One Room Challenge Week Three: Paint, Polishing and Construction

Hey guys! I’m back with updates for Week Three of the One Room Challenge!

If you’re not familiar, the One Room Challenge, created by Linda of Calling it Home in 2011, is a biannual event in which 20 featured designers chosen by the One Room Challenge team each work to overhaul one room in 6 weeks. Along the way, the featured participants post updates each Wednesday detailing their process and updating readers on their progress.

In addition to the featured designers, anyone with a blog is free to take part as a guest participant and link their progress up to the One Room Challenge site every Thursday. That’s what I’ll be doing!

If you missed my previous updates, check them out here: Week One, Week Two.

And be sure to check out all of the other guest participants here!

Week Three Progress

This week, I was able to get a lot of painting done. Two coats went on the ceiling, and I was immediately flummoxed as to why we don’t paint all ceilings a color. It looks SO pretty! I might do the same in all the bedrooms — too much?

This light will be getting replaced this week with this beauty:

And I can’t wait! It’s so clean and elegant.

After the ceiling, I painted all the trim, two coats, which is always my favorite part because it makes the room feel so CLEAN.

The windows in this room are wood, and while I considered painting the windows black and leaving the trim white, I thought it might get too busy with everything else I have going on in here. So I painted them white, and since I never tape windows, lots of scraping with a razor followed.

Before I painted the door trim and casing I took the two doors off and removed all the hardware to clean it. I haven’t done this in the past, but the paint inevitably gets on the hardware (and it’s probably already on there if you live in an older house), or else you miss spots, and both are annoying to look at forever. So this time, I did it right, and I’m so happy I did!

The hardware is all brass plated and pretty old, so it’s worn in places. I don’t mind it for now, but I’ll have to come up with a solution for all of the hardware in the long term. For now, it’s been cleaned with Bar Keeper’s Friend (amazing product, I used Brasso before and I like this so much better), and it looks much better than before. I didn’t take a before and after photo, but here is an example from the downstairs hallway:

These are the hardware that are back up, I’ll show you the rest next week after I finish painting the doors.

I did get one side of the yellow closet door painted!

I’m in love. It’s so bright and cheerful, and it makes the white room feel more fun. Graham said, “Mom I want the walls to be yellow, too!” My eyes hurt just thinking about it. I showed him all the new art and fun things I was going to put on the walls, and told him the white walls would help them all to stand out. I’m not sure he was convinced.

I was also able to put one coat of white paint on the walls (still needs another), and I’m in love with how bright and clean it feels! (I keep saying that — do you think I want this playroom to feel clean? YES, because it’s never actually going to be clean!)

Ignore the mess in the closet.

And the mess in the hallway. The One Room Challenge has the uncanny ability to make the rest of your house go to s**t !!

But do notice the cute pajama superhero down there.

And up there!

The thing that has me most excited about this week, however, is the frame for the tent!

Steve was able to build it over two days this week, and I’m so happy with how it turned out! Most importantly, it’s STURDY. I could hang on it and it wouldn’t budge. That was the biggest worry for me, as I know the kids will be hanging on the curtains in no time.

Steve built it with perfectly flush surfaces so that when I upholster it, the fabric will lie flat and look tailored. I am going to paint the whole thing white (halfway done), inside and out, so that the wood doesn’t show through the white stripes on the fabric. I’m so excited to start on this!

And that’s it for this week! Come back next week and you’ll hopefully see sneak peeks of the (finished?) tent, window treatments, art, etc.!

Make sure to check out all the other guest participants here!