One Room Challenge- Week 2 Update

Our first week of working on the room for One Room Challenge has come and gone (so quickly!) Our plan for the week was simply to float the ceiling! Sounds simple right?! But it was such a big undertaking! If you remember the design plans I shared, I am really wanting a wallpapered ceiling! If you missed the design plans in the week 1 plans, check them out here.  Since our ceiling is very textured, we needed to either remove or cover this texture so the wallpaper will go on smoothly. After some research, removing this kind of texture (pictured below) was going to be pretty difficult as it doesn’t soak and scrape off like popcorn texture. So we decided to float it flat.

This will be probably the messiest part of our design and since the ceiling (obviously) sits above every other part of the room, we need to knock that out first. Although this was our only goal for the week, it’s a big undertaking. If you’re watching along on Instagram stories, you know that I’m beyond pumped for the wallpapered ceiling… and Cody is very… not pumped. I know that it’s a ton of work but in my opinion, “it’s so worth it” (Cody always quotes me saying this) but to Cody, it’s just so much work that he’s not thinking it’s worth it. I’ll ask him after it’s done to see what he says then.

Tape & Plastic:

Once the room was empty, we taped plastic across the entire floor using masking tape and then also taped off the closet. We ended up deciding to run a roll of paper on top of the plastic for a little extra protection so the floor is now double-covered lol.

Removing Fixtures:

Next, Cody removed the old ceiling fan/light fixture combo and… accidentally dropped it so RIP.. but we planned to replace it with a sputnik light fixture anyways so it went into the trash. We also removed the air vent and smoke detector so we won’t have to skim around them when working on the ceiling.

Floating/Skimming the Ceiling:

I feel like this process has so many different names… mud/float/skim… I’m probably missing one but you get the point. We bought this premixed joint compound to make it easier than buying the powder and self-mixing. Although it is premixed, we added water and mixed it in a 5-gallon bucket until it was the consistency of yogurt. For application, we used a 12-inch paddle and tray. Stilts would have been ideal but we don’t have those so Cody used an old step stool and had to move it every few feet to get the entire ceiling. One box covered about half of the ceiling and took roughly 2.5 hours of time.

 

Board and Batten Wall Prep:

We plan to do a modern board and batten on the crib wall but since this wall is also textured, we need to get this wall smooth before applying the board and batten. I debated hanging a thin layer of paneling on the wall as the smooth base to cover the texture, but because of the angles I’m wanting to do with the board and batten, we’d have to very strategically hang the paneling at angles and would end up causing a lot of waste. In addition, we could save around $50 if we floated the wall instead of purchasing paneling. So while the supplies were out, we also floated this wall. Which went a lot more quickly than the ceiling lol.

Sanding:

The next step is sanding or as we call it “dust everywhere.” We popped into the room after work on Tuesday, expecting to sand, and instead discovered that most of the room was still wet from the skim coat. We were both pretty excited for a forced night off lol!

I had wanted to try wet sanding but since we will be using a pole sander for the ceiling, wet sanding is out of the question and we will be going with the dust everywhere method of good old-fashioned sanding.

On Wednesday we hopped into the room after work and it was dry enough to sand. We taped off the doorways that lead into the hall and bathroom so we were quarantined inside. We wore respirators, safety glasses, and also opened the window with a fan to try to push as much dust outdoors if possible. But there’s only so much prep you can do for the sandstorm of dust. Cody snapped this photo of me (below) in the midst of the dust storm and it’s pretty funny. We stopped at about 9:30 to shower and go to bed for work tomorrow so we only got about halfway through sanding.

I can’t believe this concludes the first week already! Stay tuned for more updates in the Week 3 blog post. Also, be sure to check out the other One Room Challenge participants on their week 2 posts here: www.oneroomchallenge.com/orc-blog