The last 5 weeks of the One Room Challenge just flew by.

We took another week off the ORC bedroom makeover last week because we were at a point where we’d have to spend money to continue, and when you’re paying for two houses, money isn’t exactly in abundance.  (Anybody want to buy a cute Victorian?  Please?)  We were also kept pretty occupied half the week by the sewer pipe that backed up and flooded our basement.  Fun!

The Hubs found me a dresser on Craigslist, though!  I think it’s amazing and gorgeous, and the price was a steal.  It was also, literally 5 houses down from us.

It’s a nice, cool brown, not too yellow, and not too red, so I didn’t even want to re-stain it (in the future, I might want to make it a couple shades darker).  The hardware was a little drab though, so I rubbed them with gold Rub ‘n Buff to brighten them up.

Rub ‘n Buff gold leaf color is what gave the headboard a little makeover too.  I just needed something quick, cheap, and easy to make it a little less…IKEA.  It’s not bad!

The chunky knit throw has been waiting to be made for a long time.  The deadline for the One Room Challege helped me finally get it done…as did learning how to arm knit (I told the story on Instagram).

I can’t wait until we own the place and I can pull up the green carpet and the laminate that’s underneath it.  Obviously, the room is still lacking a lot, like curtains and lamps and a rug…they’re all still at our other house until it sells.  Are you sure you don’t want to buy a Victorian?

Back to the room…the biggest job here was the painting.  It started with filling in all the grooves in the paneling, priming, and painting the walls.  There area total of 7 doors and 5 windows in this room.  All the doors were painted with the wall color, and all that moulding was painted black.  (Actually, it’s not done yet, most of the moulding still needs to be finished, and the windows need to be painted white.)

The ceiling!  We were still working on that Tuesday night and Wednesday.  The Hubs brought pizza, wine, and painting supplies home with him so we could just keep working through the evening.

The chair was another steal…only $5 at Goodwill.  And the kitchen area still looks the same as it did two weeks ago.  We’re just going to pretend it’s not there until we can renovate.  All told, this temporary makeover only cost the price of the Craigslist dresser, 2 gallons + 1 quart of paint, $10 on random things at Goodwill, and one $5 tube of Rub ‘n Buff.

Hopefully by next Spring we’ll own the house, and maybe we can give it the real makeover for next year’s One Room Challenge!

All the other participants have their final posts linked up too, you should go here to the One Room Challenge page to check out some great before-and-afters!  I really appreciate Linda from Calling it Home for hosting this challenge, a deadline and accountability always work wonders for me actually getting stuff done!

The post Bedroom makeover with just paint and a few second-hand items appeared first on Little Victorian.

We had too much going on last week to make any progress on the One Room Challenge bedroom makeover (click here to see our first 2 weeks).  I did get the walls and most of the ceiling primed, but that was it.  This week, however was much different.

Here’s what it looked like a couple weeks ago:

The grooves in the paneling have all been filled so they look like real walls.  Everything was sanded and primed and the walls and moulding have been painted (partially).  Everything still needs a second coat, and still some cutting-in, but I love the color combination of the light stone walls and the almost-black trim!

I already had a quart of the navy-black in semi-gloss, but after testing it out, I went for satin finish instead.

The ceiling still isn’t painted. ? I was supposed to do that before painting the walls, but I ran out of white paint and the work had to continue.

I was sooo, so happy to paint over all 4 colors that were in the kitchen area with the same color as the walls.  And I actually think it’s a pretty cute kitchen now!  Too bad it’s in the bedroom and not our actual kitchen.

We’re still trying to figure out a way to minimize the kitchen look and utilize the space for something practical.  It turns out kitchen cupboards make horrible clothing storage, and we still don’t have a place to put our clothes.

Still to do:

• Second coat of paint on walls and moulding
• Paint ceiling white
• Paint doors in wall color
• Paint window frames white
• Makeover bed frame
• Makeover night stands
• Replace yellow mini blinds with bamboo (curtains are still back at the other house)
• Buy dresser/make clothing storage
• Decorate

Totally doable in 2 weeks, right?  Click here to see all the other participants in this spring’s One Room Challenge!

The post I’m in love with this color combo (ORC week 4) appeared first on Little Victorian.

As is often the case in houses with plaster walls, at some point, instead of repairing or replacing them, the previous homeowners put 60s/70s paneling over them.

Now, I am not one that blanket hates 1970s paneling. I just believe it belongs in a 1970s house, not a 1920s Craftsman.

Thankfully they didn’t do a bad job of putting up the paneling in this house, but it’s still paneling, and it made me twitch. So I was left with the question: how do you make paneling NOT look like paneling until you can do a full restoration?

Fill in the grooves!

It’s not a difficult job, it’s just a slow job.

Before I could fill in the grooves though, I had to sand the walls.  For some reason, the walls in the whole room were a very rough, sandy texture.  Rough as in, I think they were painted with that outdoor, non-skid floor paint.  We’re not totally sure, but that’s our best guess.

Here’s how to fill in the grooves of paneling:

I’m in the middle of that process here: first coat is almost done, then I’ll be doing the second one tomorrow.

Before my walls here can be painted, I’ll have to prime and paint the big foam-paneled ceiling.    By the time I make it through that giant project, I will probably have made it through an entire audio book.  But it will look SO MUCH BETTER once it’s done.

Early last week, I still had no idea what color we’d want on the walls, so I put up a few paint samples.  They’re all colors we really like (in fact, the living room and kitchen were just painted the top left color), but they all just looked terrible in this room.  We really wanted something with warmer undertones, so I brought up the paint I bought for the office just to see what it would look like (top right), and we both loved it in here.

It’s a very subtle stone color. In the morning, it’s a creamy white, in afternoon sun, it’s almost light pink, and in the shade it’s a light, warm purple.  (It happens to be the same color as the powder room, and living room and dining room ceilings of our Victorian.)

Sorry for the ugly photos, there hasn’t been time to take decent ones.  But it will make the “After” photos look even better, right?

So that’s where we’re at!  Hopefully by next Thursday, the ceiling, walls and trim will all filled, patched, repaired, and repainted!

Helpful?
Pin it for later!

<– Just hover over the image and click the PIN button.

The post How to fill in the grooves of wall paneling appeared first on Little Victorian.

So yesterday I showed you the first floor of our new house.  This morning I’m showing you most of the second floor.  It’s a quirky floor, and we’re using it in a unique way.

Also as mentioned yesterday, after just watching so many rounds of the One Room Challenge, this time I’m joining in.  I’m going to attempt a makeover (however temporary) of the space over the next 5 weeks.  So these are the official “Before” photos.

When you come up the main staircase, there’s a landing with doors to a bathroom and a bedroom.  Then you enter into a big, open second living room.

The main stairs are on the right and the back staircase is the open door on the left.  The giant stuffed bunny is the dog’s and I forgot to remove her from the shot. ?

The bedrooms in the house are fairly small, especially compared to the size of the house, and the master bedroom is in the basement (which you haven’t seen yet).  So the day we moved in, we just plopped our air bed in the upstairs living room until we figured out which bedroom we would use.

Well, we kinda like it here, so we’ve claimed the big open space as our bedroom.  After sleeping on an air bed for three weeks, my back was VERY happy to have a real bed and real mattress again as of this Sunday.  And we picked up some $5 stools from IKEA so we wouldn’t have to use moving boxes as nightstands anymore.

We would eventually like to add walls to make this an official bedroom, but for now, even when we have guests, we can just close both doors at the tops of the stairs and we have privacy.

The doorway in the corner is to one of the bedrooms and we’re using that as a library.

And now the quirkiest part of the second floor:

In the 1950s, the house was turned into a duplex.  The previous owners turned it back into a single family, but never took out the little kitchen upstairs.

Obviously, we are going to take that out…eventually.  So far, we’re thinking we will want to extend that partial little wall all the way and enclose the whole thing, then we’ll turn the kitchen into our open closet/dressing/sitting area.  But again, we don’t own the house yet, so we can’t make any changes like that.

I’m dying to pull up the teal carpet and layers of laminate floors that are underneath it, but I’ll have to be patient.

There is another bedroom in the far right corner, and the door next to it leads to the attic.  Which is amazingly huge, and unfinished.  So many plans for it.

But one of the nicest features of our giant “master bedroom” is the private deck:

FYI: those photos were not enhanced at all, the grass is just that green and beautiful.  We love it here.

There is so much to do (and so much we can’t do yet) that I’m not even sure what my full plans are for the next 5 weeks of the One Room Challenge.  Here is what I do have planned so far though:

• Fill in the grooves of the wall paneling so they don’t look like panels
• Paint the ceiling tiles
• Paint the walls
• Hack the IKEA bed so it doesn’t look so…IKEA
• Replace yellow mini blinds with shades
• Hang functional curtains (a tricky task for bay windows)
• Figure out more functional storage for our clothes
• Make the kitchen less noticeable
• Decorate (duvet cover, pillows, art, etc…)

And if we can get all that done, I’d love to get a little seating area on the deck too.

The plan for the challenge is to post an update every Thursday on our progress. We’ll see how much of that we can actually accomplish in 5 weeks! ?

The post The 2nd floor “Before” photos appeared first on Little Victorian.