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How Our Guests Get Down

Good Monday, all! We hope your weekend was busy and happy. Aside from the success of the Puppy Love fundraiser, we also managed to squeeze in three (super fun!) days with good friends. That is to say, three days of two friends that slept in this tiny home with us and the kids. But, as you can imagine, two “bedrooms” in 675 square feet doesn’t exactly add up to a lot of room for actual beds.

Our bedroom is the slightly larger of the two (coming in at a whopping 10′ x 12′), leaving our 8′ x 10′ office / project room / makeshift guest room / command center with barely enough space to move around without a bed in it. You might ask, “how do guests actually sleep in that room when they come to visit?” We hinted at this dilemma back here, but figured it was time to give you all some photographic evidence that two people can actually sleep in the tiny nook between the desk, filing cabinet, and sideboard. It works, but they had better really like each other.

The most difficult part of making this whole situation work was finding an air mattress that would actually fit in between our pieces of office furniture. It gets quite sticky when you realize a queen mattress is about five inches too wide, and a twin bed is not big enough for two people. Bummer. So a full size it was.

Kim had her heart set on a double-height mattress to give our guests a bit more of a “real bed” feeling, but finding a full sized bed in a that height proved to be the impossible for two reasons: 1) We weren’t ready to shell out so much moolah for something that could be so easily punctured with one, sneaky kitty claw, and 2) the knobs on our sideboard robbed us of 1-inch. Ridiculous as that may sound, we needed that inch. Back to the drawing board.

After hours (and days) of internet scouring, review reading, and a whole lot of nit picking, we settled on the Coleman Quickbed that fit the budget and space restrictions. It inflates and deflates in less than a minute with the included pump, and guests have assured us that it’s nice and comfy.

The mattress nestles right into place (albeit, with a cushy give), while Grandma’s chair turns 90 degrees and acts as an impromptu suitcase rack. Displayed books are stacked, and guest towels are rolled and at the ready in a tote.

In the past, guests have mentioned that the duo of bicycles hanging from the ceiling looks a bit ominous, but at around 25 pounds each, I could still probably hang all of my weight from each one and have them stay securely anchored in place. On that project, we applied the motto that anything worth doing was worth overdoing.

A few stuffed-animal staples made guests feel cozy in their bedroom, although most of our time around the casa was spent chowing down around the kitchen counter. Our pals were happy to crash in their “own” room at the end of each long day – days that were spent celebrating Kim’s birthday a few days early (which happens to be today, btw. Happy birthday, my love!) with lots of eating, concert-going, beach lazing, BBQ-ing, and Catch Phrase-ing at a favorite tavern. The sometimes gloomy weather certainly didn’t hold us back from painting the town red!

There you have it. Proof positive that four people can actually cohabitate in this tiny abode for a few days. It certainly takes a bit of planning and forethought (especially when all four folks need to get showered and ready in our single bathroom), but it’s totally worth the effort to have good friends share a few days with us in the city that we love.

Does anyone out there share a similar small digs dilemma? One bathroom for four people?  Mathematically calculated air-mattress purchasing? Bikes hovering above the heads of your out-of-town guests? We’d love to hear about them and learn any tips you’ve picked up along the way.

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  • Happy birthday, Kim! Hope you have a fantastic day!!ReplyCancel

  • Erica5.9.11 - 9:28 AM

    Happy Birthday to Kim! I just got my pet portrait gifted from my sister-in-law, and I LOVE IT. So, so sweet. Blog post to follow!ReplyCancel

  • Loren5.9.11 - 9:40 AM

    This arrangement looks super comfy. Maybe not forever but for a couple nights I can see that it would work in a pinch.
    Our bedroom is technically a large closet space and is approximately the size of a kind sized bed. (Luckily we sleep on a full mattress). It was difficult to figure out a bed-side table solution that fit into our budget (which was roughly 0$). We actually really love it and it clears up a lot of room for having friends over and lets us set up the ‘real’ bedroom as a little office space so we can close the door and get away from each other on some occasions.ReplyCancel

  • Z5.9.11 - 9:50 AM

    After having just spent a week with my in-laws as guests in our NYC *studio*, I think your guests have quite a nice setup!

    (the stuffed hippo is key).ReplyCancel

  • Kim5.9.11 - 10:24 AM

    Thank you for the birthday wishes!

    Loren, we have a queen bed in our room, and we actually like how it kind of feels like we’re sleeping in a cacoon… Like our bedroom is hugging us while we sleep. That sounds cheesy, but it’s our silver lining!

    Z, I’ve been a guest in a studio in Boston, and it was certainly tough! There were 4 of us in a space the size of our living room. But that’s all part of the fun – for a short time!ReplyCancel

  • Amanda- Hip House Girl5.9.11 - 10:29 AM

    Well as you know, I modeled my guest room/craft room/music room/multipurpose room after yours, so I’m happy to see this post! It really does make sense to pull out the air mattress for the 5% of the time that guests are occupying the room instead of having a “real bed”. And if you put enough sheets, blankets, and pillows (and stuffed hippos!) on it, it feels a lot more like a bed.

    A murphy bed would be fun someday, or my crazy dream of having a platform bed that you can hoist up to the ceiling with ropes and pulleys to get it out of the way. Stan is not so much on board with that idea… :)

    Happy birthday, Kim!ReplyCancel

  • Cait @ Hernando House5.9.11 - 10:48 AM

    Haha I love Amanda @ Hip House Girl’s comment aboout the platform bed on ropes!

    One day when we move our rooms around (after the carpet gets ripped out and the guest bath gets redone) we may go with an air mattress or murphey bed instead of an actual bed.

    Until then, glad to hear that one bathroom with guests isn’t too bad! We may have a guest later this month and our guest bath is currently sans-shower (and toilet, and water…) Ugh.ReplyCancel

  • Cait @ Hernando House5.9.11 - 10:51 AM

    And happy birthday, Kim!ReplyCancel

  • Kim5.9.11 - 10:55 AM

    I, too, love Amanda’s idea of a bed on pulleys! C’mon, Stan, what could go wrong?

    Cait, it’s really not so bad! And we had 3 girls that had to shower, blowdry, primp, and who knows what else! We just worked in quick shifts and made Scott wait to shower last – ha!ReplyCancel

  • Crayfish5.9.11 - 11:00 AM

    I think a full sized air mattress still only works for one person. With the amount of motion transfer, there’s no way two adults could sleep well on a full sized mattress like that. But, you could always put one person in the living room if necessary! My husband and I can barely sleep on a queen sized memory foam mattress together – one of us would definitely steal the living room!ReplyCancel

  • Amanda5.9.11 - 11:14 AM

    This looks so cozy. I wouldn’t mind sleeping here. + that hippo would make a lovely bed mate. :) hehe The bedding is very nice looking, and very cozy as well (which always helps!)ReplyCancel

  • Jody5.9.11 - 12:03 PM

    Great post. Since we moved our bed into the sunroom, any guests we have are left with the living room, which means they’re waking up when we wake up. Which is usually OK, as we don’t have many guests who like us so much that they want to do that.

    And I feel you on that “one inch lost” business. We recently got a new stove (yay!) and it’s about three inches more shallow than our old one–which means that, while we had to buy new cookie sheets, we now have an extra 128 square inches on the kitchen floor! Woo-ha!ReplyCancel

  • Esther5.9.11 - 3:03 PM

    We have a full sized inflatable in the office for guests as well. Just the thing to fit between the bookshelves and the file cabinet. Welcomes guests but doesn’t encourage them to stay tooo long :)ReplyCancel

  • LOL… LOVE this post! Totally cute, cuddly, snug, and chic! Nice job! Way to work with the space!ReplyCancel

  • michella5.9.11 - 9:28 PM

    makes my task of trying to get some kind of daybed in the new nursery a breeze. I love how you made it functional and pretty. great job! I love the dark blue color on the wall and looking around for a similar color, do you mind sharing?
    thanks!ReplyCancel

  • Kim5.9.11 - 9:58 PM

    Hi Michella, the dark blue in the office is called “Distance,” by Behr. You can find every color in our home right here:

    https://yellowbrickhome.com/source-list/

    Thank you!ReplyCancel

  • Happy birthday! Our guest room does double duty as our office and while there is a little more clearance around the bed, there’s not much more room in there than yours!

    I think the one bathroom is the trickiest part for us but luckily we have a fairly decent sized water heater and our guests are usually pretty flexible about the whole thing :)ReplyCancel

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We’re Kim + Scott, Chicago based content creators behind the Home + Lifestyle brand Yellow Brick Home.

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