Hello there! It’s been a whirl wind of week over here. The reading room is coming along and we are so excited! Welcome to week FOUR of the One Room Challenge.
Let me show you some progress. **affiliate links used.
The gorgeous shelves my husband made are up and they are awesome. This is by far the best thing he’s ever made for our home (self proclaimed). They are light weight and can hold a ton. In this picture they have screws in them while the glue dried but since then we removed the screws and everything is up there with wood glue. That blows my mind!
Don’t worry. The cleats that the shelves are connected to are attached to studs with big lag bolts. He assures me these things aren’t going anywhere…Which is good because they are exactly what I envisioned.
One more thing on the shelves.
We used oak to make them and I stained them the Minwax color “weathered oak”. It’s a beautiful warm color that was light enough to let the details of the wood show through. But I’ve read about the importance of using pre stain wood conditioner first.
I used it and wasn’t sure that it was doing anything until I accidentally skipped that step on one side of a shelf. Woah! It made a big difference. With the conditioner the stain slid on and looked really smooth. Without it the stain didn’t go very far and left marks of being uneven. I stopped right away and switched back to the pre stain first. I highly recommend it for staining bare wood.
I shared this quick project on Instagram stories but I used some of my Great Grandmothers salt and pepper shakers to make wall art.
I used two of the 9×9 RIBBA frames from IKEA, a thrifted linen shirt for the background, and hot glued the sailors to the backplate.
I love that they get to be displayed but they’ll be on the wall making more of a statement instead of getting lost on a table top.
One last thing I just talked about on InstaStories. The lighting above the bookshelves. These pretty sconces are the LILLHOLMEN light from IKEA.
You might have eagle eyes and noticed on the previous pictures that the bracket is hooked to the wall and there’s no electrical outlet behind them…
It was going to cost $700 + to drop new lines by cutting holes in the ceiling (because it’s a two story house) and then patch and texture the ceiling. No thanks. I’ll do the magic light trick I’ve seen from Brooke at Nesting With Grace.
That’s it for this week!
Here’s a look at the to do list:
remove carpet
clean up concrete floors
prime and paint the baseboards
paint the walls
make shelves- the hubs
stain shelves
install shelves -the hubs
hang rods and curtains
hem curtains
install lights
install the fan
figure out wall art situation
make dresser pulls
paint or stain the dresser- still haven’t decided which one
diy table- still stuck on this
figure out pillow covers for the chairs
cover louvered doors- stuck on this too
style shelves
shoot reveal pics
Make sure and read up on the featured designer rooms, and check out other guest participants too.
A big thank you to my sponsors for this project! It’s gonna be good yall!
