Tropical Guest Room Makeover

My house tour is moving upstairs today to our guest bedroom. Or rather our no-guest bedroom since most of our friends and family live close by and we never actually have guests stay overnight.  But we set up a guest room anyway since we already had a mattress and some accessories from Rob's bachelor days. Plus it makes a nice reading room and the extra bed has come in handy when one of us has been really sick and wanted to keep our germs to ourselves.  

Since the room isn't used too often we didn't want to spend much money on it (okay, no money) and haven't done any major updates, but we have made a few small improvements.  Here's how the room has looked before:

The mattress, bedding, and art are leftovers from Rob's pre-married days. Since our budget for this room was basically $0 and we both like a tropical look, this stuff stayed. Plus all of the tropical stuff kind of makes us feel like we're on vacation when we go in here.

But the room needed some improvements. Namely, we had to get the mattress off the ground and the bed needed a headboard.  So here's the room after these, and a couple other, updates:

 Luckily, my Dad had an extra bed frame that he gave to us so that got the bed off the ground. I was surprised that the bed frame made the bed look so much higher than before.

I also added a seagrass headboard that I made myself. You will never believe how cheaply and easily I made this, but I'll share the full tutorial tomorrow.



In addition to the bed updates, we also swapped out the small tray table with a rustic end table (a free hand-me-down from my cousin).  I like how the rustic table looks along with the tropical elements in the room.

To accessorize the table, I added a tropical lamp (Rob's from back in the day) and a plant set on top of an upside down wicker planter (a $1 garage sale find).

I'm happy with how the room turned out considering we only spent a few dollars to update it.  Now, if we ever do have guests we'll have a comfy room for them to stay in.  In the meanwhile, our pup has another napping spot.


What do you think of our tropical guest room?  Any suggestions on how we can further spruce this room up on a dime?

P.S. The 3M prize pack giveaway is still going on- don't forget to enter!


I'm linking this post up to Guest Room party at DIY by Design.