ONE ROOM CHALLENGE | WEEK FIVE:  PAINT + A PICTURE LEDGE = PROGRESS

If you’re visiting for the first time, welcome! Here are the links to catch up on Week One, Week Two, Week Three and Week Four.

I’m taking whatever positives, in terms of living room progress, I can this week. Remember how I’ve been saying that the plasterer was coming on May 2nd and how I was worried that was cutting it fine for the ceiling to dry out sufficiently to paint before the reveal? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha. Guess who didn’t come on May 2nd… *insert more hysterical laughter*.

OF COURSE the plasterer didn’t come on Tuesday because NOTHING is turning out to be simple and straightforward with this One Room Challenge. We eventually managed to get the guy to reply to our texts on Tuesday, after 90 minutes of waiting for him to show up and him not picking up his phone, and it turned out he’d written down the incorrect date, for a week on Tuesday, and was currently on another job. After a bit of back and forth, and progressively losing my mind more and more with each message, he said he’d be able to move a job on Thursday to come and do the plastering and crown moulding / coving work then.

So hopefully as you’re reading this, he’s in the living room working. If not I refuse to be held responsible for my actions. In fairness to the guy, he was really apologetic but STILL. I definitely could have done without a two day delay and the rest of the house is absolute carnage now – we moved everything out of the living room on Monday night in preparation for the work being done.

I’ve also had to cut a whole bunch of things from the To Do list for this room because there is just no way it can all get done between Friday and Wednesday. Especially as I’ll be flying solo until Tuesday on the DIY front and I have friends staying over on Friday and Saturday.

But anyway… progress. Of a fashion. I finally picked a paint colour after my endless search to find the perfect hint-of-blush-pink for the walls, which I talked about last week. It probably comes as no surprise that I ended up going with totally different shades to the ones I thought I would. I bought four more testers to try out and finally was able to get to that “we have a winner!” point.

From left to right we tried B&Q Colours Subtle Blush, Valspar Lip Gloss, Valspar Perfectly Pink-ish, Valspar You’re Blushing, Farrow & Ball Pink Ground and Valspar Rabbit’s Foot.I talked a lot last week about how challenging this room is in terms of lighting but Perfectly Pink-ish seemed to play the best throughout the room. It’s also a really subtle pink so doesn’t seem overbearing on a large expanse of wall.

We started painting on Monday evening and got to this point (again, sorry for the rubbish in progress iPhone shots)I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that plastering and coving won’t destroy it all and I’ll just need to go in and paint up to the coving once that’s installed.

Tuesday evening we painted the chimney side of the room and also made and installed the picture ledge. This one is straight-up ripped off from the brilliant minds of Chris love Julia and it really is as simple to make as they say.Mine is 2.4m long and will span the length of the sofa and the side table. I need to add a bit of black paint or something to the screws used to attach it to the wall. The black screws I had weren’t long enough so I had to use silver and you probably would never notice them once pictures are on but it annoys me, so it’s getting done. It’s sturdy and magic and I love it. Kind of want to send Chris and Julia a cake as a reward for coming up with this but…that would be a bit creepy so…moving on.

I also ordered a rug this week which felt like huge progress because I’m ridiculously indecisive when it comes to picking rugs. I went for this neutral cowhide rug from Jord Home. The room is kind of uneven – because of the positioning of the door to the hallway you can’t centre the sofa on the fire and the fireplace is not totally centred in the room (already adding in the bookcase wall has helped create the illusion that it is more centred than it is). In the end having an irregular shaped rug, like a cowhide, seemed to make the most sense for the room as there just seemed to be no way of having a rectangular rug in there that wouldn’t make the room look even more off-centred. Hopefully this theory will be proved right when it arrives!

The To-Do list for the final week is looking like this:

{PROJECT LIST}

• Electrician to change ceiling lights from two fittings to one
• Fit new ceiling light fitting
• Plasterer to skim coat ceiling
• Build bookcase wall
• New coving / crown molding
• Beef up baseboards / skirting boards (although this will probably totally have to wait)
• Paint walls (touch ups still to do)
• Paint door
• Paint baseboards / skirting boards
• Decide on fire surround / mantlepiece (LOLZ. There is no way this happening by next week)
• Build picture ledge behind sofa (as per Chris & Julia’s)
• Reupholster / refinish vintage telephone table
• Build coffee table
• Bring in furniture
• Replace window blinds (budget permitting!)
• Decorate (cushions, artwork, rug etc)

Ok, reading that is making me panic a bit. Eeeek! See you next week for the reveal…

Don’t forget to check on the progress of the other guest participants over on Calling it Home.