Thursday, April 23, 2015

ORC Linking Event Week 4

It's week 4 of the One Room Challenge.  I don't know why, but when I say that in my head it sounds like the announcer from a boxing match. Ha!  This week has been tough. I think I say that every week!! Finally all the wallpaper and glue are gone. My painters got one coat of paint on the ceiling and the tinted primer on the walls. Here is how the room looks now.






I took down the light fixture. I'm donating it to a sweet little baby for her nursery. It will look perfect there. This room is coming along slowly and surely. The floors are going to hold me up. Sadly I will not finish in the alloted 6 weeks. I will still update every week until I'm finished, so please keep coming back. 
We are off today my husbands MBA graduation this weekend. It has been a long 2 years. Classes have been every other weekend. When we moved from Jacksonville he had to travel there twice a month from Pittsburgh. With plane tickets, hotels and rental cars it has been an expensive venture. I'm  so proud of all his hard work. We finally get our weekends back!!!! Just in time to work on our fixer upper. I'm off to pack. Hope everyone has a productive weekend. I'll be spending time with family and friends so no work until next Tuesday for me. 

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Boy's shared room- ORC Week 3


So it's week 3 of Linda from Calling it Home's One Room Challenge Linking Event. This marks the halfway point of the challenge. There's still so much to do. Not sure I will finish in 3 weeks mostly due to the schedule of the flooring guy.

I'm still stripping wallpaper and washing glue off the walls. so there are no pics of the room this week. Removing old wallpaper is a tedious job. I will be finished by the end of the weekend. I decided to hire someone to paint and repair the plaster.  He was very reasonable and I need to strip 2 other bedrooms so we can get all the floors refinished.

I did buy a couple of things for the room this week. The ceiling light and quilt are from PB Kids and the clip light, desk and dresser are all from IKEA. If I have enough time I'd like to do a little paint treatment on the dresser.Boy's shared room



I started my initial string art. If you follow me on instagram you saw this pic



I put an orange wash on the board and made a pattern and started nailing. I'm still nailing. My kids think it's very noisy so I'm working on it here and there while they're at school.

Window treatments are on the schedule for Sunday and Monday. So that will  be my reveal for next week. Till then go check out all the other linking participants over at Calling it Home.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

ORC- Week 2

It's week 2 of Linda's One Room Challenge Linking Event.


Well week 2 of the ORC didn't go so well for me. What was I thinking attempting this challenge! I hurt everywhere from removing all that blasted wallpaper. We did close on our house on Monday. That means I've had 3 days in the room. Here is how it started.



Wallpaper removal is not for the faint of heart. Here is how it looks after 3 days.




There are many cracks in the plaster that need to be fixed. I'm researching how to do that now. They need to be repaired then primed and painted.

So when I started the removal process I realized the ceilings are even papered. I'm leaving the paper on the ceiling and hopefully I'll be able to paint it. You really can't tell it's paper unless you look very close.



See that large crack!!!  What am I going to do where the paper meets the wall? I would love to put some crown in here, but 3 of the walls are curved near the ceiling. Guess I'll be wandering the aisles of HD and Lowes Looking for a solution.

I couldn't  have done the wallpaper without these 3 tools.

Wallpaper removal



Best $60 dollars I could have spent on this job.

We are having the wood floors in the whole house re-stained in about 3 weeks. Nothing can get moved in to the room before they are finished. Installation of the room will have be done in just a couple of days. If I finish in time it will be a miracle.
Hopefully next week I'll get to show you some projects I am doing. Here's a list of what I"m going to try to do for next week.

  • Finish wallpaper removal
  • wash all the glue residue off the walls
  • fix the cracks
  • prime the walls
  • 2 initial string art projects
  • 2 cornices for windows
I'm just getting this post in under the wire today.  Can't wait to check out everyone progress this week. I'm sure you are all ahead of me. Ha! Come back next week to see more progress.


Thursday, April 2, 2015

ORC (One Room Challenge) Linking Party

Well it's been almost 2 years since I last blogged. Wow! We have moved twice since then. The first was a local move, and the second was a move to Pittsburgh, PA.  Let me tell you, I do not like the cold here in the North. I am ready for some warmer weather so I can get my flip flops back out.

Right now we are living in a small rental house south of Pittsburgh, but we are buying a house and are closing in a couple of days. This will be our 5th move in four years! Now you know why I haven't had time to blog! I need some motivation to get stuff done in the new house, which is definitely a fixer upper,so I thought the ORC linking party would be good for me. If you are not familiar with the One Room Challenge, go visit Linda at Calling it Home to learn all about it.

Our new house is an 80 year old Tudor style brick house.



The first room in this house I'm going to tackle is a shared bedroom for my 2 youngest boys. They are not used to sharing a room so this will be an experience for them. One that they are not looking forward to. Luckily the room is quite large, but needs a lot of work. This is how it looks in the listing photo.



It would make a sweet little girls room with the 50 year old floral wallpaper, but sadly I don't have any girls. So here is the plan. 

The wallpaper is getting stripped. 
The floor is getting sanded and restained to a darker color.
The walls will be painted a nice neutral greige color.
There will be 2 twin beds each with this Landon Pottery Barn quilt.


The bedding is my inspiration and the rest of the room will be designed around these colors. I will be using a lot of what we already have but I will be doing some custom window treatment for the windows along with some initial string art and some other surprises along the way. I hope you'll check back every week and leave me comments. I'd love to make some new blogger friends. If you are participating in the ORC Linking party I wish you the best of luck and I can't wait to see your rooms.