Thanks for checking back in on my One Room Challenge progress. For the first time ever, Linda from Calling It Home and House Beautiful extended the deadline by one week, making the final deadline November 16, and I’m pretty thankful for the extra time, especially since we have a business convention this weekend…

This week was sort of all over the place in terms of what I accomplished for the One Room Challenge. I had a few adventures in decorating! The first order of business was finishing assembling my Ikea Rast nightstands. I had the cutest little helper, and of course she had to temporarily turn a nightstand into a fort!

While assembling the nightstands, I may have been a little careless and violently stabbed myself in the thumb with a screwdriver. I took the picture right after, and it doesn’t look so bad, but a few minutes later, it really started bleeding. My little helper was horrified, and quickly retrieved a Sophia the First band-aid for me from our vitamin cabinet.

A week and a half ago in Minnesota, it was 70 degrees, sunny and gorgeous. Perfect learning how to use my paint sprayer in my garage weather. Yes, that’s an actual thing. However, last week dropped to a whopping 28 degrees. This is the time of year I start contemplating a move to Florida. Every. Single. Year. And I’m not saying that to be funny. I seriously get panicky every fall thinking of all of the cold weather in my very near future. Why do we still live here, you ask? The people we love live here. Only reason. Plain and simple.

Because of our extreme climate dip, painting in the garage was no longer an option. I’ve tried ignoring paint manufacturer temperature recommendations for past projects, and it never turns out pretty. Trust me. On to plan B.

I bought some cheap 9×12 paint drop cloths from Home Depot and duct taped one of them along the back wall of our storage room, draping the sides inward and hanging them from the rafters with some crafting thread. I spread the other cloth out on the ground.

I had a vague idea of how to work my paint sprayer because in another life I had a part time spray tanning business, so it wasn’t my first time using an HVLP sprayer. The one I bought for painting is this one by Home Right.Initially the primer was too thick and refused to flow through the sprayer, so I read the paint can, sort of followed the instructions (and sort of guessed) for thinning the primer, and quickly figured out the painting motion.

After letting the primer dry overnight, I couldn’t wait to get back down to the basement and paint. I wanted to see if the Behr Diva Glam paint color was as great as I was hoping. The lighting was yellow and made the pink look a little harsh, but I had a good gut feeling about it, remembering how much richer and more bluish the undertones were in natural light.I filled the sprayer with paint, plugged it in, pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. Hmm, must not have cleaned the sprayer out well enough. I went and spent ten minutes rinsing the nozzle in the basement bathroom. When I tried again, the sprayer sprayed for about two minutes, and then stopped spraying again. This is how far I got.Did I get a faulty sprayer? I went into the bathroom again and rinsed the nozzle. Again. Back into the storage room. The paint sprayer still wouldn’t work! Hmm, maybe I should read the directions for cleaning it? Total user error. Note to all of you impatient painters like me… If you REALLY want to save yourself some time, read the instructions! I had no idea the entire front nozzle disassembled into four separate parts that all needed to be individually cleaned. Sure enough, when I did that, I found a huge chunk of dried white primer blocking the nozzle. After wasting an hour, I finally got the sprayer to do its job. And man, once you get it working properly, it is a LOT faster than using a roller.

In my impatience, I think I had the setting up a little too high, so the finish isn’t completely smooth. The perfectionist in me thinks I should sand down the fronts and spray one more light coat for a perfect finish, but the One Room Challenger in me says, “We don’t have time for that!”

When I first decided to participate in the One Room Challenge, I knew I would have to find some campaign style hardware to add to my Ikea rast dresser to give it that extra glam factor, but campaign hardware is expensive! I stumbled across some Young House Love Liberty Campaign Hardware listing on ebay, and there were multiples available. The seller was asking $12 for each set, and I needed six. BUT there was also a best offer option. So I threw out $6 each for six sets… And my offer was accepted! $36 for all of this was a bargain! The hardware is a champagne color, so I planned on spray painting it my favorite gold. However, when I put the hardware on one of the newly painted drawers, I realized that the colors really work together, so no painting needed! Saves me some time, plus I will have the antique gold mirrors directly above the nightstands, and I like the idea of the metals being slightly different colors. Complimentary, but not identical.This picture of the drawer is the true color, as opposed to the warmer, harsher color it appears in the pictures above.

In other exciting (to me) news, I found a chair!! Well, two chairs and a rug actually. Is everyone familiar with Facebook Marketplace? I’m sure I’m late to the party, but my sister turned me on to this, and I found the most gorgeous vintage wing back chairs that have been reupholstered in pink velvet. I actually like them even more than the teal chair I originally wanted that is out of stock.

This is the picture from the original listing. The seller didn’t want to separate the chairs and the rug, and she was asking $300. So I negotiated and purchased them all for $225. That’s a bit above my budget for one chair, but I can sell the other as well as the rug, so should come out just about perfect.

I was able to kill two birds with one stone by meeting the seller at Ikea, and then popping in to pick up a picture frame I needed for my print, some pillow inserts, and a couple of plants to accessorize with. Here’s my rear view in my Flex while I drove home (no, I did not take the picture while driving). 

Here’s what the chair looks like in my room. The fur throw probably isn’t staying, but I just threw it over the chair for the picture so it didn’t look so lonely in the corner. The color is a little dustier than I had hoped, but the chair is so gorgeous, I WILL figure out how to make it work with the more vibrant colors happening everywhere else!

The teal shibori pillow covers I ordered finally came (a steal off ebay for $6.58, for two of them – yes, you read that right). So with my Gray Malin wannabe print framed and hung, all of my pillows and inserts together, and my nightstands painted, things are really coming along.  From certain angles, the room almost looks done! But I still have another lamp to Rub ‘n’ Buff, hardware to add to dressers, curtains to hang, a throw blanket (or two to find), nightstands and dressers to style, a rug to paint, very heavy mirrors to hang, artwork to hunt down, a TV to mount, and entire corners of the room to figure out…

I hope you’ll check back next week to see more progress. Sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss anything (you’ll also get six free black and white typography printables)! Also, don’t forget to check out what the other bloggers are doing back at Calling It Home.

Week 1       |       Week 2       |       Week 3       |       Week 4       |       Week 5       |       Week 6       |       Week 7