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One of the best parts about the ORC is hearing everyones comments. It is so interesting what people notice and what sparks their interest. I've had several source requests so I thought I'd lay it all out nice and neat, just like this room was - for about an hour. I am happy to report it is now perfectly trashed, and will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. Also, the sun finally came out so I got some more true-to-life pictures.



The white stools were purchased several years ago at my favorite local antique store and have been in just about every room in the house and every color in the rainbow. I had just barely enough Les Touches to cover them and I love how they tie the red accents from the front of the house to the back of the room.

The console is an outdoor buffet table. It folds up, has a zinc top and weights practically nothing.

The blue and white is from my collection that has made its way around the house and the lovely brass hardware is from Rejuvenation.

The backs of the bookshelves are planked, just like the far wall. Tutorial to come soon.


The fabric for the slipcovers is plain white denim from housefabric.com (they are local for me). All the fabric was prewashed and the slipcovers were made without piping to prevent shrinkage when they are washed. And they will be washed. Frequently.

The red and white pillow is from Etsy, the white table used to be black, the mirror is from the side of the road (classy) and the toy under the table is probably Fisher-Price. (real life)


The plaid fabric, floral fabric and blue and white fabric are all from housefabric.com. They know me well there.


The color on the chairs is Rust-Oleum Lemongrass. The green pillow is from World Market (although I don't think it is available any more) and the ikat pillow is from Etsy. Rainbow Pom-pom garland from Furbish and sconce from IKEA.


I told you it was a sunny day. Can you believe all of this light came in from the door at the top of the stairs?!


I think that about covers it. Do you have furniture that you recycle from one room to the next? Ever dump something in storage for a while and all of a sudden it seems new and exciting? How excited do you think HouseFabric.com is going to be when they hear I'm actually sewing now?

Week six is finally here and I have crossed the finish line. Picture me squirting gin water all over my face. Wahoo!

I've said it before but it should be said again - six weeks is not as long as it sounds and I was down to the wire on this project. It can be confirmed that I am a down to the minute girl.

But enough jabbing, let's get to the pictures. I won't do much talking today (as hard as that is to believe), I'll just show the goods. Oh, with one note - this is a basement AKA - NO light. And no matter how many 'learn how to use your camera' tutorials I pin, I just don't have the patience. So be kind. A professional photographer I am not...obviously.


As a reminder, here is where we started six weeks ago.


Here was my inspiration board for the space.





And here we are today.



The old office table from Goodwill and my mis-matched chairs have all gotten a paint job and are ready for lots of arts and crafts. The chalkboard was mine growing up and got a fresh coat of red paint (the girls' color choice).


Clearly I am not a chalkboard artist, but the girls are. The quote is my new mantra. I'm going to use it to justify my consistently messy house.



I planked the back of the bookshelves to coordinate with the plank wall and then filled them with my blue and white overflow and lots 'o books. The numbers on the left are old score board numbers I got at a church yard sale years ago and represent our anniversary - May 20.


I made those pillows. With a sewing machine. Its true. Not a big deal to most but a huge accomplishment for me. I am still amazed.



The old $8 chairs got white denim slipcovers (perfect to wash when needed) and look so very good. I am in love with their skirts. And they looks smashing with their Goodwill makeover lamps.




The dollhouse was made years ago by a family friend and was passed down to the girls when my niece went to college. The sign that hangs above is from my grandparent's farm. The same farmhouse where the 'homework chair' that sits over at the creative station came from.


The girls are big into photos (mostly of themselves) so I took an old metal tray and turned it into a magnetic photo board. Push pins often end up on the floor and then stuck in someone's toe (that would be mine) at our house so magnets sounded like a safer bet. Now we can switch, add and rearrange on a whim. And trust me, we have a lot of whims at our house.


The coffee table got a fresh coat of paint and a new plexi glass - aka unbreakable - top. And I'm madly in love with the indoor/outdoor rug. It feels great, looks great and takes a beating like a champ.


So there she blows. All done and being trashed by the girls as we speak. Just as it should be. I'll be sharing more details, sources, and tutorials over the coming weeks so be sure to stay tuned. And thank you all for following along. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

A special huge thank you to my dear friend Linda for including me on this fun adventure, and to all my fellow challenge mates. Excellent work ladies!

One note before we get started - I am lucky enough to participate in the Take Two series over at designPost today. Make sure to check it out here.

We are at the half way point people! (click here if you missed week 1 or 2) And what am I still doing? Painting. I am sure you are as sick of here about my painting as I am of actually painting. But we are in the home stretch, so stick with me. I promise good things.

Last week we were left with a nice bright, white room and a primed staircase.


But those of you who know me know I can't leave a room white for long. I am, after all, a color girl. Enter those mystery stripes I mentioned on the inspiration board.


The painter's tape came out and I got to work on one of my very favorite "I want to do that some day" pins, a painted stair runner.


And I can't leave the stairs all alone so I thought some stripes on the floor would be fun too.


The floors were simple to tape out. I just measured the length of the room, randomly choose a width for each stripe by eyeballing what 'looked good' and then divided the width out by the total length. Easy peasy.


The stairs were a bit trickier. These stairs, along with everything else in my charming old home, are not level. In fact, I think if you tried to put a level on these stairs you would actually be able to hear laughter coming from the treads. So trying to measure would just result in a trip to the sanitarium. So I trusted those eye balls of mine.


Using the same Porch and Floor paint from Sherwin-Williams, I painted the navy stripes. I went one shade lighter than the navy I used on the girls' dresser. And thanks to excellent paint, the floor only needed two coats. It helps to watch Orange is the New Black while you paint floors, in case you were wondering.

As for the stairs,


they need a little clean up but for the most part I am thrilled. My eyeballing would have been perfect if I hadn't decided to make the skinny lines just a tad bit thicker. I didn't overlap my tape perfectly on the left there, so mamma has some touching up to do. No worries.

And one word of caution if you are thinking of painting stairs: unless you have multiple stairwells in your house leading from one floor to the next, this is a task that can cause some grumpy tenants. When you look at those cute pictures on Pinterest you forget that said stairs need to dry for long periods of time, aka you can't walk on them. Laundry is then sitting, waiting, unable to be reached as though it is on a deserted island. And some people can't go downstairs and watch sporting events on their big TVs and they find this frustrating. Which some other people don't really get because the couch isn't down there anyway. But I digress. Also, painting stairs can cause you to contort your body in weird Cirque du Soleil ways. Just an FYI.


The floor stripes however didn't give me an once of trouble and they look just like I wanted them to. Look at those straight lines! Raise the roof with me people. This picture is right before I put a coat of sealer on so the floor now has just the slightest glow, a happy floor glow.

And in other news, I found the perfect rugs to go on this smashing floor. Some of the outdoor variety and some of the vintage flavor.


A sneak peak.

And one last update,


this is happening.

So I'm moving forward. I also found a few things for the room and am currently in the middle of a fabric do-over conundrum. I'll keep you posted.

What can we cross off the list this week?
- Rip up gross carpet (floor and stairs) and replace flooring
- Paint and plank walls and bookshelves
- Recover estate sale chairs
- Create some sort of art station for the girls
- Paint chairs and table
- Repair and paint coffee table
- Create toy storage that doesn't involve the words 'pink' or 'plastic'
- Get some art on those walls
- Find rugs
- New Lighting

It is only week 2 of the One Room Challenge (read week 1 here) and it is already time to get down and dirty - aka carpet removal.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, we removed the carpet several weeks ago, as soon as the leak was stopped and fixed, for obvious reasons. The carpet was already gross from years of kids, dogs, snacks etc. but the water made it officially unacceptable.


Since I am not a fan of carpet, and we still have many years of hard playing left to do in this room, I thought a painted floor would be a fun alternative. Call me crazy but I just wasn't feeling the maroon floor.


Removing carpet itself is a dirty, and at times violent job, but with the right tools and a willing partner it goes pretty quickly. It's the stuff that is under the carpet that is the real work. The tack strips, the glue, the holes left by all of the nails. Hell on earth. I followed Mandi's tutorial and it worked like a charm. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in need of a painted concrete floor, or even just carpet removal 101.


A few things I learned from the process - the lacquer thinner worked like a charm and the glue came up with little effort (I think the trash bags are the key). It was super smelly however and since we are in a basement, and ventilation is a bit harder to achieve, there were a lot of breaks throughout the process. However, the tack strip/nail removal and hole filling part was long and tedious. To put it simply, it sucked.


I never want to see another tack strip again. Ever.

It was a lot of work and it was hard work. And to be honest, I was rather crabby by the time it was all finished. Many gin and tonics were required to put me right again. But I stepped away from the room for several days (weeks really) until my strong work ethic the One Room Challenge put me back on track and ready for my favorite part - painting.


There is nothing like the instant gratification of paint to put you in a better mood. And the cocktails help too. It took two coats of primer and two coats of white to get rid of the 'ear infection' yellow on the walls but I was thrilled to do it as the room got brighter with each coat.

Once the walls were done I moved on to un-red that floor.


This time I did two coats of Kilz 2 Latex Primer and then two coats of Sherwin-Williams Porch and Floor Enamel.


Here are the floors after the first coat. Already better I think.


And here we are all painted. Wahoo! I can't get over how much brighter and bigger the space feels. Totally worth all of that cussing I did during the carpet removal/floor prep stage.


So I've done all of that work, only to arrive at the point where I'm ready to start the real work. It has to get worse before it gets better, right?! God, I hope so. And don't worry about the stairs, I won't leave them that way. But you will have to wait until next week to see what I do (I love a good tease).

The only thing that feels better than fresh paint is crossing something off the to-do list, so let's do it:
- Rip up gross carpet (floor and stairs) and replace flooring
- Paint and plank walls and bookshelves
- Recover estate sale chairs
- Create some sort of art station for the girls
- Paint chairs and table
- Repair and paint coffee table
- Create toy storage that doesn't involve the words 'pink' or 'plastic'
- Get some art on those walls
- Find rugs
- New Lighting

We have arrived at week 4 of the One Room Challenge (you can catch up on weeks 1 - 3 here) and this week has been all about fumes. Paint, floor wax and stripping chemicals. Ahh the smell of progress.

Thanks to a well timed play date and some quality grandparent time, the hubs and I took advantage of an empty house and got painting.


Btw, I shared my progress on Instagram, and am now officially addicted. I know I'm late to the party but that sucker is just fun.

Now for those of you who are new, I'm a color girl. I need it the same way I need anything that Andy Cohen will put on TV. So I went with quite a radical choice for the walls. White.

I can hear the sarcasm in your voice, 'White?! That is soo daring.' Well, for me it is. This is only the second time...ever that I've painted a room white. (the kitchen being the other instance)

But you may have noticed from my board, that there is also another paint color listed. I can't go without color somewhere on the walls, so I went for the fifth wall - the ceiling. I took a cue from all of my Pinterest ceiling inspiration and gave the girls what they wanted. Pink.

Not bubblegum pink, or baby pink. We are going for Big Girl Pink.

My 5-year-old Amelia picked out this fabric (she's good, I know) and I used that pink/purple color as our Big Girl inspiration.


I matched up a swatch (BM Springtime Bloom) and slapped that sucker up on the wall.


I knew as soon as I started trimming out the ceiling that I loved it.

These girls' are not wallflowers and neither is their room. It is a really great color that looks different thru out the day. It is a great contrast against the white and it makes the room feel bigger. Win win.


Beautiful ceiling and walls, now on to the floor. I took advantage of the emptyness to get on my hands and knees and clean the crap out of that floor. Soap and hot water, elbow grease and then a coat of wax. I'll do another coat of wax and then buff it. (my mom is very proud at this moment)

The crib was then taken down (sad) and Eve's 'new' bed was brought up from the basement. The girls' have the same beds that were used by my sister and I, which I love.  With both beds in the room, we were able to move things around and I've nailed down where all the little puzzle pieces will fit. Sweet progress.


The paint fumes must have made us giddy because we also went ahead and put up the new light fixture. And in my final burst of weekend energy I took those drawers out of the dresser and started to strip. The drawers. I stripped the drawers.


As of this morning all the drawers are stripped and the base is half way there. More on that next week.

With all of that, I'm pooped. Let's check in on the list, shall we?

1. Come up with functional floor plan
2. Paint walls/ceiling/trim
3. Paint dresser (new hardware?) Progress
4. Update vanity (maybe some fun color or hardware) Progress
5. Find curtains and add trim
6. Add a rug and new bedding Progress
7. Hang art and create some personalized pieces Progress
8. Find/Install new light fixture (buh bye ceiling fan)
9. Reupholster chair and possibly add comfy floor cushions 
10. Find/Make lampshade(s)