One Room Challenge: Week Four -- Karma Police

April 23, 2014 erin

Welcome back for week four of the One Room Challenge, aka the madcap race to completely transform a room in six short weeks. [You can catch up on previous weeks HERE.] Ok, I'm not going to mince words... week four hurts. It is rough like a cheese grater on your soft and vulnerable pinky knuckles. It is the point where fantasizing and planning meet the cold hard slap of reality. In a dystopian turn, I inevitably come to loathe every idea that previously seemed like a bright and shining beacon of awesomeness because I am my own worst client. Deep breaths. Let's do this.

Last week my wonder husband who still loves me but doesn't like me anymore dropped in an overhead light so that we could see. If you are wondering why we didn't go with sconces, it's because the space felt too narrow and I didn't care for the idea of sconces on opposing walls. Now I thought the gift of vision would be a major improvement, but like many things the room looked better in the dark. I see cellulite. Everywhere. Adding insult to injury, I had to match the ceiling texture to the rest of the lumpy bumpy ugliness. I also textured my hair in the process. Kinda feels like dry shampoo.

I decided to paint out the ceiling and wood work in Black Beauty. I had this on a wall at our old house, and it's warm and dramatic. Just like me. Sadly you can still see orange peel in the raking window light, but at least the extractor fan looks skinnier in black. And even though my paint job reminds me of putting on eyeliner with two kids grabbing at my legs (erryday), I do think the black moldings are a vast improvement. Sanders my magical amazing incredible paint guy made me try the new Benjamin Moore Grand Entrance enamel paint and I LOVE IT -- goes on like pudding and hides pesky brush marks. Delicious.

So that's the end of the good stuff. The bad stuff goes a little something like this: the more time I spent in that room, the more I felt the beadboard from the original design had to get out of my life. It was too many elements for this tiny space -- too many stain/paint/weird transitions. And that meant I had to make a life decision about the wallpaper I oh so optimistically purchased two years ago.

erin williamson | design crisis

Long ago I planned for this beatific wallpaper trifecta, for which I was sure I deserved an award. The middle paper was installed in the foyer years ago. I grew afeared of a long term relationship with the color in the wallpaper on the left. But I still loved the Little Greene wallpaper on the right and thought it would be right at home in the powder room. Except that this paper is very... absorbent. We have two little boys. It's a very real problem that affects my design decisions. The beadboard would have repelled moisture, but without it I was at a loss.

I decided I should get new wallpaper. Is there anything, ANYTHING more of a true Design Crisis than choosing wallpaper? It's like holding a mirror to your very soul and looking into the blackest depths. It's like getting married... but more expensive.

I had a serious case of Goldilocks and the Three Bears going on. Nothing was working. Cole and Son Nuvolette would have been my top choice but the pattern didn't resolve in such a small space.

Then I started to get really picky about print quality... I'm just not loving the vast majority of digitally printed papers. Honestly, as a photographer I was surprised at the resolution on some of these. I realized I pretty much only go for screened or gravure printed papers because apparently I like to look at my wallpaper with a microscope.

Then I was tripping on the pattern repeats. A lot of patterns look good on a little square but have obvious weird repeats when you see them installed on unbroken walls. I tend to gravitate towards large carefully hidden repeats or small textural papers, probably because I used to count the flower people and creepy alligator men in the wallpaper of my childhood bedroom. We'll discuss that some other time.

Finally, the expense factor got super scary. I am obsessed with some of these papers, but wow. When wallpaper is priced by the square foot, I get spooked and file it away for my brave and well heeled clients. At one point I was calculating literally thousands of dollars in paper alone for that one tiny toilet room, and I just had to step back.

Let's not forget that the whole reason I started searching for new wallpaper was this:

This guy had been sitting in the cat's food-filled water bowl, then he ran with his catfood stew pajamas across the house and all over my wallpaper samples.

The criteria became clearer. Durable, inexpensive, awesome. I decided to go with a non woven for the durability factor. And then I decided to go with this for the awesome and inexpensive factor:

Designer's Guild's Bain de Minuit in zinc. Ike approved.

I was the decider! I felt good! I was pumped! I ordered four rolls and steeled myself for the award I thought I deserved a few years ago but definitely deserved now.

And then I saw that Holly from The English Room had chosen the same paper for her design. And then I freaked out.

Basically I had looked into my soul and found... someone else's soul. Even worse, someone might think I was trying to steal their soul.

I felt terribly guilty and ashamed -- about what I am not sure, but it doesn't really matter because I am the guiltiest person in the world. I should immediately start wearing hairshirts and flagellate myself with glass studded whips just for fun. I was sure Holly would think I was a jerk, but she didn't even bat an eyelash because she has better things to do than to worry about what other people are doing.

Meanwhile I feel like I am constantly worrying about what other people are doing -- worrying like it's my job. And partly it is. I am supposed to be up on design trends -- what's coming in the future, and most certainly what's been done. People pay me for this. And yet it really is a vicious cycle, made even more cruel by the speed of the internet. One trend must die in order to sell sell sell a new one. We are all scurrying to get ahead of the curve, and for me that often means zagging where others are zigging. It's juvenile and contrarian, frankly. And I'm not sure it does me any lasting favors, but it is turning me into a crazy(er) person.

I like this wallpaper. It's awesome and soon it will probably be in every house in the world, much like the infamous Woods wallpaper. But that's ok. I had that wallpaper too, and I loved it. So friends, the afterschool special lesson of the day is: if you like it, do it. And do not apologize for your choices. Unless you are me, and then you should apologize for everything.

Sorry about that!

There have got to be some people making good progress this week. Go find them! Check back next week to see if I actually hung this paper. Or that paper. Or some other paper.

One Room Challenge: Week Three -- Fables of the Reconstruction

April 16, 2014 erin

Hello friends! Welcome back to the One Room Challenge, the crazy internet wide scramble to completely redecorate one room in six weeks. [Catch up on previous posts HERE.] I am struggling to wrap my head around the fact that we're now halfway through and I don't even have a mirror or lighting picked out... I'm feeling a bit like Aesop's hare here. We made super headway super fast, but now I'm super tired. At any moment I might lie down and twiddle some buckwheat whilst taunting tortoises with better project management skills than mine, but first we need to congratulate me on my hotdogging DIY skillz. At least the hare is flashy, right?

As you may recall I started out with a nuclear orange vanity of indeterminate but undeniably bad design. Well, I upgraded those sleazy doors for some fresh and clean oak shaker numbers from Barker Cabinets. I'll admit that I spent more than a few hours caressing them, getting to know every inch of virgin woodgrain. It was hard to slap on that first coat of stain. But after sanding them smooth with 150 grit paper, I screwed up my nerves and brushed on the Speedball india ink.

Yep. Speedball. India. Ink.

Black as night, this stuff is. It makes regular "black" stain look like weak coffee, but if you try this for yourself please learn from my trials and four letter word filled tribulations: do not buy the acrylic ink (on left). The one on the right is what you want (PS, thanks for making the labels look so easy to differentiate, Speedball). It is waterproof and contains shellac, which is a sanding sealer so it doesn't raise the grain like the acrylic stuff. Also it flows ever so much more nicely and doesn't build up in tacky layers.

Can you tell that I spent a zillion hours reading woodworking lumber jock forums before I started this project because I am a giant nerd?

Now I'm a dirty nerd in need of a manicure.

After permanently dyeing my skin black in the process of brushing on two coats of ink, I finished with Osmo polyx oil.

I kind of refused to hermetically seal my hard earned woodgrain with polyurethane, so I spent another brazillion hours researching finishing options before settling on a hybrid hard wax. This stuff is totally food safe and eco friendly, plus is it easy to apply -- wax on and wax off Ralph Macchio style. Repeat 8 hours later -- crane kick optional but not required. Voila! Delicious juicy woodgrain with a touchable oiled finish.

All that stripping, sanding, and staining, sublimated into one grace note of beauty. I hear angels singing and rainbows weeping with envy.

Rather than painting the cabinets black, I used this process as a test for our future kitchen remodel that will probably maybe never happen someday. I don't mind the idea of painted cabinets, but I do worry about chipping and the difficulty of touch ups -- especially with Wrecker and Bruiser around to hasten the demise of any fragile finish. This can be touched up and repaired with relative ease, plus I really like the ebonized look.

Now whether this stuff will stand up to dribbled toothpaste and marathon boat parties hosted by our as of yet uninstalled sink, I do not know. This guy wants to remind me not to get too high and mighty on my champion DIY skills.

He would also like to know if yogurt from the trash tastes as good as yogurt from the fridge.

Because I said no I am not allowed to bask in the glory of my success.

Unless I leave to forage for fresh yogurt, in which case I should come back. Now.

It's a wonder that anything gets done around here. But you may have noticed we managed to drop in an overhead light, positioned above the sink.

Hilariously/not hilariously it is located exactly where an overhead light used to exist before the previous owners installed that hideous vanity light. We pretty much went back to the future. Or... something. Time travel confuses me.

Light is helpful when you have to spackle and sand at pitch dark o'clock, which also happens to be renovation celebration o'clock. I like ice with my whine. Don't judge.

To top off my winning streak, counters have been ordered and will be installed shortly. Ike picked them out -- or so he thinks. He also picked out the gargantuan face bandage which is covering precisely nothing. That's gonna hurt when it comes off, kid.

To summarize: I am basically king of the world, a super-ish parent with the very best that trash cans and stone yards have to offer, possibly the most talented DIY'er ever, and definitely a designer in charge of her own destiny.

Except that I had a hyperventilating panic attack and ordered totally DIFFERENT WALLPAPER. Bad hare, baaaad hare. From winning the race to cowering under a rock with my face in the dirt. Self saboteur in the extreme.

Goodbye beadboard, hello new wipeable wallpaper. We will discuss this ad infinitum next week. For now, just know how the mighty have fallen. I am in trouble.

Until then, please do see how my fellow participants are faring in their own race against time. Only three more weeks left to go!

One Room Challenge: Week Two -- The Case For Uxoricide

April 9, 2014 erin

Hello and welcome back for the next installment in the One Room Challenge! Last week I laid the foundation for what should be a grueling but fairly straight forward renovation of our puny powder room. This week the husband ~~and I~~ began demolition of the truly heinous and downright criminal renovations wrought by previous owners, and I am having the distinct feeling that this endeavor might result in bodily injury. To me.

Before you decide that Colonel Mustard did it in the bathroom with a hammer, let's start at the beginning of the end.

The very day I accepted this challenge, I promised my loving husband that I would hire out every single job. That we would not spend weekends and evenings painting and fretting and hanging and rehanging art like last time. Then I couldn't find a single contractor willing to come out and even look at such a small job. Then the threat of public humiliation and impending failure whipped me into a stress filled frenzy... and then Ben caved. Because I am nice, and I make a delicious pan seared halibut, and also because I birthed his two adorable babies, he really couldn't say no to my plea for help.

Which is not to say that he was happy about it.

When he started in on the Jasco paint stripper (a toxic gel with low floral notes reminiscent of Mad Dog 20/20) and I came in to document the process, the eye rolling commenced. With every scrape of shriveled polyurethane I felt his "enthusiasm" for the project dissipating, the influence of my trump card waning. I'm pretty sure he was scraping our love away.

Oh yes. For the moment, let's put aside the probability of divorce (or worse) and talk about why it's even necessary to strip and stain this vanity -- why not just buy a new one? Please see the diagram above for evidence of an ugly but useful sewer cleanout that runs to the kitchen and laundry room. Unfortunately keeping it meant that we couldn't do a swanky wall mount or pedestal sink, which is ok because obviously we need concealed storage to house a phalanx of plastic toilets and pee stained training seats. Boys and their toys, you know.

Toys like a long piece of piano wire, perfect for strangling the mirror off the wall. Hot tip #1: Goo Gone + sawing softened adhesive with a wire = no more nasty mirror. Hot tip #2: Don't embarrass your husband with a camera when he is holding a weapon.

This wall is oozing with the kind of misery that comes from sobbing behind an ugly builder grade mirror for over a decade. I wish I could say I see instant improvement here. Instead our powder room is looking more and more like an abattoir.

The tiled in baseboards have been gutted. Perfect for fluid run off.

The sink is gone, the lighting is gone, scary murder gloves are not gone.

Basically it's like a jail cell up in here.

I am hoping I didn't use all my lady chits for nothing... it is terrifying to consider that Ben might hate me AND that I must suffer the ignominy of a hideous bathroom.

Honestly, he is an angel sent down from the heavens above to serve me. That didn't come out quite right, but I am so very very very grateful for his help and hopefully when he reads these words he will decide not to kill me.

Also, next week I get my own hands dirty with sanding and staining and patching and painting. I stole my cabinet finishing idea from these guys and their amazing floors:

Perhaps Ben will at least let me stick around long enough to put this hot mess back together. And maybe to cook him a hot dinner. And other hot... things. I'm not ashamed to say that I will use every tool in my arsenal to survive.

My charms are limited. Call 911 if no one's here next Wednesday morning.

Until then, please do visit my fellow challengers. What a lineup!