One Room Challenge: Week 3 – Checking off the Project List

Week 3 of the One Room Challenge is here and things are in full swing on our family room transformation with projects, projects, projects.  I’m generally feeling pretty calm about it all though- probably too calm actually.  It could just be the calm before the storm, too.  I do have a tendency to feel like I have more time than I actually do to get something done, and then I end up scrambling in the end like a mad woman. But, this time things have pretty much been going to plan, and even the problems I encountered last week have been mostly resolved, so feeling pretty confident overall.  Now that I said that –  queue: disaster.  You know how it goes.

Anyway, this past week  has been all about checking projects off the list by reworking some new and existing furniture items to give them a fresh identity.  We also ‘reworked’ (for lack of a better word) our lighting a bit by adding a few goose-neck light fixtures over the new floating shelves.   More on the lighting later, but first:

What’s Been Accomplished so Far?

I have to share my most favorite furniture DIY of all time (as of this moment): this marble top coffee table

Isn’t she beautiful!  So far its my absolute favorite thing for this space, plus – it only cost me about $160 and took about 5 minutes to DIY it together.  I found the 42″ wide, 1″ thick marble top on Craigslist for $75 –  find of the century, right?!   It’s a beautiful piece of real (heavy) marble and I knew it would make the perfect top for a coffee table, I  just needed to figure out how to attach some legs.   After a couple options I discovered that Pier 1 sells table bases for coffee tables, end tables and dining tables.  Genius!  We decided to secure the base to the top, just for safety reasons with little ones around.  The top could easily crush your foot if tipped off the base.  All we had to do was measure where the base would sit, trace it out,  add epoxy and adhere the legs.  Five minutes to harden, and another recommended 30 minutes more for it to cure and wall-la!  A awesome new marble coffee table, that no doubt would have cost me at least a few hundred dollars more to buy in a store.

The other project was to reworked the legs on the sofa.  I know, its brand new you say!  And, yes – you’re correct.   But when I ordered it, i knew I’d have to change out the legs.  The sofa is custom, but unfortunately their selections for legs left much to be desired.  Here is what the sofa looked like with the base it arrived with.  Its not bad, just not my style or what I wanted for the space.

So after it arrived, I jumped online and ordered two sets of furniture legs (8  total).  I ordered the color that I thought would work best with the coffee table base, that were also within my budget (total cost was around $70).  The legs ended up being a bit darker and more reddish than I wanted, so I sanded off the finish with an orbital sander and stained them with a very light coat (almost a dry brushing) of dark walnut stain I had on hand.   They ended up just right, baby bear!

The next step was to get these bad boys onto the sofa.   I’ll admit, I was totally nervous doing this because I was basically dismantling my brand new sofa and drilling holes in it, Lord help me.  But I figured, why not.  I can always put the original base back on, right? maybe? hopefully?  So I began by removing the base of the sofa by unscrewing it from the frame.  Pretty simple. Then I found the drill bit that seemed to match the size of the bolt on the sofa leg.  I actually tried out a smaller bit first before finding the right one, just to make sure I didn’t drill a hole too big.  I measured where I wanted them the leg to go, and used a leg mounting plate (the silver square in the photo) as a guide to make my marks.

I drilled a hole in the center, and simply screwed the leg into place being careful to keep it as straight as possible.   I ended up not actually using the mounting plate because I didn’t think they were really necessary, but it probably would’ve acted as an additional guide to ensure the leg went in straight.  I LOVE how it tuned out – it was exactly how I had imagined it.  This was inexpensive and super simple to do, and totally changed the look of the sofa for the better best.   Here’s how it looks now:

The other major thing we had going on around here was adding some goose-neck lighting over the new bookshelves.   I like them…I really do, they’re beautiful. But…I’m a bit concerned they aren’t the right scale.  I’m still pondering over what to  do to make that feel right to me.  I might just have to play with the positioning of the ‘goose necks’  a bit, or I’ve even  thought about trying to remove a section of ‘neck’ to shorten them.  Although I really don’t want to have to resort to that, or to replacing them all together, so we’ll see what happens.  Maybe they’ll look better to me once the shelves are styled.

I also grabbed a few new floor lamps from Target’s Threshold collection that are a-maz-ing.  I almost contemplated returning the globe lamp because the light cast from the Edison bulb doesn’t make it very useful (more of a glow vs. actual light), but it’s a total beauty to look at when it’s not on, so I decided it must stay.  My boys have already also decided it can be used as a musical instrument by tapping on the glass globe – grrreat.   Call me psychic, but I foresee one of them owing me $55 from their allowance jar in the near future.

Reworks in Progress

Moving on to the project that are still in progress.   In addition to solving my rug dilemma from last week by finding two  gorgeous Safavieh Faux Sheep Skin rugs I scored from HomeGoods (which look amaz-balls with the new coffee table BTW), I also found a pair of  vintage chairs that will be the substituted for the ones I had ordered and didn’t care for.   I spotted these chairs on Facebook at our local mid-century resale store that’s only open on weekends, so on Saturday I rushed  over in-between my son’s soccer games, and made the decision in 5 minutes to buy them.

Making a furniture purchase in 5 minutes, my friends is a furniture decision making record for me!  Granted I’m not sure many people make furniture buying decisions in 5 minutes, but the point is that indecision is usually my greatest nemesis – the sofa took me 4 months to decide on.  So, yeah, see where I’m going here?  Guess I should do all my furniture shopping when there’s a game to get to from now on!  Of course, these will  definitely need to be recovered.  Please don’t tell me you  really thought I  was going to leave them like this!?

No, silly. While the yellow, black, brownish tweed works beautifully with the current colors outside my in my backyard,

they leave much to be desired for the interior color scheme.  So, I’m going to attempt to re-upholster them myself with a mudcloth look similar to this:

Via Design Sponge

To die for, right?  I know I’m probably asking for trouble trying to reupholster these babies myself, but I’m going to give it my best shot.  I’m sure there’s a YouTube video out there to help, right?  Fingers crossed.  I am going to hire out the remaking of the box cushion however.  I do know my DIY limits, and sewing is one of them.  The sewing machine and I are not friends.

The other two projects I have yet pending are pretty simple.  Stain our existing media cabinet  – I’m still looking for just the right stain for this bad boy:

And make a leather strapped clock for above the fireplace like the one below.  I’m just having trouble finding the right sized clock since the area above the fireplace mantle is so large.

Via: La Maison d’ Anna G.

So that’s where we’re at, and here’s what’s left on the to do list stands as of today:

• Build DIY floating shelving
• Decide on and purchase a new rug
• Locate a pair of vintage chairs,
• Find fabric and reupholster the vintage chairs
• Complete the DIY marble coffee table
• Change out the current feet on the sofa for new feet
• Purchase clock and DIY the leather strap look
• Create a two part typographic print for shelves
• Stain the media cabinet
• Lighting
  • Purchase floor lamps
    
  • Install goose neck sconce lighting above the bookshelves
  • Purchase table lamps
• Purchase misc furnishings:
  • bar cart
  • side table
• Purchase Decor
  • Pillows/Throws
  • Stools/poufs
  • Flag for wall
  • Misc. display items for:
    • Coffee table
    • Shelving
    • Mantle
    • Top of Media Cabinet
  • Baskets
  • Frames
  • Plants

This One Room Challenge Room process has been a great experience so far.  It has forced me to make a lot of design decisions I’d been debating over for awhile.  Overall, I’m happy with the progress.  Fingers crossed it continues without too many more bumps in the road.   If you need to catch up on the plan or those stumbling blocks I encountered last week you can read about that here and here.  Thanks for following along with me on this 6 week journey, keep checking back for more over these next three weeks until the final reveal!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out some of my favorite blogger girlies and their updates on their One Room Challenges:

Restyle It Wright

North Country Nest

Making Joy and Pretty Things

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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