Week three already of the One Room Challenge…only two weeks to go to finish our bedroom, and several projects still need to be tackled.  But we have the open closet that we love so much again.

Apparently, I have lost the “before” photos, but they looked like any other closet: a single metal rod and a shelf above it.  The shelves were too high to be very useful for 5′ me…I usually just ended up throwing things up there and hoping they landed.  And they each had two sliding doors.

Of course, we removed the doors first, then the tracks (still have one upper track to take down in the right closet).

Then we put up the shelves and the Hubs hung the rod with some rope.

We need a tiny bit more shelf space, as you can see on top of the dresser:

So we’re putting another shelf up in the right closet, and maybe a face-out for my dresses or sweaters too.  The dogs’ sofa is shoved into the closet until we get their replacement built and set up.  That should be next week’s post.  But you never know with me.

The light had the typical pull cord, and it was original, so it was a little yellow and stiff, and of course, not very pretty.  So it got replaced with pink paper beads.  It was actually a long necklace that I never wore anymore, but here, we get to use it daily!

I was originally hoping to remove the trim, center divider and cut back the walls so it was just a clean, flush cut out, but that was too much of a project at the moment.  Hopefully in the future!

The closet still needs some tweaking and some styling, but we’re so happy to have it open again like the last house.

And hopefully next week I’ll have some quality photos to share too…after we moved back home, I put my camera battery in a very safe and logical place.  Apparently too safe and not as logical as I thought.  So they’ve all been taken with my phone for a couple weeks.    If you were me, where would you have put a camera battery?

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Guys!  I’m totally off my plan on the One Room Challenge, and we’ve only just finished the first week of work.  I was hoping to do this all neat and orderly, but that’s out the window already.

I did get the room painted.  Last week, after the first post, Laine had convinced me in the comment section to try sanding down the sand finish in the walls.  I had every intention of doing it, and then I looked at how much I didn’t have done, and how little time I would have to do it all.  So I’ve skipped the sanding for now, but will probably try it when we get to our guest room next.

These walls were icky.  They were really stained in the high traffic areas, and there were dark outlines of where art used to be.

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But, after an afternoon of climbing up and down ladders, it’s all fresh and white-ish now.

The closets are another thing that we are changing in this room.  We wanted an open closet like we had in the last house, so we removed the sliding doors and shelves will be put up (they already are in the one in the edge of the picture–they have been for a while–shhh!).  But the second closet, the one you see here was just taken apart.

By next week, I’m hoping to have the second closet re-done.  Then we’ll be on to the furniture: some new (to us) things, some made-over things, and some DIY things.  That is, if I can stick to the plan this time.

I debated sharing inspiration photos because I’m not sure my finished product will live up to them, and I know my photography won’t.  But I need to get over that…so here are a few of the rooms I LOVE:

A post shared by Melissa Coleman (@thefauxmartha) on Sep 15, 2016 at 7:49pm PDT

Sarah Sherman Samuel

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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

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