we are storing our guests?).

Near the door, there's a vintage bombe chest, burled wood, one of my best Craigslist bargains.
Thank goodness for people with more money than sense, who re-decorate and get rid of their old stuff -- cheap!
The top and middle drawers are empty, for guests to use.
The bottom drawer holds extra sets of linens for the bed.

The lamp is a pineapple, a symbol of hospitality.  Like all my lamps, a bargain.


A little peachy-pink tole basket (Home Goods) holds bottled water,
York Peppermint Patties, and hard candies when guests are in residence.

We have an old hotel luggage rack, bought for $6 when the
downtown Carlton House Hotel closed in Pittsburgh in the early '80s.
You can just spot it under the window.


On built-in shelves -- books, a plastic carry basket for bath items, and two sets of towels.
Extra towels are stored on the shelves underneath, behind the doors.

There are yellow towels for guests in this room; they always know which are theirs.
Guests in the Pink Bedroom get ... yeah, you guessed it.

A pair of Teddy Bears perches on the shelves;
you never know when you might need a Teddy Bear on a stormy night.

In the closet, kept empty and ready for guests' clothes, there are wooden and padded hangers, and extra pillows.

(Now how often do you see the inside of someone's closet?  It's the only one of mine you will ever see!)

On an old quilt rack (yard sale): extra blankets and a sweet little blue, pink & yellow printed quilt.

Note: The quilt rack has since migrated to daughter Anne's apartment. 

I'm looking for a replacement, one that I'll like better than this one!.

For bare toes, a little rug, hand hooked by a gentleman who was my father's best friend.

His wife was French, and the little rug has "Bonne nuit" and "Bon jour" worked into it.

And on one of the bedside tables, a lamp I bought on Ebay.

Can you see what it is? Look closely. . . .

It is a miniature replica of an old wicker suitcase.

There's a small brass handle at the top.

I just get such a kick out of a suitcase lamp in a guest room.

Simple things amuse me.

Just ask my husband. He amuses me no end.

The low-post cherry and poplar bed is one Howard and I bought 30 years ago at

The Whale's Tail antiques shop in Mars, Pennsylvania.

I love it, but there is a creakiness factor. We warn overnight guests.

Beds that are almost 200 years old have a tendency to audibly protest when used.

Can't say that I blame them.

The nightstands are from my in-laws' beautiful block-front Newport-style

mahogany bedroom furniture, handmade in Boston in the 1940s.

Most of this set is in our master bedroom, but these little guys just fit in so perfectly

in this small space that they just toddled across the hall to the guest room.

The blue needlepoint chair I wrote about in another post, here; another Craigslist bargain!

The colors for this room were taken from a beautiful cotton fabric by Greeff/Schumacher.

Soft yellow background, tiny peachy-pink dots, and flowers.

Green, blue, pink, peach and yellow.

That was the palette, and luckily it all came together,

with Benjamin Moore's Corn Silk on the walls.

I've been asked the name of the fabric but I don't remember it,

and I think it is discontinued. I got it at a bargain-barrel price from a fantastic

online site -- fabricguru.com -- from whom I've ordered many home dec fabrics.

Cheap shipping, fast service.

(I am not compensated by them; wish I were, I'd take my payola in fabric!)

Our other guest room would be my daughter Alida's room if she had not heartlessly deserted her loving family and moved 10-thousand miles away to the wild and woolly frontier town known as Los Angeles.

Here's a collage I did awhile back of the Pink Room -- there are pictures of "befores" including the extensive plaster repair and removal of some mystery shelves -- and "afters," but this poor room still is needs its window treatments and other niceties.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse of our guest room.  It's just the right size for a single guest, or a very close couple. --- Cass