ORC – Week 7 Reveal

The One Room Challenge is now done and it’s time to see the finished spaces for all participants. There were a lot of changes in our home during these past 7 weeks, especially with the addition of our newest family member who was born 3 weeks ago.

Completing this room by myself while being very pregnant and then with a newborn had its challenges. I was able to install the Metrie trim but I  didn’t have enough time to paint the bunk beds — I may have been a bit unrealistic about what I could complete during this time!

The foundation of the room is finished with the new trim, casings, baseboards and new light fixture. With the board and batten on the walls, the ceiling seems higher and these formerly blank white walls have interest even though one side of the room is currently bare.

Remember how this wall looked before when it was just plain white and had narrow baseboards? See the difference now? 

This is the side where the bunk beds will go. In the meantime, here is a clear view of the new, Wide Baseboards and Solid Pine Lattice that I used for the board and batten. It was a new challenge to change the baseboards and I’m so glad I did because it gives the whole room a more updated look.

What I learned from installing wide baseboards is that you need a large blade on your mitre saw in order to properly cut them. That’s just something to keep in mind when choosing a saw if you like the wider moulding profiles.

The board and batten worked well with the awkward angles of this room.

For artwork, I used this painting that was done by my husband and just happened to be the right colour scheme for the room. While mum was visiting in October she made this flannel crib sheet.

Here is my 3-week old son testing out the new space and of course our dog, Cali is right there beside him.

Thank you to Metrie for helping to make this vision a reality! I love when a sketch or an idea comes to fruition.

Even though many elements in the room stayed the same (curtains, curtain rod, crib) with a new foundation the whole room looks new.

To see how all of the other 200 + rooms turned out click on the ORC logo below.

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.

 

Fall ORC – Week 3

Lighting

Lighting has been the biggest change in this room so far. I finally replaced the builder basic light with a statement one. Since the rest of the room is going to be mainly white and yellow I wanted to create a focal point with the light fixture. My plan was to use this bucket style pendant light and adjust the length to the shortest I could possibly make it.

This is what the light looked like with the original long cord and below are photos of it in the room after it had been shortened.

Since this was the only change made to the room since last week, here’s a view of the light from all different angles.

A reminder of what the room looked like before.

This weekend we’re planning to buy a secondhand bunk bed. I’ve been searching for one for months without luck so hopefully this one works out! If not, we aren’t in a huge rush which helps when you’re looking for a specific secondhand piece.

 

Progress in other rooms from the One Room Challenge can be seen here in One Room Challenge Week 3.

Fall ORC – Week 2

It’s Week 2 of the Fall One Room Challenge and just over 1 week away from the new baby’s due date.

Here’s a look at the plan I have for this shared nursery/bedroom – a neutral base with white walls, furniture & bedding; a statement light fixture and colourful accents that can be changed up over time.

Initially, I had planned to colour block the walls with navy on the bottom of the wall to contrast with the white furniture. When my husband saw how dark the navy was, he was completely opposed to this plan so I ended up painting the walls solid white instead. I still think that the navy would have looked good because this is a bright, South facing room but I like the white too.

The furniture and curtains in this room are the original pieces that I used in our very first nursery from our Montreal home. This rocking chair was among the first furniture we bought and I below is the original photo of it from October 2012.

At that time I was expecting our first child and was keen to paint everything with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, that’s where my love of DIY home improvement began. The white paint from 5 years ago has stood up very well as you can see in the photo below. The mirror resting in the photo below is the same one that we have in our powder room.

Goodbye mountain mural nursery wall…

Here’s the plain white room which isn’t too exciting right now. After painting the room I realized that I need to make the doors and trim a brighter white so that there is some slight contrast between them and the walls. By the way, these black door handles are actually shiny brass hiding beneath spray paint. It has been three years since I spray painted these and they’re holding up well here because we don’t use these door handles very often.

 

Week 2 from all of the other participants is linked up through Calling it Home.

Fall One Room Challenge – Week 1

It’s been awhile since I’ve shared any new projects on my blog. Now that The One Room Challenge Fall Edition is here I’m joining in to create a shared bedroom for my son and his baby brother who is due this month.

This photo is from exactly 3 years ago when I painted a simple mountain mural for my 1-year-old. It was a quick and easy project (see the post here) that I still like but, that 1-year-old is now almost 4 years old and with a baby coming I know it’s easier to redecorate now rather than later.

Before I show my plan for this room I’m sharing photos of the whole space as it currently is. The crib has worked very well as a toddler bed but soon we will need it back to use as a crib.

The desk worked as a change table & dresser before and now it’s still used as a dresser. The rocking chair was one of my first chalk painting projects.

 

This little installation I created with some secondhand mirrors as well as canvases and painted them with paint samples.

This is the view of the room from the hallway that I completed with Metrie Moulding last fall. The gallery wall is made of wood secondhand frames that I painted white and distressed.

The pineapple quilt was made by my mum who will soon be opening an etsy shop with baby quilts.

That’s it for this week. All of the other people participating have shared their plans for The One Room Challenge and it looks like a few nurseries are being created as well as many other rooms.

Mountain Mural Nursery Wall

Here comes another painting project post — a mountain mural in the nursery. For some reason, I always want to paint every surface of a house just to make it my own but in this case, the blue-grey walls were a good neutral and allowed me to concentrate my painting efforts elsewhere.

After debating between doing stencilling to look like wallpaper or colour blocking I went for a mountain range instead. The mountain wall from Syrinveien was so striking and a quick way to instantly add character to the room so I basically did the same thing. I continued the mountains over to the edge of the door frame and used a very pale semi-gloss paint that I had left over from the bathroom. Masking off the mountain peaks took some time but the painting was fast and easier than repainting the entire room.

Now the room has more personality and with the rain clouds above the mountains this reminds me of the familiar scenery growing up in Vancouver.

Also thanks to my mum for making this quilt!

Update: Room Tour

A full room tour is now up and shows this room as it has grown from a nursery into a preschooler’s bedroom.