I’m writing this at 2:30 on Thursday morning as I literally wait for paint to dry so I can do another coat. This is a pretty good indication of how my week has gone. I left off last week feeling hopeful that I’d get this room finished on time – I had major plans for last weekend – I was going to paint and then work on my headboard, my bedside tables, and then maybe sew a pillow of two. Seven days later and I’m still painting. The other stuff on my list? Ha – they didn’t happen.

On Friday night I painted my walls and was pretty pleased, but the next morning I started to have doubts – was it too yellow? My apartment is tricky – it doesn’t get a whole lot of natural light, and what it does get is late in the afternoon. I thought that perhaps it was trick of the light, so I decided to revisit it later that day. Several hours later and the changing light hadn’t changed my opinion.

Saturday night found me frantically looking through my paint deck trying to find another off-white that wasn’t too yellow, or too blue, or too pink. I honestly didn’t realise how hard it was to pick an off-white - they're all so similar yet so different. On Sunday morning I made the hour long trek via transit to Lowes for some tester pots of paint. After the trip back home to test them out I made a decision and had to take myself back to Lowes to buy a gallon. If you’ve been keeping track that’s 4 hours on the bus for a gallon of paint. Fun times.

My options: (all paints Para) P5211-14 - Shape Shifter, P5213-14 - Posture & Poise, P5215-14 - French Manicure, and P5219-14 - Every Girls Dream

Anyways, a coat of the new colour went up late Sunday night and I was much happier with it. I was apparently overly enthusiastic though when I tried to do a second coat the next evening because I broke the roller. Who knew that was even possible? Anyways, after purchasing a new roller the next day on my lunch break I was able to finally get the second coat up, and tonight I’m taking care of the trim.
Why the late night painting session? I’ve got the wallpaperer coming today (Thursday) and all the painting has to be finished before he can get started. I’m really hoping that after the paper is installed I’ll feel a little less stressed out about getting this room completed.
That said, with only one week left I think it’s time for a to-do list:

• Install wallpaper
• re-upholster headboard
• Bedside tables
• Sew pretty pillows
• Move my furniture back into my bedroom
• Figure out what to do for bedside lamps (What I was going to go is failing miserably so I need a second option)
• Pick up my vintage magazine from the framers, and decide where to hang it.
• Iron and rehang my curtains
• Find accessories and prettiness to dress the bedside tables
• Pull everything together
• Take photos

Yikes! There’s still so much to do. I honestly don’t know if I can do it – keep our fingers crossed for me.

Want some more One Room Challenge inspiration and craziness? Make sure you check out the 20 bloggers doing the one room challenge, and the other One Room Challenge Linking Participants.

After I installed the drywall came many, many layers of drywall compound

This is (again) a bad nighttime picture, but I promise the wall looks really good in person

After the wall was finished I did two coats of primer, and I’ve started the actual painting part of this project. Sadly I thought I might be able to get away with just one coat on the ceiling, but given I was painting at night with what turned out to be inadequate lighting I will need to do a second coat (there’s nothing more disappointing than lying in bed looking at your freshly painted ceiling and realizing you did a crap job). Once that’s done though I think the most difficult part will be over until it’s time to paint the radiator – I hate painting rads.

A copy of Hearth & Home magazine from Mach 1929

I’ve also started to work on my bedside tables. I’ve had them for a while, but they were stacked in the corner of my room while I decided what to do with them.

That said, one of the first things I did when I returned last evening was put yet another coat of plaster on my wall. That's right - the hole still isn't fixed. It is looking a lot better, but my attempts to repair it are being hindered a bit by the lack of heat in my building. Mud that should only take 8 hours or so to dry is taking over 24 which is massively slowing my repair progress, and I can't really do anything else in the room until I have the wall fully repaired. Here's hoping I have a bit of luck over the weekend.

{Sorry for the cellphone pics - taking photos with no daylight is a skill I haven't yet mastered}

The fabric was soured from Designer Fabrics on Queen street which means there will likely be a few more contenders found when I return this selection. Oh well - I'm still not entirely positive my sewing skills will extend to sewing decorative pillows so perhaps indecision is a good thing? Then again I need something to occupy my time while I'm waiting for plaster to dry and sewing pillows might be just the thing! Any thoughts on what I should choose? Have any other suggestions?

Walls made of fiberboard with no structural support, and a patch of drywall that a previous owner had made

Problem #1 – the wall (at east in that section) is not made of lathe and plaster like I thought, but plaster over what I can only describe as fiberboard.

Two pieces of drywall are pretty heavy, especially when you're also carrying drywall saw, screws, work gloves, duct tape, a plastic sheet and various other DIY supplies

Eventually, with a lot of effort, a huge amount of mess, and a lot of noise (sorry neighbours) I accomplished this:

Hello there bathroom. If I got Ryan Reynolds to move in I think this could be called a feature wall - don't you think?

And eventually this:

Drywall installed. You can see my earlier patch on the left

It wasn’t all dust and noise this week. I did a little sourcing for fabric for pillows and lamps (and ran into Vanessa of Décor Happy at HomeSense). No decisions made there yet, but I did pick up some fabric for my headboard at Designer Fabrics – did you know they have a whole section of off-cut velvet for $7/yd? I wasn’t going to miss that deal. And on Tuesday I found myself back in class for the first time in a couple of months.
Hopefully next week I’ll be able to report that my bedroom is looking much better. I still have a long way to go, but I’m a little more confident now than I was this past weekend that I can get the room completed by the end of the challenge. Fingers crossed.

My Bedroom (sorry for the awful picture)

And here’s the tentative plan:

Wallpaper, Lamp, Bedside table, Headboard, Pillows: 1, 2, 3

You may recall I won the Thibaut Etosha wallpaper from Meredith Heron a number of months ago – I chose the grey. I’ll only be doing an accent wall behind the bed (which incidentally I don’t think Meredith would approve of, but it’s a really bold pattern, and I don’t yet have the designer guts that she does to do a whole room).