This One Room Challenge has been a bit different for me. The last couple times I participated, I raced to make sure my blog post was done on time and tried to link up immediately in an attempt to get my post as high on the list as possible. My motivation was visibility and as much engagement as I could muster up. This time around, I’m taking the blogging side of things at a much more leisurely pace, possibly in part because Pinterest recently changed their algorithm, dropping my blog traffic down significantly. It’s frustrating when you build traffic consistently for years, only to see it drop because of something completely out of your control, and frankly, it’s made me reevaluate my motivation for blogging. There is a bright side to this though… I’m finding ALL of my enjoyment in the One Room Challenge just from giving my son a room he’s SO excited about. And he really is ecstatic, especially about the Kelly Wearstler Channels inspired DIY walls.

Regardless of my motives, I’m enjoying participating in the One Room Challenge, a quick turn around home makeover hosted by Linda of Calling It Home and media partner Better Homes and Gardens.

Last week I gave an update on the loft bed situation. I fully planned on adding a header at the foot of the bed, with a bookshelf attached to it, but after measuring out where the mattress will come to, we realized that our rapidly growing son would probably not be able to squeeze through the opening in a few years, so we decided to leave the bed as is and put some floating shelves near the head of the bed for his book storage. So the bed looks exactly the same as last week, but we have made some other progress, like installing the MDF sheet underneath that covers up the 2×4 frame. Of course, we took a cue from here and wrote a few things inside the “studs” of the bed.

We also installed the plywood that will function as the foundation for the rock climbing wall ladder.

We also painted the black accent wall in Benjamin Moore Soot, a deep blue black that looks blue in the can and when wet, but dries deeper and appears black.

The paint made such an immediate impact!

The rock wall has the same background color. Kaden is pointing to where he wrote, “Kaden’s rock wall.” 🙂

He has been such a great helper through this process, and has been involved in some part of every project.

He’s ecstatic about how things are coming together. My boy loves to have a project to help with! And while working together, we’ve had so many great conversations, and Kaden frequently comments, “I love talking to you.” If that isn’t the best thing ever, I don’t know what is!

The other major progress over the last week+ is that I started the Kelly Wearstler Channels inspired wall pattern. First, I created vertical lines.

I didn’t follow any specific pattern, just put them where it felt right. Kaden helped me determine the spacing, and it almost felt like he was reading my mind, we were so in sync. He has a surprisingly good feel for balance and design spacing.

Next, I painted the horizontal lines, spaced pretty evenly apart.

I noticed that my vertical lines tended to slant to the right a bit, so I measured out dots to guide my spacing of the horizontal lines. I probably should have done the same with the vertical lines, but you live and learn, right?

For the lines that run into the ceiling or the trim, I used a craft brush to ensure crisp, non bleeding lines. I’ll have a few touch up spots, but mostly this worked.

Finally, I started in on the diagonal dissecting lines. I tried to follow an “every other” pattern vertically, although I did mess up in one spot, and of course that’s the first thing I notice when I walk in the room… I’m still debating over taking the time to fix it or not.

Our Kelly Wearstler Channels inspired DIY is slightly less busy than the original designer wallpaper, but I figure we can always add to it if we decide we want to. That wraps up the progress for now… The To Do list is still long, but hopefully I can pull this off in time. Now back to painting…

To Do:

1. Paint white walls
2. Build loft bed bed
3. Paint black walls
4. Paint pattern
5. Cut and hang plywood for rock wall
6. Build/hang railing for bed
7. Sand pocket hole plugs on bed
8. Paint bed
9. Build/hang desk
10. Build/hang floating shelves
11. Order bedding
12. Order rocks
13. Hang rocks on wall
14. Source art
15. Move furniture (bookcases and dresser) back in
16. Attach legs to dresser
17. Order desk chair
18. Order reading sconce

Remember to check out past weeks and the other One Room Challenge spaces!

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6