Hello! Welcome to this week’s first blog post! All these days off from school are brutal! It’s not like Louisa requires actual supervision – she is, after all, five whole years old – but she does require things like food and water and occasional outings, and we've been engaging in all of that. Which, given the crisp fall weather, has been a pleasure. In addition, we’ve actually been suuuuuuper-busy on this here One Room Challenge. It turns out that swapping two children’s bedrooms with all their earthly belongings is a bit of an undertaking, particularly when one does it during a seasonal transition. Meaning, we’ve been pruning and paring and purging all the time, and that’s been an interesting side show. But let’s turn our attention to the room at hand and see how things are going.

One Room Challenge Week 1 (AKA "Before")

It’s different! It’s certainly at the beginning stages. But this new big girl’s room has made great strides since last we spoke. It’s now the blank slate I was hoping for.

To start, I moved the furniture in here and chose the layout. (Read: I huffed and puffed and hauled all that heavy crap around over and over again until finally this rather obvious layout occurred to me. Read all about it, and my plans for the space, here.) Then, over the past several days, I primed and painted the walls a clean, bright white. It’s really…quite white. Perhaps, frankly, too cool. But I’ll still take it over the yellowish/greenish, sickly walls we had before.

You can see there a bit of the contrast between the old and the new, even with the existing terrible lighting. I had held out absurdly high hopes that paint would prove transformational in this space. And it has…in a way. But, as I say, it is a tad on the cool and stark side at the moment. Nonetheless, I remain optimistic. By the time we bring in all the crap – ahem – art, toys, desk command center, and more – the white should act as a quiet backdrop. I hope!!!

In any event, once the rather large project of painting was out of the way, I turned my attention to the bones of the room. First, we (mostly me, with Westley offering a “helping” hand every now and again) organized Lou’s dresser, making sure that we kept only top-condition, seasonal items which fit. The drawers are looking good! I’ll have more on them and our organizational system when we re-do the dresser. (Which is something we desperately need to get on already). Next, we turned to the bookshelves.

Those are some crappy looking bookshelves! To be fair, this is just all Lou's stuff, which I shoved in here thusly after switching the kids' belongings.

These large bookshelves once graced our dining room walls, and we moved them in here during the great Musical Chairs 2016: Bookshelves Edition earlier this year. They were a fine dark brown, but we wanted to lighten them up a bit, so I had given the shelves a slap-dash coat of white paint when we moved them in here. Sadly, that was a poor choice. The paint didn’t really cure and couldn’t stand up the abuse of housing toys; my quick paint job was also looking shoddy. So, I primed and repainted the shelves, including the shelf edges this time, and finished with a clear coat of poly. Then I dug up a small sample of pale pink paint from my stash to give the backs a bit of (subtle) rosy cheer.

Finally, it was time to organize and store the toys.

The shelves actually work beautifully for toy storage, and I like that they’re a bit less – er, expected? – than the cube storage options like the Kallax. I also like the adjustable shelves, which allowed me to neatly stow even the bulky handmade barn and doll bunk beds. I prefer to have all the toys on these shelves (and in the cubbies in Louisa’s storage bed), rather than have any left on the floor space. I think it makes for a cleaner-feeling space, and frees up room to play. I find that kids’ rooms get so chaotic so quickly, and having a space for everything can really help with that. Though I wouldn’t have chosen these giant brown bookshelves for this room if given my druthers, I’m actually pleased with how they turned out. You know what they say: Make the best with what you’ve got!

Though I suspect I'll futz a bit more, and of course, label away, I think it’s all rather sweet and cute, and I like having the books very accessible, but the board games less so. (Board games are the bane of my existence. So. Many. Pieces). The top baskets hold things I want an adult to help with, like Lou’s microscope, science projects and a little robot-building kit. We’ve pared down an extensive collection of stuffed animals to only these most treasured specimens. They do still get some action, though they’re not as popular as trains and crayons these days, so they mostly just watch from on high.

So, yeah, it’s been incredibly busy around here, and all to end up with a pretty bare-feeling white box. (And some admittedly terrible photos, but you know I love me some terrible "before" photos). But I’m pleased with our progress, and looking forward to next steps. This week, I hope to tackle the dresser, which will get a dreamy shade of sea-green and some new hardware. I’d also like to try my hand at making a few minor repairs. We’ll see how it goes! If I have time, I’ll also dig into the light fixture. Inspiration struck while perusing other One Room Challenge participants (of course) and now I think I have a plan! Then a floral wall (those flowers on the dresser if you scroll up should be a part of said floral wall soon!), new curtains, spruced up bedding...the list goes on.

To check out the rest of the One Room Challenge Guest Participants, be sure to drop by Calling It Home. Thanks for reading!