One Beach Cottage Bedroom Reinvented Four Times: From Kitsch to Calm, and All the In Between

Last Updated on October 25, 2024 by Marybeth

Over the space of twelve years one room in our house has had four disconnected personalities. It’s like those stories you read about people reinventing themselves every couple of years. Because of ‘work martyrdom.’ Because a milestone birthday creeps up. Because they are moving toward their authentic self.

Often the stories take a madcap turn.

They up and quit their job at Burger King, steal all the nuggets and say “F#@! it.” To escape their current life they steal a BMW after being told they can’t buy it with food stamps. They ask a new woman on a date and drive her to a sports bar on a stolen Walmart mobility scooter. And yes, these are all Florida Man stories: I just couldn’t not.

Our little guest bedroom has not been nearly that brazen, and never heinous, and to be truthful of the four personalities only two have been distinctly ours. The first was as we found it. The previous owners had it styled as, I guess, a study. The best room in the house, with its own little covered deck, overlooking the lush tropical back yard and swimming pool, was left snoringly boring.

The third iteration was when my youngest (then mid 20s) daughter moved in with us for a year, along with a mammoth cage of 2, and later 4, pet rats. I loved having her here (she who recently gifted us with our second granddaughter!!!!) but we’re not going to show photos of that stage of the four-part series.

Our first re-design: You’ve heard the advice of interior designers about making sure your house has a flow. As your eye travels, you want a visual channel; nothing jarring. While to jar one’s senses was never our intention, we just don’t do flow. Like our kids – even though, as a young mom, I thought they’d all be white-blond and love the beach – their little divergent personalities emerged and I wouldn’t change a thing. Each room in our house is thoroughly its own.

The pool bedroom – as it became named, for obvious reasons – emerged slowly but with a determination to be a little quirky and not not theme-y. Cobbled together with furniture that had been saved for eons in Mom and Dad’s attic (“Someone will want this someday!”) we set up my childhood 4-poster bed (sans my princess- era frilly white canopy) and an antique dresser that never quite lost its musty smell. Everything else just sort of harmoniously happened.

RELATED: Beach Bedroom Makeover: From Small Study to Summery Guest Retreat

After Mae moved out we decided we wanted a zen-like space. Soothing, quiet, peaceful. (I swear, Sweetie, it had nothing to do with us now being rat-free!) I’d moved away from my paint-peely dumpster-diving (I literally leveraged myself into our apartment complex dumpster once, before I married Robert, for a coffee table that the kids and I painted with brightly colored polka-dots: totally worth the dive) self and found that I was drawn to the clean lines of mid-century furniture and the whiteness of “Scandi-style.”

Robert often watches a Japanese carpenter on YouTube who mesmerizes us, not just with his quietly jaw-dropping talent but the videos themselves. There is no talking, only him working patiently, with interesting camera angles and focus. Occasionally his dog meanders silently past. At the end the completed piece of simply stunning furniture is shown, styled maybe with a single flower in a clear glass vase on the floor beside it. Piano music, slow but happy – like sunshine coming in the window of his wintry studio – plays. He hooks his dog to a leash and they walk through the misty afternoons, crunching leaves beneath their feet, Cherry Blossoms slowly waving above. Find Ishitani Furniture here on YouTube, and @ishitani_furniture on Instagram.

So Robert, inspired, built this bed:

An extra-long twin sized bed seemed a better choice for this 10′ x 11′ room than my childhood double. We painted the walls Valspar ‘String of Pearls’ and vowed to keep the palate clean and simple, minimalist whites and natural finishes. And while you’ve probably heard me say that beige is my least favorite color – well, along with brown (even its name sounds sludgey) and burgundy (Triple B’s!) it is looking here like beige is coming creeping in to my house.

That vow I mentioned? The minimalist one. Basically we banished all the kitsch (well, except for the alcohol themed coasters) and no longer have cutesy beachy signs: ON BEACH TIME; LIFE’S BETTER AT THE BEACH; WHEN IN DOUBT GO TO THE BEACH – these are all outside now – and I stuck my PLAY THE DAY AWAY pillow in a closet (for now.) I feel like we’ve grown up, we’ve evolved. Maybe we’re even finding our authentic selves…..

My authentic self may still – despite thinking I want the light, airy, less is more thing – be secretly longing for the unexpected pop of sunshine beyond a gold-yellow throw. Verve. Surprising ebullience in the form of “I would rather be happy than dignified” (Charlotte Bronté.) And so, my fellow travelers and readers of my blog, I’m guessing you won’t be too shocked to see that color and yes, probably kitsch, has crept back in. Kind of like the roots of my hair if I forget to make a hair appointment: inevitable, when my hair is truly dishwater blond/beige, deep down.

Pool Bedroom Personality #4 is still on a journey to its authentic self. And I’m guessing there will be swerves along the way, detours maybe. Landmarks bringing more of the color pink into our lives. Joyrides, not on a mobility scooter, but a baby stroller. Because who else are we going to style our guest bedrooms for if it’s not for our two granddaughters’ overnights? Twelve years ago we also styled the other guest room as the Shipwrecked Bunk Bedroom (not not themey!) hoping for grandchildren someday. This room can become Ellis’s or Rhoda’s when they’re old enough (that bunk bed ladder will make me nervous until they’re, oh, probably eleven and fifteen.)

Stay tuned for #5.