Guest Room Spruce Up

Finally....after so many months of Covid  restrictions we had good friends travel for a visit and overnight stay!  Our guest room doubles as an office area, too - and the cabinet pictured above is over 40 years old.  It looks great now that we spruced it up - and company coming was the perfect excuse.

Once again, I forgot to take some "before" photos!  The base of this cabinet was purchased in J. C. Penny's in 1978 when we moved to Horsham, PA for a job my honey was starting.   We had only been married a year and my wedding china was still in boxes in the closet.  We found the base cabinet and it worked perfectly under the window of our dining area and held all of our china....then a year later we moved into John's parent's home back in Schuylkill County, PA.   Sadly, John's dad died before I met John...and his mom became sick before our marriage and passed away in late 1978. She had just remodeled the home and never even got a chance to use her new kitchen.   After a year in the Philadelphia area and looking for a home we realized that our best bet was to move into John's family home.  We slowly made it our own....and took this base cabinet with us.  Once day when we were out shopping - at a J. C. Penny - we found the two completing pieces to this modular unit on sale.  One boxy unit for the television, and a topper that had glass doors.  We were thrilled.  We used it in our family room...took it with us when we built a house in 1989 and used it in the basement family room...took it with us when we built a larger home in 1993 and put it in a guest room there.   When we moved again in 2007 we did the same thing...and the larger, old fashioned televisions fit in the unit perfectly.   

Times change....we downsized, moved to this wonderful apartment in a fabulous community and brought the unit along again.  But, times and televisions change...and here we were with this BIG HOLE for the back of the old fashioned televisions in the middle of the unit.  The smaller, newer televisions did not fill up the empty space.   For a little while I covered it up with a piece of wood...but that did not look right.  I tried woodgrain paper...not a great look.  Then I saw many posts about peel and stick wallpaper and my plan was hatched...

Since this is the bedroom near the Paris bath - you can see a post about that here - 

Paris Decor

I found some paper with a French newsprint design on Amazon and we started the project.  You can see a bit of the hole in the back of the cabinet where the wires for the television and printer snake through...and some of the awful fake wood backing that never bothered me when the BIG old television was in there.

We had to overlap a big to get the paper to match up, but it was already looking much improved...

Once that was completed it was time to work on the glass doors on top.  I have been using that area more as storage than display and it looked kind of messy through the clear glass...

So, we measured some cling on window film that we had leftover from the bottom of our bedroom windows. ( I have room darkening shades in the bedrooms, but did not want them down all the time and as our bedroom looks out onto our screen porch we covered the bottom half of the windows with this film and it is perfect...)

You can see the difference here...one side clear glass, one side with the film....

And here is the finished product.  I took everything off of the top, cleaned and purged and moved things around and her it is! I added a few plants to the sides of the printer for some more color.  I love it!  So much better than it was before...and since we have had the cabinet pieces for so long it is nice to use what we have. 

Did you do any makeovers on furniture pieces you have had "forever"?

Let me know what you think - leave a comment below!  Thank you so much for stopping by Our New Vista!  Have a fabulous week!