The Interior DIYer
#DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2020 – Week One!

I am super excited to share that I will be partaking in this spring’s One Room Challenge as a guest participant! Pretty much since buying our first home last autumn I’ve been weighing up which room I would makeover first, and this time as a fully-fledged ORC participant [vs. when I participated in spring 2018 as a renter].

I decided to update the room we’ve called up until now the front room. We call it that because it’s at the front of the house and it’s a room. A room that serves zero purpose other than to be Random Furniture Limbo™ and somewhere to put Cora’s dollhouse. It’s basically is where furniture goes to die, but I want it to be so much more. I want it to be a room we want to spend time in.

Before I detail my plans, I want to acknowledge that I am taking this project very seriously during the current COVID-19 pandemic. I will not be hiring anyone to come into the house to do work. I will be doing all the work [with help from Robert when I need a second pair of hands]. Anything that comes into the house will get the same treatment everything gets these days; it’ll be Lysolled within an inch of its life. Anyone who follows knows I prefer to source items secondhand. I will continue to do so as it’s very budget-friendly and I strongly believe it is more environmentally responsible than ordering brand new everything. Anything secondhand coming into our house will be Lysolled and where needed will sit for 2 – 3 weeks in our shed to be on the safe side and to kill off any unnecessary visitors. Because of the pandemic, we have 8 weeks to complete this ORC project vs. the usual 6. I am not going into this project being flippant. Trust me, I’ve thought of all the scenarios and have the stress-induced acne to prove it.

Now that that’s out of the way, onto my ORC!

Our front room is okay at the moment. I mean, it’s livable. But I have big plans. The main items I want to achieve are: 

CEILING AND WALLS
Both and all will be ripped out. The 50’s / 60’s style ceiling tiles will be removed, the faux wood grain panelling will be ripped out [the entire room has that 80’s wood paneled walls, but it’s been sneakily painted since so you can’t tell it’s there], and then on the exterior walls I will be insulating, drywalling, plastering, then adding the good-kind of wood paneling treatment on the walls and finally painting them all a dark, warm gray. It’s a tall task but it’s also a small room so I’ll take my time. 

I’ll be partnering with the incredible team at Bin There Dump That, who very thoughtful offered to send a 14-yard dumpster to help with our renovation. It will be arriving tomorrow and I cannot wait to throw every single ceiling tile into it with a smile on my face. I’ll detail the whole process next week! 

SHELVING
At the far end of the room [as seen wall above] using secondhand shelving units on either side of the window, I’m hoping to create a built-in-shelf-feel as well as make a window seat under the window. I’m planning on painting the shelves white, but I’ll flexible with maybe painting them the same colour as the walls [but am not sure if that might be overwhelming]. Again, I will be using as much secondhand as I can and using up the plethora of leftover wood scraps we inherited when we bought the house. Waste-not.

FIREPLACE
I so desperately want a fireplace somewhere in the original section of our home, but without having to spend $10,000 to install it. So, I’ve sourced a fireplace mantle secondhand for next to nothing which I’m hoping to place where Cora’s dollhouse currently sits [as seen above]. The fireplace is currently oak and I’m debating whether or not to paint it or leave it as is. I have 8 weeks to decide so I’ll take my time.

There will be some items I want to buy new, one being a focal rug. It’s not something I want to source secondhand right now and I’d prefer to buy a new one. If anyone can suggest a great Canadian company that specializes in over-dyed or faux vintage rugs, please let me know! I have a backup rug but would rather support something more local.

Check out the full list of Guest Participants here! I’ve had a quick look at this year’s projects and they are amazing. I’m equal parts looking forward to starting and also WTF am I about to take on and I don’t even know it yet. I guess time will tell!

Week One – Week Two – Week Three – Week Four – Week Five
Week Six – Week Seven – Week Eight

#DarkRomanticLuxe

DIY Friday – painted cabinet using Fusion Mineral Paint

A few weeks ago, while still in our current state of isolation, we went for a drive to get out of the house as we were beginning to feel more and more trapped in. While we were mid-way down a country road I saw a sweet little piece of furniture ruthlessly abandoned on the side of the road …

If you could hear the photo above it would sound like Robert grinding his teeth as he did a u-turn and popped the trunk so I could take yet another wayward piece of furniture home. To add insult to injury, the cabinet didn’t fit in the trunk so we had to secure it [safely] in the seat next to Cora in the back of the car. Robert was thrilled.

This was a piece I knew exactly how I wanted to update and needed to do little-to-no planning. I wanted to paint it with Fusion Mineral Paint‘s shade of Coal Black. No wonder this poor thing was abandoned as the finish of the wood wasn’t exactly complimentary to the velvet inside and the two clashed quite a bit [I thought. To each their own].

The first thing I did when I brought this little display cabinet home was wipe it down with antibacterial wipes because coronavirus. I removed all the little hinges holding the glass in place [you can see the black hinges in the photo above], carefully removed all the glass and got to work.

It was really straight forward project after that; using a small brush I smoothly applied 3 layers of Coal Black paint. I waited a minimum of 3 hours between coats of paint to ensure each coat was dry, but it will be a few more days before the paint is cured [want to know the difference between dry and cured? Fusion Mineral Paint has a great post all about it here].

This was such a straight forward project and thanks to the incredible finish with Fusion Paint, the completed look is so perfect. I was debating sanding the edges of the display case after applying the paint [to give a similar distressed look like our Coal Black dining room hutch], but I decided against it since the “wood” finish / stain was such a strange colour, it is what would come through. I think that shade needs to stay under 3 coats of paint.

DISCLOSURE - while this post is not sponsored, I did receive this paint free of charge from Fusion Mineral Paint in exchange for a blog post. I only work with brands that I like and of course, think you will too. Thank you for supporting the companies that support The Interior DIYer.

#DarkRomanticLuxe

DIY wallpaper template

I’m taking my time with deciding how to decorate each area of our home. I’m still up in the air about a lot, but one thing I sporadically did on the weekend when Cora was having lunch was make a wallpaper template and quickly paint a small wallpaper-style pattern on the peek of wall under our stairs.

I painted this section burgundy during my lunch break a few weeks ago. I think I did it to make myself feel like I was making an update to our home [I currently have hundreds of ideas, but there are so many moving pieces and things have to be done in a certain order, therefore I’m getting nothing done].

I then had the idea to paint a faux wallpaper effect*, just to see if it’s something I’d like to do. Using an empty cereal box, I cut out a square template. I folded it in half each way to find the center of the square. I marked the center and four corners with a pencil and then I laid the cardboard template on a folded up kitchen cloth and used my drill to carefully drill 5 holes. Yes, I could have used something else to make the holes, but it was literally within reach and there’s nothing I love more than being lazy.

Then I simply used my template to mark lightly with a pencil the pattern on the wall. Once you do one row, simply line up the template with existing pencil marks to make sure your lines are consistent. That’s it! It was so easy and fast to make. I painted little gold hearts as my pattern. They’re super imperfect, but I like that.

And yes, I’m hoping to paint our entire hallway like this. Because I’m a glutton for punishment.

*I’ve been seriously thinking about wallpapering our hallway for some time, but I cannot decide on a wallpaper. I’m way too indecisive. Plus, wallpaper is expensive and we’d need a fair amount to go up the stairway. So I’m going to try my hand at painting some.