One Room Challenge Week Three – Guest Room/Nursery

How are we already to week three of the one room challenge?

I guess if you’re following along around here you’ll notice that I missed week two altogether. As it always seems to happen in our house, we decide to join the one room challenge and then immediately book a vacation that falls somewhere in the project.

This year was no different. We started the project and then left town.

Well we didn’t really start the project.

What we did was develop the concept for the project and the scope of work involved so that we’d be able to dive right in when we returned from our vacation.

If you didn’t see our idea board click HERE to see the plans we started with.

Week Three One Room Challenge

If you haven’t checked out the One Room Challenge you seriously need to go and be inspired. There are so many talented people and some beautiful ideas to see!

I am always amazed at the projects that people take on.

I’m always amazed at what we can get done if we’ve got a deadline. It means finishing a project all the way, not just the 95% that I usually like to do.

So here’s where we are currently.

We’ve done the boring prep work to get ready for the fun parts.

We’ve removed all the items from the walk in closet so that it can be painted white.

We’ve installed a smooth surface to attach our mural.

We installed smooth wood to attach the mural too. We tried this in our previous house and found that it was so much easier than smoothing walls for wallpaper. Not just easier but faster as well. And less back breaking.

We saved the back breaking part for the ceiling.

Enclosing the Tray Ceiling

We’ve enclosed the top tray of the ceiling.

My favorite thing so far is enclosing that tray.

I know that it’s a controversial topic. It’s a beautiful tray ceiling. Unless you’re not really into that sort of thing.

So here’s where I stand on this one. The ceiling in this room is too tall for the space. The tiered trays needed to be toned down. So we still have a tray ceiling, just one tray and not two.

It doesn’t have the birthday cake effect that it had before.

In the photo’s you’ve got the before of the double tray. Then you can see that we built a frame inside the top tray. We had to build a form so we had something to hold the ceiling fan and also to nail our wood onto.

The last photo shows the wood planks that we installed to cover the inside of the tray.

And I love it!

Design Pivot

Once we got the wood planks installed our whole design took a different turn.

Since my husband helps me with all my construction and heavy stuff, he also occasionally has an idea to add to what my plans are.

Darrel typically nods at whatever ideas I throw his way and is a willing participant in whatever crazy idea I can come up with.

He can even take a vague notion that I have and show me how to make it possible. Like the time he built a three car garage from a drawing that I gave him.

I was originally planning to just paint the ceiling the same color as the walls and move on.

His idea is to stain the wood that we put on the ceiling.

I had not planned to use natural wood anywhere else in the room. All the pieces that I’ve chosen are painted so I’m taking a minute to get my mind around it but why not?

Best case is that we love it.

Worst case is that it winds up getting painted later in the project.

So there’s no real downside to it.

But I have to choose the paint color before I can pick the stain color.

Here are the 5 choices.

I’m not even sure that you can tell there are 5 choices here.

We originally started with a much lighter pinkish tone but I’ve come around to sticking closer to the existing color since it’s fairly neutral. We’re going a shade lighter and we’re going to paint the ceiling and vents the same color.

Since the room is for a boy and a girl I needed to be more neutral than pink walls.

These stains are just the ones that I happen to already have on hand. I really love the blue but I think it will clash with the paint so we’re going with the darker walnut.

The black stain is gorgeous and all of these already have my mind moving into future projects!

Stained Wood

I think I’ve also come up with a solution for how to bring more natural wood into the room as well.

The queen size bed only has one wall that it can fit on and there’s a doorway on that wall as well. This leaves a very small area on either side of the bed for a nightstand or two.

I think we’ll build some floating nightstands to go on either side of the bed so that we can make them a custom size. I can add outlets for phone charging in the backs of the these and make them so much more handy.

A lamp with a wood base will help tie the elements together as well. Maybe some art with wood frames.

Once the decor starts arriving I think it will be easier to tie the colors together.

Note to future self: Staining the wood before applying it would have been so much easier.

Less time, less neck pain, less ladder climbing.

Ooh it does look amazing though!

Except for the smoke detector – which clearly says “do not paint”. I’m guess that means don’t stain it either. Boo.

Plans for Week Four

We’ve managed to get ourselves back on track for this project! Here’s what we’re planning for this next week.

We’ve got company coming this weekend for a wedding nearby so we’ll be putting the room back together to function as a guest room for the weekend. That pretty much takes away Friday – Sunday on work time.

Paint is going to be a big one for this week.

We can get the paint finished in the bedroom and the closet.

Once we finish the paint we can hang the mural. Yay for the mural! That might be a week five project though, we’ll just have to see how things progress.

Once the paint is finished we can hang the ceiling fan.

So the actual goals will be paint and more paint. And hang the ceiling fan.

I also need to make sure that I have all my supplies ordered to move forward and double check shipping. Shipping is a major concern these days!

I hope you’re enjoying the updates and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the stained ceiling.