One Room Challenge – Fall 2020- Week#1

Time for the Fall One Room Challenge – The best motivation to finish up projects!

Welcome to our basement. When we moved here over one year ago the only furniture we brought were our beds, couch and coffee table. This room has stayed basically unfurnished for the past year so now is the time to make it cozy to stay home this winter!

I prefer to use secondhand furniture as much as possible – for the environment, the quality is often better as is the price. This console we bought with our kitchen table, the TV used to be my Nana’s and the lamp is from the last house.

Last year I added curtains to the window. I bought new sheets and sewed them into curtains.

These cabinets I bought at Restore with plans to paint them and make them into a storage bench similar to our last home.

Here is the room (and the kids 😉 ) in a space overrun with toys. Despite the full size windows, it is dark so I will be painting the walls lighter and adding mirrors.

For months I have been looking for a secondhand sectional couch – finally I found one!


We bought our leather living room couch used in Montreal 8 years ago and it has withstood the use and abuse from kids and pets and still looks good. I had hoped to find something used again rather than buying new but was having trouble finding one. I started to look for a new one and asking my Aunt and friends when I saw this one used online. We hired a local person – Your Friend with a Truck – to bring it to us.

Here is step one of the Fall One Room Challenge to make the room cozier – what a difference furniture makes!

Photo: Heidi Lau Photography

In our last home adding moulding throughout the house was a priority to add character. I haven’t done any yet in our current home but I brought this mirror from our last dining room which I plan to finally put up.

photo: Heidi Lau Photography

This was our last basement where I added this board and batten. I have some ideas for the wall treatment in our current home to give the space more character…they are quite finalized yet.

Here’s some of the materials I’ve been slowly collecting over the past year – paint mis-tints, some leftover Advance paint from the island cabinets and door architraves. I am also excited to sew some new cushion covers for the sectional couch.

To see what else everyone has planned check out the One Room Challenge page linked below:

https://www.oneroomchallenge.com/blog/orcguestss20wk1-khx3f

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New in the Studio: Screen Printed Tea Towels

Here’s a look inside my studio from the side of the room that I haven’t shown before. I did a mini makeover last year with several more DIY projects, which included building a new work table for screen printing.

With all of the focus on doing home improvement projects, I wanted to make an accessory for the finished space, in this case the kitchen.  Here’s a look at the process and finished pieces.

 

 

They are designed to be functional for everyday use and the linen will get softer with every wash.

Also, a tutorial for this wreath as seen in the photo above will be coming to the blog within the next week.

This board and batten wall works well for hanging fabric to dry too. The tutorial on how I built is here and was recently featured on Apartment Therapy.

ORC – Week 6

The shared nursery/bedroom is coming together and luckily the One Room Challenge has been extended by one week so that should be enough time to finish installing all of the Metrie trim.

I’m using the garage as my workshop and borrowing my friend Kate’s mitre saw to cut the pieces there. Then, I bring the cut trim up to the bedroom to double check measurements and install it using basic hand tools like I did in my previous moulding tutorial.

I have a sketchbook where I planned the trim and I also use it to keep track of the lengths I need to cut.Removing and replacing window and door casings is new for me and so far it’s going well. Above is how the window looked after I ripped off the old casing. I pried it off with a screwdriver and then pulled out the nails with a hammer. Where there was a build-up of paint from before, I used a chisel to carefully create a smooth surface.

Here is the new Pretty Simple Casing up around the window. Combined with the 5 1/4″ wide Pretty Simple Baseboards,  the room is already looking better.

This side of the room has two doors that I’m still working to remove the old casings from. In the meantime, I have started putting the Solid Pine Lattice up on the top edge of the room.

Once the lattice was up around the top and the baseboards were in, putting up the vertical lattice went quickly.

While I was working in the room these two were napping in the hallway …

That’s it for this week. My sister is here visiting for a few more days which will help me get the rest of this finished in time for the final reveal at the end of next week.

 

To see how all of the other rooms are coming together, click on the link below.

ORC- Week 5

The pieces and materials are all coming together for this room, now it’s just a matter of completing all of the projects. 

This is my son who was born last Thursday and was the reason that I decided to take on the One Room Challenge this fall. This pineapple quilt was made by my Mum and is part of the theme for the room.

Since my last post, I’ve ripped off the basic mouldings in the room so that I can replace them with Metrie baseboards and casings. Since I’m going to be adding board and batten to the walls, I wanted to add weight to the baseboards and casings to make the whole room have more architectural interest.

I am so excited to partner with Metrie again to complete this project. This time I’m using trim from their Pretty Simple Collection because the profiles were the perfect complement for the lattice I’m using as the battens.

This is what I’ll be using in the room:

Solid Pine Lattice 1 5/8″

Pretty Simple Casing 

Pretty Simple Baseboards 5 1/4″ 

This is the current state of the room with all mouldings removed. Before installing the new ones I will paint them outside in the garage. Since I couldn’t wait to see how it would look I propped up the new baseboards to get an idea of how it will look.

We have bunk beds now as well. After searching for months without any luck, I finally found this set of solid wood bunk beds on Kijiji. 

This was the only picture in the ad but it was enough to tell that they were what I was looking for – good quality, solid wood and could be separated into twin beds in the future if we ever wanted to.

This is part of the bunk bed frame that I’m planning to paint white.

After seeing the bunk bed ladder in the room I think I’ll leave it as is for practical reasons and also because the colour of wood works with the white walls and yellow curtains.

 

To see the progress of the other One Room Challenge participants click on the logo below.

ORC – Week 4

It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge and our baby was born this morning! Even though this room isn’t perfectly finished it doesn’t matter because we have a bassinet in our room to use for the first couple of months anyway.

 

Another announcement is that I am partnering with Metrie to change these plain white walls into ones with more substance thanks to board and batten moulding. Below is the rest of my mood board for the room.
After adding moulding in other rooms of the house, I have seen the sense of character it adds and envisioned it here as well. Since this room is an irregular shaped kids room that will be packed with furniture, the board and batten painted white will add some subtle dimension to the walls.

Image Via: Rethink Design Studio

This image from Rethink Design Studio is the inspiration and I intend to do a similar style. I like how they used the lattice along the top edge instead of crown moulding. After installing moulding on our staircase this should be a simple job.

This is the rough idea of what I’m planning. After doing some sketching and spending time in the room measuring different spacing, I prefer the look the board and batten being wider.

 

That’s it for this week…time to get back to that baby! More updates from the other participants can be found below.

 

How to Install Board & Batten

Today I’ve got a tutorial and reveal of the completed board & batten wall, created in collaboration with The Home Depot Canada. Since I’m usually learning as I go, The Home Depot staff are who I rely on to answer questions and give advice for whatever project I’m working on.

These are the steps that I followed. It’s important to measure, plan, keep lines level and plumb, nail into studs when possible and when in doubt – ask for advice!

Removing the baseboard was my first step because it was thin and wouldn’t look right with the pine boards. I used a flathead screwdriver to pry it off and it came off much easier than I expected.

Next, I marked all of the studs and finalized the placement of my vertical boards. These boards I had cut to length at The Home Depot Canada. Since I live close to the store I planned to start with only these 1″ x 4″ Pine Select boards and then return to have the horizontal pieces cut. When choosing boards make sure to get ones that are straight. If you don’t know how to check, just ask for assistance. If the boards are warped it makes it more challenging to attach them to the wall.

I used 1 1/2″ spiral finishing nails which were recommended to me since they have more grip than a regular finishing nail. For some boards that don’t stay on the wall flush, I used a few dots of Construction Adhesive to make sure they held.

The next step was to take the measurements between the boards before heading back to get the horizontal pieces cut.  The policy is us that you pay after the first two cuts but if you visit when it’s not too busy the staff usually go above and beyond. Having a sketch helps to remember which pieces go where and what lengths are required.

When I got home I started figuring out spacing on the wall. I did have to adjust a couple of boards with my hand saw because I had taken the wrong measurement.

I started with the top pieces and made sure they were in a level line. It turns out that our basement height is quite uneven so to create a level line across the top I left a gap (which will later be covered with moulding). These smaller pieces are held up with 2 -3 nails. Along the bottom edge, I wanted to make sure that in the future if we were going to replace the flooring it would be possible to easily remove the bottom boards.

Painting the bottom pieces before adding them to the wall would have made it much easier. To save yourself some hassle, paint them first!

Where the boards intersected I used a wood filler and sanded once it was dry.

When it comes time to paint, if you’re using a product that has a primer built in you can paint directly onto the wood. Along all of the edges where the boards meet the wall, I ran a strip of caulking along it. I have a caulking gun and have found it to very worthwhile to have. It allows you to purchase tubes of caulking or construction adhesive which are easier to apply than little containers that you squeeze out.
After final sanding, painting and caulking.

This reveal wasn’t about changing everything in the room. The paint colour stayed the same but now the basement has a feature and interest that it didn’t have before.
Thank you to The Home Depot Canada for helping make this vision a reality! If you have an idea of a project but don’t know where to start they are a wonderful resource of information and guidance.

Here’s a little reminder of where it started and some of the steps along the way.

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As featured on

 

 

Basement Accent Wall – Plans

Time for another project! This time I’m going to be adding an accent wall to our basement thanks to The Home Depot Canada.

Throughout all of my home improvement projects, The Home Depot staff have been there to give me guidance and answer any questions. There are so many possibilities to create furniture and home accents without having a workshop at home. I like being able to show up with a plan and leave with the wood cut so that I can begin building, sometimes right in the living room when it’s too cold to work outside.

The plan for the basement is to create a board and batten style accent wall using Pine Select 1″ x 4″ Boards. I am choosing wood since it’s for the basement and I plan to paint it the same white as the walls currently are. Above are a couple of sketches I did to figure out the spacing and corresponding measurements.

Here is how the basement looked when we first moved in. Below is how it currently is after I painted it white for a lighter look and refinished the banister. Paint has quick and inexpensive results, but the addition of paneling takes it to another level and can expand the sense of space, which can be very useful in a basement. Natural light enters from the stairwell which should add some extra dimension to this wall once the wood is installed.

Once the wood gets up on the wall there will be photos of the process plus more behind the scenes on my Instagram.

 

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