As most of you know by now, I am taking part in the One Room Challenge as a link participant! And here we are already at week 3 of 6. I am feeling pretty good about what we’ve been able to get done to date {I say we, because Scott is a vital part of this challenge}, but we still have a long ways to go in order to get Beckett’s new room completed in just three more weeks!
Before I give you this week’s update, here’s a quick refresher. We are decorating a brand new, “big boy” room for two year old Beckett. As soon as he moves into his new room, little brother Cooper will be able to move out of our master bedroom and into the nursery {and it’s about time, since Cooper will be one at the end of May}. I am calling the design plan for Beckett’s room “Vintage Preppy Little Man’s Lounge” and it will include a lot of menswear inspired items. Here’s a reminder of what the mood board for the room looks like:
During Week 1 of the ORC, I shared all of the plans for the room together with the long to do list, and you can read the week 2 update here, including my knock off version of the Restoration Hardware vintage industrial letters featured on the mood board.
We’ve been really busy this past week, and I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot, but in some ways this week has been all about taking two steps forward and one step back. I’ll start with the positive and run down what we did get done this week.
My parents watched the boys on Sunday and we were finally able to paint the room. We painted three of the walls with Benjamin Moore Soft Jazz.
The fourth wall of the room will be the real star – argyle! I was hoping to have some argyle photos to show you this week, but not yet. However, that’s not to say that I haven’t been making progress. I spent several hours the other night mapping out the plan for painting the argyle wall, including determining the exact size of each diamond {22 5/8 x 15 13/16}, and creating a to-scale mock up where I’ve mapped out where the colors will go. This plan will allow us to have four rows with 10 complete diamonds in each row.
Before finalizing the measurements for the argyle wall, I needed to get a sense of what it will look like once the furniture is in place. I wanted to make sure that none of the colors would be completely hidden by furniture, and that the scale of the diamonds looked appropriate as compared to the furniture {we originally debated on whether to do 3, 4 or 5 rows of diamonds}.
In this rendering, the placement of the furniture is not exact, but the scale is accurate. The brown rectangle on the far left represents the depth of the bookcase on the adjacent wall. The three brown boxes along the bottom center represent two kid-sized chairs {like the one in the mood board}, with a trunk between them that will serve as a toy box. The large blue shape on the right represents the hanging play tent that my mom and I are designing {the top will actually be pointed, not round}. And the three rectangles in the center of the rendering represent three framed photos that I plan to hang on the argyle wall. I have been uncertain as to whether it will look too busy to have framed photos hanging on this patterned wall, but seeing this illustration gives me a bit more confidence.
Today is the day that I’ll beginning taping out the diamonds, and I honestly have no idea how long it will take before I’ll be ready to start painting. But if you follow me on Instagram, I’ll give you some sneak peeks at the process over the next few days. And, of course, I’ll give you a full tutorial when it’s all complete.
When I’m in the midst of large-scale, time consuming projects, I find it really rewarding to take short breaks to tackle some smaller projects that can be completed quickly. Earlier in the week I framed
a couple of art pieces that I purchased for the room, and yesterday I created two whimsical pieces of art by cutting photos of Menswear Dog out of a calendar and placing them on patterned papers I designed to look like suit fabrics. You can read the details of the framed dog photos here, and I’ll give you the info on the other artwork once I do the full room reveal.
Among other accomplishments this week, we have now removed everything from the room that doesn’t belong, and we were able to sit the major furniture pieces in place to get a general sense of what the room will look like. The furniture fits just as we anticipated, thanks to the furniture plan that I created before we began purchasing any items.
Not everything went exactly according to plan this week…
I had planned to add some gold detail to the chalkboard globe that I began painting last week, but then discovered that the chalkboard paint would cause the gold paint pen to smear. I’m just so glad I tested the paints on some cardboard before adding the detail to the globe. After a couple more trips to various art supply stores, and two more rounds of tests, I think I have found a solution that will work, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’ll be able to complete the globe this weekend.
We also installed the bun feet {the ones I was painting yellow in last week’s update} on the Expedit bookshelves. After seeing the long bookshelves with just one foot at each corner, we realize that it would look much more complete with an extra pair of feet at the center of each bookcase. This meant I had to go back to the Lowe’s to buy more unfinished wood bun feet. I’ve primed them and painted them, and, if the weather is warm enough tomorrow, I’ll be able to spray them with the enamel finish so that the additional feet can be installed and the bookshelves will be complete at last.
Finally, I was hoping that by now we would be done with our DIY leather drawer pulls for the dresser. I bought some belts that we were planning to cut up to make the drawer pulls, but I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that I hadn’t thought it through fully and that the stitching along the edges of the belts would come undone once the belts were cut. Once again, this meant I was back to shopping for a better alternative, and I managed to find a great price on some belts with no stitching.
That’s it for this week. I’ll be back again with another update next Thursday, and you’ll see more projects popping up on the blog between now and then. In the meantime, please stop by Calling It Home, the host of the One Room Challenge, to see what all the other participating bloggers are up to in their rooms!
You can find all of my past One Room Challenge posts here:
FALL 2014 ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: Modern Metro Master Bedroom
SPRING 2014 ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: Vintage Preppy Little Man’s Lounge
