The new guest room - before and after pics

When we moved house last year one of the most exciting things for me was that we now had an extra bedroom that could be used for guests.

It's only a small room - 8' 11" x  8' 9"- and I wondered if I could squeeze a double bed in there, but I was determined to be able to invite friends to stay over so it was one of the first rooms to be tackled. It also had to be done on a very tight budget, so I kept decorating and furnishing costs down to a minimum.

Before: blue, blue and ....erm, more blue.

The room had been used as a boy's bedroom and had been painted two shades of blue, the bottom half of the wall was a deep blue - and a complete nightmare to paint over! But the biggest problem was the border that had been used around the room. When I took it off it pulled off the paint underneath which looked like it had been painted onto unprepared plaster. Not good.

That meant I had to sand down the whole area where the border had been then fill the gaps with a premixed filler, and then - oh joy! - sand it down again to get it as smooth as possible in readiness for the paint.

Then it was a matter of painting over the blue paint which turned into a marathon painting session.  It took 3 coats of white emulsion (which I already had) to block out that deep blue and even then I was sure I could still see the blue!

Next, I painted a feature wall after figuring out the best way to squeeze a double bed in and against which wall. The feature wall paint was one of the specially mixed colours from the Dulux range (you know where you get them to mix it while you wait?) although I can't tell you the name of it because my brother has hidden tidied away the tin.

There was already pretty decent laminate flooring down, so I just cleaned it up before moving the furniture in.

The chest of drawers, table lamps, mirror , cushions and bedding were all from my bedroom at the old house. I redecorated my new bedroom a few months ago, so these were spare. The red side table was £17 in the reduced section TKMaxx  (I love their red sale stickers!) and the curtains came from Next (£35).

The bed purchase has a story all of its own, but this divan (£120) came from a local furniture shop where I was also offered the solid oak headboard for £30! Needless to say, I snapped their hand off!

All the other bits and pieces I already owned and thought they went well together. I didn't want to overwhelm such a small room, so I've tried to keep it all fairly simple but co-ordinated. I would have preferred some pattern in the room, but I didn't want to splash out on wallpaper because of the tight budget, although maybe in a few months that could be changed. All together, including £15 for the mixed paint it cost approx. £217 to redecorate and furnish the room.

I like the final result, and our recent guests said the room was comfortable. The only quibble I have is whether the room is too samey-samey, matchey-matchey? What do you think?