One Room Challenge Week 4: A Last Minute Design Change, Some Killer (& Cheap!) Lighting Finds, & Some Possibly Ridiculous Craft Room Plans

When the week started off, I was feeling pretty good about my One Room Challenge bonus room makeover and thinking that maybe for once I was actually going to knock this baby out in six weeks without the crunch time panic that has ensued EVERY time I’ve participated in the ORC in the past. And then on Monday, it all went south. There was an unexpected delay with the wallpaper I was planning to use in the bonus room so it’s now not going to arrive in time, my wallpaperer injured his back and had surgery so is out of the game, the ottomans I was planning to use went out of stock (my bad for not ordering them earlier!), and I realized that the long weekend when my kids are off school (during which we have lots of plans) is actually the weekend before my ORC reveal when I had been thinking it was the week after. Yikes! But what am I to do except keep trudging forward and hoping that by some miracle it will all come together in the end, right?! Here’s where things are at (post includes some affiliate links – full disclosure statement {here}):

And here’s the breakdown of what I’ve gotten done… First, I found some great (and cheap!) lighting for both the bonus and craft rooms. For the far side of the daybed I found {this brass swing arm floor lamp} – I pulled it out in front of the daybed to give you a better look:

It’s a really nice lamp for the price! Right now it looks a little awkward in that spot but I think that once the gallery wall goes up and the wallpaper is in place it will all come together (but I’ve kept the box just in case 🙂 ). I also picked up this gal’s little sister (available {here}) for the craft room:

But having two versions of almost the same lamp in two adjoining spaces is a little too matchy for me so I kept on looking and found this little beauty (available {here}) that I LOVE:

I know it’s hard to tell from the pic but it’s a small, huggable little guy which is perfect since the craft room is a tiny space. Now I need to order a second one because lamps are the only source of light in that windowless room so a pair is a must!

In other progress, I finalized (I think) the layout of the gallery wall for above the daybed. Putting a gallery wall together is such a game of Jenga – I like to leave everything laid out on the floor for several days and keep coming back and tweaking it until it feels balanced. This is probably version #543 but for some strange reason I enjoy the challenge!

You also may have also noticed that I found a side table! Finding one that was a good fit wasn’t easy because the daybed is so deep, but {this tiered side table} fits the space really well and even more importantly, my daughters really love it. 

The top of the legs are brass and the bottom of the legs are wood – I might end up needing to paint or whitewash the wood portion so that it fits better with everything but I’m going to wait until the room is farther along to make that call. I’m envisioning a bunch of plants on the marble rounds – wouldn’t that be fun? 

Oh and most importantly this week… I came up with a revised wallpaper plan! You might remember that originally I had planned to use {this wallpaper} in the bonus room and when I first found out that the wallpaper wasn’t going to be back in stock in time for my room reveal, I decided I would just paint the walls for now and wait on the wallpaper because I didn’t want to sacrifice my final design because of an ORC deadline. But then I started looking at more wallpapers because sometimes thing happen for a reason – some of my favorite design decisions have been made when I was forced to go to a plan B. And I came up with a plan that I’m totally happy with and definitely rivals my original plan. I’m going with {this gorgeous wallpaper with leafy vines} (the left square) for the craft room and {this geometric design} (the right square) that was originally slated for the craft room will now go in the bonus room (both are c/o Serena & Lily). The two wallpapers coordinate beautifully with {my daybed quilt} c/o Vera Bradley that’s the main pattern in the space:

And if you’re thinking the three patterns look kinda busy together, you’re right! But none of them will be right next to the other – there’s still going to be a lot of white in the room because of the beadboard that’s halfway up the wall so I actually think it will be just enough pattern to be playful without being overwhelming. And I’m going to try to keep the patterns of my daybed pillows to a minimum. In addition to {these two small tassel stripe pillows} c/o Vera Bradley, I’ll be adding some white quilted euro shams and a few subtle tone-on-tone 20-22″ pillows to the mix.   

And one last thing! Some new plans for the craft room that I’ll either be SO glad I went through with or will go down in Driven by Decor history as one of my biggest “why did I do this?” moments ever. The cabinetry in the craft room is seriously the most gross, yellowy-beigy color – I’ve always hated it but have never wanted to spend the money to replace it.

So after the success of painting the floor tile in our bathroom, I decided that I’m going to try painting it. And I might throw some Con-Tact paper into the makeover mix too – more to come on that…

What started off as a bad, panicked ORC week ended up as a “I think I can pull this off” week, especially after Linda decided to push the reveal date of the One Room Challenge out one week! Did you guys already hear about that? Woo hoo! Since my wallpaperer is down for the count I think I’m going to tackle hanging it on my own and will need every last minute I can get! So now that you’ve gotten my update (thanks for hanging in there – this one was a doozy!), you can head on over to check out the room progress from the other ORC linking participants {here}. 

I’ll see you all back on blog next week with what I think is going to be one of my favorite My Five Favorite topics ever! Enjoy your weekend!