One Room Challenge Reveal
It's week 8 of the One Room Challenge, which means it’s reveal week! My space still has a little ways to go, and I’m more excited than ever to be working in my bedroom. The mural is underway, the new layout is in place, and I actually have a bed to sleep on tonight! I figured for a bedroom redesign, I should actually have a bed in it for the official reveal.
Let’s take a moment to remember where we started, shall we?
Very beige. The bed profile is too tall for the space, and the bed itself is too small for us to actually sleep in without disturbing each other.
Let’s see where we are now! The biggest change from last week to this week was paint. In thinking back over the last week, I almost didn’t believe how much I painted in this one week! My ceiling went from off-white to a deep blue and it’s so dreamy. I was nervous for a lot of reasons, mostly because I felt there was little room for error with color selection and my actual paint job. While my ceiling heights are LOW, I wanted to infuse the room with a moody cozy factor, and boy did this paint color deliver. Painting the other walls white brightened up the space, and even that deep blue feels brighter than my old beige.
The other painting project that is transforming the space right before my eyes is my mural! It is taking me ages to actually paint, it needs more coats and touchups, I still have pencil marks to remove, and it’s already the most impactful element of the room.
My choice to paint this mural rather than go with wallpaper was a multi-faceted one. I had a lot that I wanted this design to do. I wanted a large scale, a non-repeating pattern (or at least a very large repeat), I wanted to match the color of my ceiling and headboard wall, and I wanted to bridge the gap between the lines of natural stone and the geometrics found in Deco design. That’s a big ask from a wallpaper, and it would have been a long and costly process to try to create a custom one. I think this mural will cost me about $25 in paint when all is said and done. Aside from the practical reasons, I have major cold feet about installing wallpaper in my home, despite its big comeback. And I absolutely love some of the ways designers are using wallpaper! But if you’ve ever had a bad experience with wallpaper removal, then you’ll know where I’m coming from here. If not, then I’m very happy for you! I had to remove a LOT of wallpaper from my house when we first bought it. The absolute worst example was in my old studio, now my daughter’s room. There were four layers of wallpaper on top of one another. The bottom layer was adhered directly to unprimed drywall when the house was built in 1968, and “remove the wallpaper” turned into the biggest scope creep of our home updates. We ended up with new drywall, insulation, and windows, just so that we could paint the walls. If the next owner of this house isn’t keen on my take on a Deco malachite meets agate hybrid, they can just paint right over it. And so can I if our needs change.
Another painting job this week - I also painted a box valance! I know, a bit weird. But I was able to receive a number of valances through my Buy Nothing Group, and decided to make this striped fabric valance my own by painting it! I’ll be adding the mural pattern over the valance as well.
So what’s left to do? Still on the list are to:
paint the trim
paint the doors
complete the wall mural
install and paint the picture rail molding
continue the painted mural above the picture rail
install the curtains
hang art, finalize textiles, staging
Considering that one week ago I had a white ceiling, no mural, and no bed, I’m feeling ready to keep moving and tackle this list. The art and staging is my favorite part, and I can’t wait to play with color and pattern more in this space. And I’m finding this mural to be quite cathartic to paint in a way, so I’m glad that so much of my list involves painting this lovely pattern.
One of many iterations of my mood board, which shows what’s in store for the valance, picture rail, and mural continuation
This Fall One Room Challenge posed a much bigger challenge for me than the Spring, despite it being a much smaller room with few infrastructural changes. The end of Daylight Savings Time hit me hard, and I had a lot that I wanted to do with my family during our favorite season which left less time for work in the room. The biggest unexpected challenge was that working so close to where my kids were sleeping was retriggering my Postpartum Anxiety. It took me a few weeks to work through that, and it was the best spent time of the challenge. I cannot say enough good things about the One Room Challenge community, which has been so supportive. Even just knowing that there are other people out there whose houses are a total disaster while they make improvements is amazing. So having not finished my spaces on time twice now, I’m confident that I’ll keep participating in One Room Challenges in the future.
Thank you so much for following along with me, and I hope you stay to see how it all comes together! I will continue to give updates here on the blog and on Instagram, and will update this particular reveal post once I have the space fully completed. I will also include a final budget once the room is complete, as I know it can be helpful to see what goes into these makeovers.
Check out The Glad Suite on Instagram and be sure to check out all the amazing reveals going on over at www.oneroomchallenge.com/orc-blog
If you’re an ORC participant, please leave your Blog name / Instagram info in the comments so that we can come see your big reveal!
