One Room Challenge Week 8 -THE REVEAL

What a marathon… We just ran an 8 week marathon. It was incredible.. and worth every minute but lots of prjects were done in this last week. We have basically been non- stop building and DIY’ing for the last week. But today is the DAY… and we couldn’t be more proud of the finished product.

So our goals were to transform this space into a unique, beautiful short term rental. We really wanted a have a king sized bed but the only wall that could fit (besides the bay window wall) was the right side of the room. But that side has a large window and putting a king bed in the center would be really awkward with the window off to the right.

So…. enter… secret window project. The goal was to create a shutter from the inside of the window that folds into the room to reveal the beautiful park view. So when guests want to have it be brighter in here ( we have 3 other windows in this room) they can open it. But otherwise, the window would now become part of the headboard of the bed. Genius or Giant fail??? Happy to report.. It’ was GENIUS and it is the perfect accent to this wall.

We also wanted to create texture on this wall and the roofing material was SO cheap, already ready to install with minimal cuts AND cuts with a utility knife. Score!

We used the color “Quietude” by Sherwin Willimas for the top half, and “Sea Salt” also by Sherwin Williams. We really wanted to create soft lines on this wall and wood prices are up right now, so we decided that we would stack drywall to create a pattern.

Onto the bed build… it was by far the hardest build. We basically made up the design and in theory is was great… but getting the bed reinforced from underneath was tough. From much trial and error we are so pleased how it came out.

The windows.. lets talk about the windows. We have the exact same bay window in the apartment upstairs and we really wanted this one to be completely different. We wanted this to have soft curves and create the feel of the space. Everything else was designed around these windows. We wanted the feel to be fun and playful but still grounding it with a cool color and bringing the sophisticated wood to pull it together. We also wanted to do some fun trim since the windows didn’t have any. We sanded and painted PVC pipe for the tim, used drywall for the circles and to create the arch themselves and used flex trim to smooth out the lines of the drywall. So this build was REALLY inexpensive AND we used minimal power tools to make it. The router created the circles but everthing else was cut by hand with a pull saw and an a utility knife. You can see the entire process of how we built it by going to our highlight reel on instagram

If you would like to see any of our stories on how these were built, we saved videos to our highlights.

Next lets talk about the desk area and the feature wall behind it. I made this plaster effect wall by using a cake comb and joint coupound. I took small sections the width of the comb and slathered the wall with joint compound about 3/4 of an inch thick. I drew the comb down and started the next section. If it looks messy and has high peaks, don’t worry… the beauty of joint compound is that it can be added onto and SANDED to be beautiful. So don’t worry if it doesn’t look completed after you have put it on. I let it dry and added to low spots and sanded high spots. Then I painted it “alabaster” by sherwin williams.

But look at these CLOSETS!! So do you remember how these closets used to be along this whole wall and we moved them to the side? Well.. they are perfect. We did an ikea hack and bought the ikea closet and built around it. We also saved about $300 on making our own beautiful arched wood doors. These are made of birch plywood and they are PERFECT. We used the router to arch the door and put new hardware on. Remember that if you are adding weight to the doors, you have to reinforce the ikea closet where the hinges are and make sure that your hinges can hold the weight.

Don’t forget to check out the other designers and see their BIG reveals.

Ok… now to sleep for the next week.