One Room Challenge – Week 3 Update

I wish I was coming at you with some awesome progress updates but unfortunately floating to a very flat finish takes a lot of time. The goal for wallpaper is a “level 5 finish” as Cody refers to it in the construction world. This literally means that someone skim coated and sanded 5 times to a perfectly flat surface. Now for our project, we’re going for roughly a level 3 finish. The wallpaper I ordered is a peel and stick woven paper so it has a little “give” for imperfections. And… floating takes A LOT of time and unfortunately, that’s ALL we did Saturday and Sunday. We spent many of hours sanding and skimming in a hot room with respirators on. And we were absolutely covered in the great white dust but we were together and had some good laughs in the process.

We started the project Saturday by sanding the entire room. This took quite a few hours and omg I discovered that the bump sweats more than me! I had a perfectly round sweat ring where the baby sits and it was honestly quite funny. After finishing the sanding, it was the first time we saw the whole room really smooth. We debated if we wanted to just spot skim for our 3rd coat, but decided to do the entire room with another thin layer to ensure we didn’t miss any spots. By Saturday night, we had the wall skim coated with the 3rd coat and by Sunday had the ceiling skim coated as well.

In between layers, we had to allow about 12 hours for the coat to be completely dry before sanding to avoid any pilling so it was onto Monday of the workweek before we’d be able to touch the room again. The past two workdays have been long so we have candidly not been working after work on the room. But I did take these “off” evenings to order some things for the room that I’ve been putting off.

Curtains/Rod/Rings:

These are my tried and true curtains as I have them on both windows in our room and absolutely love them! I wrote a whole post about these curtains and (according to analytics) you guys love these curtains a lot too! I got the 27×84 inch since this window is a lot smaller. I still want to buy the paper blackout curtains that are all over amazon so I can get a super dark room for baby girl but I haven’t pulled the trigger on a color for those yet.

Dresser:

Ughh I wanted the Ikea Tarva dresser so badly! I wanted to do one of the many Ikea dresser hacks you see with this unfinished pine dresser but it is completely sold out and won’t even let me purchase it for a future ship date. So I researched around and decided on the Ikea Malm 6 drawer dresser. It’s a little modernish for me but I’m hoping to add some legs to it and make it a little less “stiff” … I think!

Hanging Chair:

So I really wanted the chair that was linked in my week 1 post but I couldn’t justify the $500 price tag. I searched high and low to try to find a similar option and ended up going with this one. It is not identical or anything but it’s a hanging wicker chair and I ended up paying a total of $183 after taxes and everything! Which is such a steal! I used the code “GDFoutlet” to get that price! I have not received this chair in the mail yet so I can’t speak on the quality just yet. If you are interested in the Serena and Lily chair (I still am) they have an annual sale in late spring where every item is 20% off! This sale is coming up in about 2 weeks from me writing this post so if I decided I can’t live without it by then, I will wait and purchase it during this sale.

Crib:

I fell in love with the look of the BabyLetto Lolly 3-in-1 convertible crib in natural/white! Well, all of the color combos of this crib are gorgeous but for our theme, the white and natural would be best. I looked at EVERY website that this crib was listed on and ended up getting the best deal on Bed Bath and Beyond. Here’s why/how. I signed up for the Beyond + membership. Which I would typically never do but it cost $29 to sign up and the savings on the crib would be $80 so a savings of $50. Additionally, I would be able to order the curtain rod and rings from Bed Bath and Beyond and get the 20% off too so another $10 in savings. So I justified it that way and of course, set a reminder on my phone to cancel the membership before it auto-renews next year.

Rug:

If you follow me on Instagram, I admitted I spent a solid 1.5 hours straight one night picking out a rug for the nursery! I knew I wanted a neutral color but I didn’t want anything too patterned (since the ceiling is very busy) and I also didn’t want anything too glam looking like a white shag rug would be. I found the perfect rug in a nice cream color with a smile textured design and a hint of shag for a little more boho feel. I love it so much!

I still need a lot to make this room complete but I feel like I’ve knocked the big purchases out of the way as money-wise as I could.

I hope to come at you next week with some more exciting updates than skim coating and orders 🙂 but hey that’s how projects go! It’s not always about the big transformations, sometimes the time is spent on something without a large visual impact.

Be sure to check out the other One Room Challenge participants on their week 3 posts here: www.oneroomchallenge.com/orc-blog