'Tis the season.

Guests are coming.

But you aren't prepared.

Your spare room is a storage locker, a temporary office, a play room or a catch-all dump for spillover from the garage.

And there's so much junk in the attic you don't need insulation.

That once yawning, guest room of emptiness called out to you looking for somewhere to toss stuff in order to keep the rest of the home neat and up-to-date.

Now, with the holidays brewing, there's trouble on the home front.

Total domestic travel expenditures by U.S. tourists is expected to rise at a rate of only 4.1 percent this year, compared to nearly twice that much, 7.5 percent last year, according to the Travel Industry Association of America and guess what?

Fewer trips, mean more trips closer to home. Yours.

A whopping 78 percent of all home owners expect overnight visitors during the year end holidays, but most of those home owners -- 75 percent -- are using that guest room as, well, a home depot.

Olympic Paints and Stains shamelessly conducted this survey to get you to go out and buy paint and other surface treatments to spiff up that extra room, but the company does have a point. No one wants to sleep on inflatable beds and sleeping bags in the middle of your family room. They'd much rather snooze in the privacy of their own accommodations.

So Olympic teamed up with The Learning Channel's "Trading Spaces" designer Laurie Smith, who just happens to prefer the Olympic brand, to help you square away that spare room -- in style.

"The guest room is not a closet with a bed," says Smith.

Well, it's not supposed to be, anyway.

It's an opportunity for a little interior design experimenting instead of shunning a room that's not frequently used.

Smith says applying her "Trading Spaces" limited-budget approach to the spare room can not only bring it to life but add value to the home.

"In just one weekend, you can resurrect a room without disrupting your entire house," says Smith.

And given the approaching holidays, one weekend is about all the time you'll have to follow her tips.

So get with it.

• Dump the dump. Completely empty the guest room and discard the clutter, allowing only the furniture back it to visualize the possibilities.

• Sleep in. Spend a night in your own guest room. Pack an overnight bag, bring a good book and travel down the hallway. Then you'll know how it feels to be a guest in your house and how to improve that feeling.

• Get personal. Select a meaningful, inspiring accessory, piece of furniture or other item and build from there. For example, turn that child sized roll top desk into a vanity and create a reflective period room in hearty earth tones.

• "Be a curator not a decorator," says Smith.

  Place items in the guest room for their intrinsic value from a design and color standpoint, whether it's an accent pillow a candlestick or a lamp. Don't use the guest room as a recycling bin or alternative to discarding stuff you don't need. That's how it got to be such a dump in the first place.

• Slather it on. Stain mismatched furniture to match. A pearl essence finish can make that old desk really glow. Toss in other odd, dated pieces that might be out of place elsewhere.

• Don't fence yourself in. Choose wall color last or you could literally paint yourself into a corner. Early decisions on wall colors limit your choices. Let your inspiration piece and its accessories be your guide to color.

The key is to create real living space that comes with a comfortable, relaxing feel that also offers memories of you and yours.

Published: November 14, 2006

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the Web site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for "Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home" (Nolo $24.99) and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.