The King Room

Do you name your bedrooms?  We do.  Back before we were empty nesters the bedrooms all belonged to various children in our various houses and carried their names.  Now, we have a house where none of our eight children between us have ever dwelt so the bedrooms have distinct names.  When guests arrive we say "you are staying in the Jungle Room, or Queen room" etc.  At one time, this old farmhouse had eight bedrooms, two of which were servants' bedrooms.  We know this because the old floor plans from different renovations have been passed down from owner to owner as well as some cool old pictures.  We keep those in a box called the Molly box because the previous owners left all the records in a big plastic box with the name of their daughter written on it in blue magic marker. Two of the bedrooms have been converted into the master bedroom and a chronicle in pictures was taken of the gutting and renovation of said rooms and now resides in the Molly Box.  Another bedroom has become a laundry room and another is an office.  So we reside in the master of course and there are four guest rooms.  I'll show you the King Room.  I was in there dust mopping the floor this morning as I do every Monday morning and it was so sunny and pretty I had to take pictures of it.

The fun thing about these bedrooms and the rest of the house really is that every room is a combination of furniture and art that came from both my and Dan's houses.  In case you don't know, we are fairly newlywed,  just 2 1/2 years and we now have an Our house.  Dan's former house was 25 years old and Italy meets California and mine was flea market and antique shop meet renovated meet New England house older than our nation.  And it works!

That door on the right is a closet that used to have another door in it that opened to the bedroom behind it; we had it remodeled and sealed so you wouldn't know the rooms ever connected.

I painted the room a Benjamin Moore called Pleasant Valley.  The king sized headboard came from my old house; it's the only guest room with a a bed that size, hence the name of the room.  So did the end table and love seat, all the art and plates, one of the lamps and the corner column with the plant on it.  The mirrored dresser, lamp stand and bedside table and lamp came from Dan's.  We found the rug at a local antique shop and I made the window treatments.  Most of the bedding is new.

I feel strongly about live plants in a guest room so it feels like the room is alive and used (and loved).  I visit every bedroom in this house everyday even if there is no reason to.  When Dan was out of town most of last summer when we were slowing moving in, I slept in every bedroom but one to see what each room felt like.  I still need to sleep in the Queen room.

Last winter I spent many a Sunday afternoon after church and Sunday dinner supine and reading on the love seat.  The room is always bright and happy no matter the weather and the views out the windows are lovely.  When my former dog Scotty comes to visit us (he lives with my son Heath and his wife Emma), this is the room he sleeps in.  He went through the entire house and chose the King Room.