Guesting

So, we totally failed on getting the guest room completed by Thursday. Our friend will not be joining us until next week, so cut us a small break?! I am super bummed too because this would be the third room we can call finished. However, I thought we could go over what we have done, and what's holding us back.

A few months ago we started with this mood board:

Most of what you see has stayed the same, except where we failed. I'll keep it clean and make a list:

1.) The chevron painted curtains, fail. The paint got everywhere when Joey thought they had dried, and folded them.

2.) We painted the curtains again, but this time with a stencil instead of tape. Paint got everywhere. Then the dogs ran on it. So I tried soaking them in tea stain, it looked worse. I have about 100 photos of this mess. Not worth sharing.

3.) While painting the walls we discovered a "wet patch" they wouldn't dry out. It took over three days to paint a 2X2 area.

4.) Speaking of paint, it rained for three days straight so the paint took suuuuuuper long to dry. We needed the windows open for proper ventilation.

5.) I ordered some fabric to replace the curtain fail. I am still waiting for them to show up.

6.) The Andalucia rug from the kids room, is now moving into the guest room, we are now welcoming more yellow into the room! BTW, you can win this rug right now on Emily Henderson's blog!

So the walls and trim are officially painted, and the layout is decided. What's next:

1.) See these big built ins Joey made? We need to stain them, curtain them up, and build some shelves.

2.) We have a bunch of art to hang up and styling to do. We have been dying to showcase this beauty.

Yep. You read that right. Game of Whang.

3.) We need to agree on a fan.

4.) Make and hang curtains.

The list isn't all that bad. Almost all the pieces are there and I am loving the super bold color of the room. Here is a better shot of how it actually looks in person.

I am just relieved we have moved on from at least one room looking like this:

I would like to say this week will be the week, but I know it won't. I am jam packed with meetings and Joey is slammed with commercial work. Bit by bit. Man, I wish blogging was our full time job.  

Last Days of Summer

Maybe it's our inner child taking over, but we are really in the mood to slow down and enjoy life lately. With Joey's 30th birthday yesterday, we totally took the last 72 hours off to celebrate him entering his 30's and ignored the massive mid-project mess our house is this very moment. We started the celebration early Friday with a small group of old friends, and even a couple new ones. The place? A bar called Home Sweet Home in the Lower East Side. It just seemed so....fitting.

So with doughnuts from Doughnut Plant, our friends and some drinks, the fun began. After a few hours of hanging out and avoiding the rain outside, we headed to Freemans for some yummy food and stories.

The next morning (a wee bit hung over) we somehow accomplished to get up and drive to Philadelphia where I had arranged a fun day via Living Social Adventures. We were to show up and meet a group at a bus to drive to the Delaware River by 12:15pm for a fun day of tubing + pub party. Keep in mind that's a two hour drive from Westchester and I was on 2 hours of total sleep. Somehow we made it and had a great time being lazy on the river and met some pretty nice people along the way. It was a long day. We didn't get home until almost midnight. Lucky us, we got a little tan.

Sunday we totally expected to take it easy and celebrate quite style as it was Joey's actual birthday. Seems we had a little spark left in us, so we headed to Williamsburg, Brooklyn with some friends. We had lunch at Fornino's, which looked really good but I stopped eating three bites in because it seems a spider committed suicide in my watercress. Appetitelost. After that we shopped around and Joey picked up a tambourineand I got some light cages (so we can turn them into something, of course) and met up with more friends at a bar we use to go to all the time, Levee. We then ended up at our friends house where I cooked us dinner and we watched bad movies for the rest of the night.

It was nice to take some time "off". Almost like a vacation. So what ever happened to the guest room? Lucky us, our friend rescheduled, but here's where we are at:

Super close! I had to order more of that chevron fabric to make more curtains and today I am on "mission-wood-collection-at-all-costs". We have to be done by this weekend, so hang tight! We will have finally finished our third room in the house!

Be our guest, just not yet....

Hey hey! Happy morning to you! We hope all is well. Today we are venturing into a room in Casa Katsaros which doesn't see a lot of action. Behold, our guest room #1:

I wish I could insert a sound effect here. It would go something like wah wah wah...and followed by sobbing. Our home hosts three guest rooms, one studio, and an office in addition to our master pad. That's a lot of decor that needs to happen. If you missed our awesome ideas for this room, come see! Though many guests have come and stayed a while, all were stuck in an unfinished room. Things have got to change. We had a really great plan, and that just went down the toilet. Let me explain.

Perhaps you are familuar with Young House Love? They did this to their master bedroom in their old house:

With Ikea closets and a creative mind, they made this custom look work, and we wanted to do the same thing! After all, we had those exact closets from Ikea, and had a similar set up in our small apartment bedroom and no real use for them in our new home until we noticed this project.

Up the closets came from the basement, and down they fell in the guest room. Yep, crumbled to bits. Tiny, little, bits. We have moisture damage to thank for that! So instead of buying new ones, Joey decided he better make them. Making them would ensure higher quality (not a diss on Ikea, we LOVE the Ikea), and the ability to customize more. For example, our whack-a-do air-conditioning:

We are also in the progress of making some custom curtains, painting the room up, and filling out the closets with some shelves and curtains to cover up what's inside of them. We also are going to make the top of the closets more custom and built in, while making sure the air conditiong gets to our guests in a pleasant fashion.

We totally love them and think they work well with the room. We want to create a calm and functional space for guests, but also house a lot of storage for extra kids toys, towels, etc.

So there you have it! Step one in fixing up the guest room! Wish us luck! We would love to have this done before Summer fun is over!