One Room Challenge, Week 3: Now We're Getting Somewhere

Hi there! If you’re new here, my husband and I purchased our first home (a generic, 1960’s bi-level) almost two years ago in Northern NJ. Little by little, we’re adding personality to our basic, builder-grade home, and for this spring’s One Room Challenge™, I’m tackling our master bedroom. For the next six weeks, I encourage you to sit back and follow along with a glass of (bo)vino while I dedicate nearly 98% of my free time to making over this space. The other 2% of my free time? That’s for showering and maybe the occasional snack.

Week 1 // Week 2

The bedroom makeover to-do list:

Paint the walls in Farrow and Ball De Nimes – DONE
Install Metrie molding:
- crown – DONE
- base – DONE
- wall – ALMOST DONE
Caulk and fill molding – ALMOST DONE
Prime the ceiling – DONE
Paint the ceiling (De Nimes)
Rip out all existing (old af) doors and door frames – DONE
Source new furniture, lighting, rugs, pillows, bedding, curtains, roman shades and accessories – HALFWAY THERE
Paint a second coat of De Nimes on the wall (once molding and trim is complete)
Paint all trim and molding with Semi-Gloss De Nimes
Paint and install new Reeb doors throughout the room (4 total)
- Bedroom entry
- My closet (I opted for two smaller double doors instead of one big door. I love the look of closet double doors)
- Angelo’s closet (also double doors)
- Master bathroom
Install Emtek hardware on all doors
Install door casing around new doors
Install Hudson Valley Lighting wall sconces and picture light
Replace existing ceiling fan with a chandelier (and buy a substitute for the fan – maybe a Dyson air purifier
Install House of Hackney Artmis wallpaper in …. bedroom? bathroom? it will most likely be a last minute decision since I can’t make up my mind!

Option 1:

Option 2:

I thought that once I found the paint color, I’d be able to move on with my life. Who am I kidding.

Here’s what I accomplished this week:

Furniture sourcing:

Wayfair’s massive once-yearly sale was this week, and all of my energy was focused on finding a bed/nightstand/rug combo that worked with De Nimes.

I’m ashamed to admit I spent ~19 hours total scouring through their site over the course of 3 days looking for the perfect items. And wouldn’t you know – I ended up buying the very first bed that I pinned a few weeks ago. Why do I drive myself up a wall, going through a million different options, when I almost always end up choosing the very first option?! WHY.

Whatever, I’m just happy I got that over with. Now that I’ve chosen the bed, I can move on to everything else I need to buy 🙂

Trim and molding:

A few weeks ago, I was scared to use the miter saw. But my handy husband taught me how to use it and now I can’t stop using it. I’m addicted to cutting and installing molding, LOL.

I receive a lot of “omg you do that all by yourself?!” questions on IG and to be honest…it’s really not that hard once you get the hang of it. I highly encourage everyone to try it themselves instead of hiring out. And that’s how I feel about anything relating to home improvement.

You can do the thing.

Anyway, I first installed the crown and the chair rail to set the height of the top and bottom trim boxes.

(this is the tutorial I used to cut crown molding, which, for angle-challenged people like me, can be complicated).

Once I had installed the crown and chair rail, I measured out the boxes based on the length and height of the wall I had to work with. And then the measuring, cutting, and install started!

I only got through half of the room this week and plan to finish the other half next week.

“This hooman has a few screws loose”

Painted the ceiling:

Since I had leftover Wolf Gray paint from last week’s paint debacle, I figured I could save some of the F&B paint by painting the ceiling with Wolf Gray as the primer and then go over that with another coat of F&B De Nimes. It worked well on the walls so, why not.

It’s ugly right now, but my GOD what a difference a dark ceiling makes when the walls are also dark. I swear the room already feels bigger and taller. SCIENCE

Door demo:

Ughhhhh the doors in our bedroom were a nightmare to remove. The frames were metal and I’m pretty sure they were original when the house was built in 1965. After a few deep scrapes and some lung-irritating particles, the doors were all finally out.

As an amateur photographer, I’m constantly thinking of all the ways I can photograph the final product of a room. And this shot already has me excited af:

That’s it for this week! Next week, I plan to:

Paint ceiling
Source more furniture, rug(s) and accessories
Finish installing the wall molding through the other half of the room
Caulk and fill molding
Paint second coat on wall
Install Reeb doors

Thank you to Linda from Calling it Home for organizing the One Room Challenge, and a huge HUGE thank you to the companies that are sponsoring items for the bedroom makeover: