Nothing is Working in the Nursery: One Room Challenge – Week 4

I’m tired. I’m sore. It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge.

(like my rhyming?)

If you’re new here. Hi! I’m Melissa. I live in Madison, WI with my family and we are currently updating our 1970’s ranch home.

If you want to catch up and see all my One Room Challenge posts for this room click here!

This is only my second One Room Challenge, so I don’t really have much to compare this experience to. But OMG things are not going well right now! It wasn’t like this for me the first time around. But maybe that was a fluke? Is this really how it goes?! I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged lately. And I’m really, really thinking I’m not going to finish on time.

Removing the Chair Rail and Patching Walls

We removed the chair rail from the room a few weeks ago and my plan was to fill in the nail holes and do a little bit of patching to smooth everything out. I spent a lot of time doing drywall touchups, filling nail holes, retexturing, and I also repainted the three walls.

And let me just say, I’ve done my fair share of patching walls around here. So this isn’t like it was my first time doing a project like this. But I’m really disappointed. You can totally tell where the chair rail once was. And I think it looks so bad. I’ve been avoiding going in the room the last few days because it’s been making me so sad. 

I’m really not sure where I went wrong with this. But my plan is to start skim coating the accent wall tomorrow. So while everything is gross and dusty in there I think I might try sanding the chair rail sections down a little more and then try texturing and painting again. And hopefully that will make the chair rail outline a lot less obvious.

Roman Shade

Then for the last few weeks I’ve also been working on a custom blackout roman shade for the window in the nursery. I’ve made one other roman shade before. But I always forget how long these projects take!

I wanted to make a purple shade that would blend well with the wallpaper in the room. But I couldn’t find any fabric available in store that was quite the right color. Purples are so tricky! 

So I found some extra linen in my basement and decided to dye the fabric last week. I thought everything was great until I pulled out the fabric a few days later to start sewing and noticed BBQ sauce finger prints all over the fabric (#toddlerlife)! Unfortunately after I washed the fabric to get the BBQ sauce out the color faded and was too light.

So I re-dyed the fabric last night. And this time I remembered to add a cup of salt to the dye bath. So now the color is holding much better. Rit has great instructions on their site.

And then I’ve been on a sewing and ironing marathon today trying to get something done in this room! The shade is probably 1/2 way done at this point. But at least there is some progress being made!

This is what the roman shade looks like inside out. I used tube tape and bonded it to the blackout liner fabric with stitch witchery. If you sew the tubing with a machine little holes will poke through the fabric and let light through it (not good!). Then I inserted the dowel rods.

Light Fixture

I still haven’t been able to find a vintage light fixture I like for a price I like. While we were away this past weekend in Door County we made a quick stop through Milwaukee and I made a rash decision to buy a completely disassembled antique chandelier. It needs a ton of work. And there are some missing glass pieces. But I think it could eventually be super cute (after putting a lot of time into it, of course). But this is definitely not something I’m going to be able to accomplish in time for the ORC reveal.

I’m really hoping something else pops up in the next week. But if not I’ll leave the ceiling fan for the reveal and keep hunting until I find a fixture I love. Baby girl isn’t due until the end of January so there is still time.

The To-Do List

1. Paint dresser, add changing table conversion kit, and attach new hardware
2. Remove chair rail and do any necessary patching to walls (working on it)
3. Paint three textured walls (working on it)
4. Figure out what to do about the texture on accent wall
5. Skim coat accent wall
6. Install wallpaper on accent wall
7. Source a vintage light fixture, re-wire if needed, and install
8. DIY a mobile and install
9. DIY and install window treatment (working on it)
10. Purchase accessories, art, bedding

Thanks for following along! And please make sure to check out all of the featured designers as well as the guest participants of the One Room Challenge!

Home, Nursery, One Room Challenge, ORC Fall 2018