One Room Challenge Guest Participant- Toddler Room Week 1

I am biting the bullet and guest participating in the official One Room Challenge as a way to get Ezra’s Toddler room complete in a timely fashion. It’s a six week challenge starting today, October 4th and ending with a finished room November 6th.

If you made your way over from the One Room Challenge Page, I’m Megan! I’m glad you found me and my 1901 traditional four square home. I’ve been renovating since December 2014. It has been a complete gut job and a labor of love. I bought it as a single woman with no need for a house this big and 4 years later it is now the home my little family lives in; my boyfriend Josh, my baby boy Ezra, and our three crazy pit bull mixes Deuce, Denali, and Dozer.

I have already begun to work on this space (we are about a week in), but trust me when I say I have 6 more weeks worth of work to do before it is completed. The room was a blank space with window trim out and primed drywall. The floors were refinished over a year ago.  Here is a look back on how far this room has come to become a blank canvas.

We first ripped out all the plaster.

Then the lath came down.

This picture pretty much shows the extent of the insulation.

What insulation remained was removed and the whole house was rewired.

Everything in the house has new drywall and window trim. Not much remained after demo.

We added a closet to this room and used doors from other parts of the house. The small door on the right is a pass through to the playroom on the other side.

Another shot of the pass through door.

The floors upstairs are original and I had them refinished. They are a red pine and I ended up staining them with Minwax Espresso.

I started by planning out my room ideas in photoshop. I love to bring to life a design concept using my computer so I can visually tell if something is going to look great in my space before I commit to doing it. Below are the renderings of what the room will look like.

Toddler Room Rendering 1

Toddler Room Rendering 2

Ezra’s nursery downstairs had a space theme to it. I didn’t want to abandon all that was truly wonderful about his nursery just because we are moving upstairs, so I am sticking with a similar theme. I am keeping a lot of the elements I loved from the nursery, but tweaking it a bit and adding so many more exciting visual elements.

The color pallet downstairs was blue grey, black, and white, with touches of metal and canvas. What I’m changing as we move upstairs, is I’m adding a more outdoorsy color pallet. My main focal point will be the dark grey, night sky ceiling with a map of the constellations painted on it. I am also going to introduce more earthy tones into the space and change the blue grey wall color I featured downstairs to a  grey with green undertones.

Another design element that I am giving a shot is board and batten. To me board and batten painted in this darker grey-green shade encompasses the outdoors, masculine feel I am ultimately wanting to achieve. It is not lost on me that this is a toddler room, don’t worry! I have other age appropriate ideas to come.

Josh and I actually started the one room challenge a week or so prior to this first post. So far, I’ve painted the bottom half of the room where the board and batten will be, the grey green (it is Valspar Lead Cast, but I use Sherwin Williams paint). I then painted the ceiling the grey (Valspar Charcoal Grey *I believe). Josh was able to help me put the board and batten up rather quickly.

Also, pictured below you’ll see the beautiful rug that I’m not soooooo sure about! I think I love it, but I may also hate it. It’s from Wayfair and it’s suppose to look like cut wood. Trust me, I think I know where I’m going with this and I think it just might turn out great.
Still to come next week:

• I’m going to finish caulking and painting the board and batten.
• I will then decide if my baseboards will stay white or if I’ll paint them green.
• I’ll finish trimming out the ceiling.
• The upper section of the wall will be painted Sherwin Williams White Cotton.
• The window trim and doors will be painted black and curtains will be put up. ( I have bought the curtains I think I’ll use, but am still deciding if I’ll use blinds or shades versus sheers).

Be sure to check out all the stunning posts of the One Room Challenge featured participants. Follow @oneroomchallenge on Instagram or check out the hashtags #oneroomchallange and #bhgorc.