Before and after: guest area

When we lived in our apartment, whenever anyone wanted to come visit us, especially after Isidora was born, they couldn't stay with us, simply because we didn't have enough space. We didn't even have a large enough couch for anyone to sleep on as the one we had was only a love seat. Instead, when my family came to visit us, they stayed at Matt's parents' house and we would visit them over there. I never really liked this arrangement because I always felt we were missing out on a lot of time that we could have been spending with our visitors (Isidora's bed time is 7 pm and we had to be home by that time).

When looking for our new house, we really wanted to have either a third bedroom or space for a guest to sleep and a second bathroom (I would have settled for one really nice bathroom). With a finished basement in our new house, we were able to use part of the basement to put a queen bed and the downstairs bathroom as a guest bathroom/Isidora's bathroom.

Here is our bathroom in our old apartment. One thing I really didn't like about it was that the sink didn't have any storage underneath, which meant that there was always stuff everywhere in the bathroom and stuff that had to be stored outside of the bathroom (potentially problematic).

Here is our new guest area. The bed frame was Matt's sister's and was sitting in his parents' garage for who knows how long. We bought the night stand and queen mattress and box at Weekends Only and bought the new sheet set at Macy's. The table at the foot of the bed was our coffee table from the apartment and will be used for guest's suitcases when they come to visit.

Here is a close-up of the bed with Matt's Star Wars shrine in the other window nook.

Here is a picture of the armoire that goes with the bed frame. We have used it to store sheets, blankets, quilts, table linens and odds and ends like batteries, candles and light bulbs. You can see that our office area and the guest area are on opposite walls (that is the coffee table at the food of the bed in the bottom left corner).

This is the new guest bathroom. We decided that our current bathroom set didn't go well in the bathroom upstairs, but would look really nice downstairs. That also meant that we could continue to use the set of towels we got as wedding presents could continue to be used as guest towels (I think they are pretty nice towels).

Here is a shot of the other side of the bathroom. This is also Isidora's bathroom, which is nice because then we don't have to keep all of her toys, soaps, and towels in our bathroom. Another thing we have done is finally let Isidora take baths in the full bath tub rather than use her little tub. She seems to be enjoying it so far. Also, this bathroom is actually larger than our bathroom upstairs and has a closet behind the door (right behind where I am standing in this photo), which has been great for storing our extra towels, cleaning supplies, etc. Plus, when Becky stayed with us for a week and a half, she said everything worked really well!

Furthermore, we now have two couches that are big enough for people to sleep on, not to mention a recliner should we need to have a whole herd of people stay at our house :)