One Room Challenge Week 4: The No Construction Zone

That’s right…my room is officially a no construction zone!  Can I get an Amen?  I’m beyond happy to be past that part of the One Room Challenge.  I’m always excited about starting the process and the projects but when it comes down to finishing the small details on the construction end, I just don’t have the patience.  I’m not going to lie, this last week I may have uttered some things sounding a lot like, “Why did I even start…”; “I so wish I didn’t think of doing this…”; “This is such a waste of…”; and “Oh for Pete’s sake!!!”.  By the way, if you are new here, I usually don’t rant like this but I’ve taken on the challenge of renovating a room in just 6 weeks in the One Room Challenge, hosted by Linda of Calling It Home and you’ve caught me on week 4.  

Apparently I’m in a total redo mood and decided to redo this little blog too!  Just in case you were wondering…yes this is the blog that had the blue crab on it, but he has retired.  As a little reminder of how this room started out, here is the before I was working with.

A total rat’s nest of kids video games, books, toys, and the like with no personality whatsoever.  My goal is to take it toward this.

One of the things that drives design for me is fabric.  I’m a total fabric junkie and have the hoards of fabric to prove it.  If you notice, my inspiration board is curiously void of any fabulous fabric.  Unusual for me.  As luck would have it, I was out and about and spotted two of these fabrics together and just “knew” I had found my fabric inspiration for this room.

You guessed it.  The painterly fabric and the floral fabric were waiting on the shelf for me at…Wal-Mart.  I know, right?  Wal-Mart!  I popped in to the craft section to buy some printable burlap and these caught me eye.  At $3.97 per yard there really wasn’t anything to contemplate.  #holybargain  Then, to top it all off, I spotted this navy and white polka dot pillow cover in the thrift for $2 in pristine condition.  I was prepared to fork over a lot more money for what I liked, it just turned out there was no need.

The lime green in this fabric has my heart.  I love lime green.  It’s probably my favorite color to wear too.  The combination of the green in the fabric with the green of the palm fronds drove me to pull more green into the room.  I was originally going to use these bamboo and shell prints I have.  There are two very similar ones.  But every time I hold them up in a room they just feel drab to me.

I’ve wanted to do a decoupage art project for a long time.  I now have the perfect project to do it on.  I printed out my design using Poster Block to get a feel for what it would look like and for the scale.  Then, I went online and ordered a poster from my local business printing center.  Here’s a pic of my planning stages of this project.

Once I had my little projects and fabric out of the way I turned my attention to those construction finishing touches.  I decided to trim out the window in the room because this house came our way with No Character.  In fact, I think it was negative character, if there is such a thing.  I’m super pleased with how the window turned out.

On a side note,  I do all my own construction work.  I’ve never been the kind of girl who likes to wait around for someone to do something for me, so I just dive in…power tools and all.  I think my neighbors are starting to wonder if we have some sort of secret fort built inside our house with all the woodwork I do in our front driveway.  Sometimes they stop and inquire about what I’m working on now.  I also added some wood to the top of the standard framing that came with our house.  When it is all painted out I think it will add a lot to the space.

Did you see that little bit of wood on the ceiling?  I finally put the trim pieces up.  #procrastination

I have to admit I was a little worried the wood on the ceiling wouldn’t look good.  Thankfully, the plan came together and I like how it turned out.  So I’m now feeling like I’m in the home stretch.  Now it’s all about the decorating.  The fun styling and photographing is right around the corner.  Hooray!

If you want to check out what all the other One Room Challenge guest participants have been up to, click on over to Linda’s blog, Calling It Home.  There is a ton of inspiration there.