Wow! This week has really flown by! It’s been an incredibly busy week, and I’ve only had 12-14 hours of time to devote to Week 2 of the One Room Challenge and the office/craft room in the past 7 days.
Almost two hundred other bloggers and I are in Week 2 of the six-week One Room Challenge, and lots of progress is being made by many! You can visit Calling it Home to see what the others are up to. For me, Week 2 was a bit challenging as a result of a very condensed amount of time being available to work, but some changes were made nonetheless.
- Finish painting all walls (including staircase), trim, and shelves.
- Return books and other items to their places on shelves.
- Begin sorting through remaining ‘stuff’ – keep/donate/toss.
By far the worst part of painting is prepping and cleaning the walls and trim. The staircase was especially a pain because I had to lug the vacuum cleaner up and down several times before they were clean enough.
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| And then this sweet little ball of fluff found my lap, making it difficult to get any work done! |
For the first time ever, I chose to forgo the painstaking process of using painter’s tape. I’d say overall, it turned out well. Prior to the start of the One Room Challenge on October 8th, I had already completed one section of shelves, taping off for both colors (which takes a lot of paint and a lot of time!), and still had to go back and touch up some gray areas that got white paint all over them.
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| Shelf section 1 During |
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| Shelf Section 1 After |
What I discovered during that process was that the shelves (wood, white paint) themselves were the most challenging parts to paint with clean lines around the edges; the backs (drywall, gray) were easier to paint within the lines. So on the second group of shelves I decided to first paint the wooden sections, not worrying about getting white paint on the drywall. I went back after that and carefully cut in the edges of the drywall with gray paint, and actually got very little onto the white, which I touched up later.
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| Shelf section 2 Before |
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| Shelf section 2 After |
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| Close-up of the shelves – I love the contrast between the two colors! And my lines turned out pretty clean, even without tape! |
And it was so much quicker than using tape! This method was also successful on the staircase, though both the shelves and staircase have a few places where I need to touch-up some small mistakes, and they don’t quite have that crisp line you get between trim and wall when you use tape.
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| That’s one dark staircase! |
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| Looking better! |
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| Nothing special here. Except the eight little legs at the top! |
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| By the time I finished filling in the holes on this wall, it looked like it had chicken pox! |
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| That’s a much more inviting staircase! |
Painted new desk and moved it into place.
Pipsqueek is taking a nap as I type at the new desk. Seriously, how can he sleep like that?
Rocky found a much cozier spot near my feet.
This includes the top quarter inch of the sloped part of the staircase, which is a challenge to reach. And it includes trying to touch-up the little blobs of gray paint I got on the popcorn ceiling in this same impossible-to-reach area. When I painted our front staircase earlier this year, I rigged up a piece of wood on a ladder. The ladder was on loan from my parents and we have since returned it to them, so it’s time to get creative to figure out how to reach this area.
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| I had hoped that using this little slidey thing at the end of the pole would be sufficient, but it’s to blame both for the 1/4″ of tan space at the top of the walls AND the blobs of gray on the ceiling… |
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| All those little marks are tiny dart holes that must be filled in… |
This includes the following and must be done so I can finally finish painting:
- Return books, etc. to shelves
- Donate or sell corner curio cabinet that’s just been chillin’ in the middle of the room since last spring when we moved the hutch into the kitchen.
- Donate or sell a cheap desk that would be perfect for a college student.
- Move headboard that wouldn’t fit in the attic into the sewing room, where it will wind up in the end anyway.
- Sort through/organize remaining ‘stuff’ to keep/donate/toss.
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| I have my work cut out for me!! |
Thanks for stopping by! Check back next week for more progress and pictures!