Quick Guest Room Transformation & Gallery Wall

The house that we call home has two guest rooms upstairs that I have done nothing here on the blog with besides sharing the “before” pictures of, because, well, outside of putting in a few pieces of furniture, they pretty much look the same as before!

We are trying to get the 1st floor under control before doing anything major upstairs (besides the main bath we completed for the One Room Challenge and the quick master bedroom update!) so that’s why the sounds of crickets generally come from the 2nd floor on Sypsie, but I wanted to share a few quick updates that I put together last weekend before my little brother (who’s 11) came to stay with us!

Here’s the room the day that we got the keys…

By far the biggest transformation in the room is the removal of the lovely floral wallpaper. When we first moved in, M’s mom was a huge help and basically locked herself in that room for an afternoon and started ripping it all down. Luckily, the walls must have been prepped just right, because the paper came off in huge sheets and only left a few remnants near the top. Those pieces of paper may or may not still be there, so just don’t look up too high in these photos : ) The walls have not been washed or painted yet either, but when we were scrambling through late nights to get the house ready for our housewarming party last fall, the “yellow” looked just fine to us ha!

Now, when you walk in, here’s what you see!

The curtains and pillows from our old master bedroom got moved into here, as well as the desk base, nightstand and lamp makeovers from our first house. Since my brother dubbed this “his room” after first stepping foot into it a few months ago (I think he would have said that to whichever room had a TV in it, which happened to be this one ha!) I did not shy away from color and incorporated a few momento’s from him in the gallery wall.

Speaking of the gallery wall, that was added just a little while before he got here, using whatever I could find in our big closet of mystery aka the Monica closet for any Friends fans : )

There’s a treasure map from a family trip we all went on, a drawing he made me in elementary school that I put behind an old paper stencil, a few decorative mirrors and the deer and wood accents to add a tiny bit of a “boy” touch.

This room was almost 100% put together using things we already owned, outside of a couple of candles and this fun lamp! I saw it at a thrift store and after a little cleaning and a new shade, I absolutely love it. This might be an “only me” thing since I have yet to find anyone who agrees with me, but after swooning after similar versions at Homegoods that were $100+ I snatched this $5 one up!

The chair that used to sit in our foyer got moved up into the space to fill the empty corner with a few cozy accessories as well, and that pretty much wraps up our super quick guest room update!

My brother loved spending time in “his” room and I loved how in about 30 minutes of squinting at a wall to eyeball where I wanted the frames and another 10 minutes of accessorizing, the room felt lived in with a few personal touches for him.

To be honest, this will probably be one of the only updates for this space for the near future. The only guests that have stayed in it so far are my siblings (the other guest room is the main area and is ahead of this one on the ol’ to-do list), and we have lots of other spaces that are on our list to update that we use on a daily basis, but I wanted to share after finally making some progress up here last weekend!

What projects have you been working on? Any his-mine-and-ours rooms or gallery wall tips to share? I usually lay everything out on the floor and then transfer it piece by piece to the wall, but there was something slightly freeing about just going for it and not worrying if it was perfect or not!