Ready for some ugly before photos? Everybody loves ugly before photos.
If you’re new here, we purchased a custom-built 1961 MCM a year and a half ago and haven’t had a spare second (or dollar) to get to work on restoring it until now.

I’m so excited to finally start tackling a project in our house. The One Room Challenge was perfect timing for us this spring. I’ll be making over our bedroom, which needs it. Badly. We haven’t done anything to it since we moved in except for a patch of a paint sample (which was also ugly and made the room worse…still, it has been there for almost a year).
On another wall, there is also an ugly patch where I tested skim coating our sand-finished walls.
That’s a big fat “no” as well. The sand finish in our walls is incredible–not in a good way. You know I love a good texture, but this stuff will scrape the skin right off your body. Not exaggerating, I have had bloody knuckles multiple times after bumping into them. I was really hoping to skim coat over it, but it’s so coarse that I was up to 1/8″ of drywall mud and it still wasn’t covering. Any thicker than that and you’re in danger of the mud flaking off. Sanding was the other option, but no. Just no. Can’t handle all that dust.
So, now the big white drywall mud patch will be removed before I repaint and pretend there is no awful sand finish.
Our bedroom is a great size, it just has a slightly awkward layout. There’s plenty of room for our bed, and our big big dogs’ beds. As you can see Em modeling above, one or both of them sleep on a teeny little IKEA sofa every night. It’s very functional; it’s not very pretty. It is prettier than just crib mattresses on the floor though, which is what they did have. I have no idea what to do in their corner of the room yet.
The big plans:
- Open closet like we had in the Victorian
- Repair walls (cracks in plaster, flaking plaster at ceiling)
- Painting
- Getting and installing window coverings
- Grown up bed linens
- Nightstands
- Lighting! The closets have nice bright (blinding even) overhead lights, but the bedroom itself has three dim table lamps and it’s so frustrating.
- Bed(s) for the dogs that aren’t hideous
Explore More
Chalkboard wall–My fix for a peeling chalkboard
A fun change in plans
Maintenance (The deck’s “before” photos)
An open closet (ORC Week 3)