Oh hey there. Lots to catch up on, as always, but let's dive into the fun part of the week, shall we? It's the One Room Challenge! In case you've missed out on the last posts, I'm following along as a guest participant in Calling It Home's One Room Challenge. Over the course of six weeks, I'm transforming my entryway. You can read more about my plans and last week's progress here and here.

All up to speed? Great. Then let's continue with this tour. When last we met, I was still stenciling the stencil that would, a la the song, never end. But it did end, after a lot of late nights, a fair amount of wine, and a ridiculous amount of This American Life. (Did you know moose can get sloshed on fermented crab apples and wander drunkenly around Anchorage? Knowledge!) Okay, so the stencil was done. And it looked great.

Next up: Add a little function to this form. Although we have a coat closet - nay, TWO coat closets - right here when you enter the door, there was still a very clear need for a place to hang coats and umbrellas and backpacks, at 5-year-old height, with minimal fuss. While I was at it, I decided I also needed a small shelf or table on which to store my iced coffee while I lace my (new, white) chucks. I decided to make these two objects on the cheap, because I'm me.

Inexplicably, this is my only "before" picture, and the stencils and paint were for another project. Anyway, I bought a couple of pieces of pine from my local hardware store and had them cut to the size I wanted. In this case, because I wanted both to come pretty close to spanning the length (width?) of the slice of wall between my two coat closets, I went with 34 inches long. The coat rack is a 3/4" x 4", and the shelf is about 3/4 x 3 3/4". I didn't care if the soft pine got a little dinged up, because I was going for a more "weathered" look. I thusly applied a bunch of coats of Minwax Special Walnut until they were about the hue I wanted, and then added some coat hooks.

I used chalk to mark my hook placement. I did not crush the math on the first try. Sigh. Math. Anyway, these hooks were cheap - $1.50? - from the hardware store, but I liked their curvy clean shape and their oil rubbed bronze finish. I bought six of them, figured out the math, and attached. Then I hung the whole thing on the wall by drilling regular dark screws into the studs. I hung the shelf using super cheapy white brackets that I sprayed a flat black. I love it! It does need a middle bracket for sturdiness, but I'm pretty stoked with how it's working so far. Iced coffee has been safely stowed at above-toddler-height whilst we prep ourselves for exit.

Hooray! So let's talk about what's going on on top of the shelf. All of it is placeholder fun stuff, and may or may not stick around. In particular, the mirror's days are numbered. That was not my original plan. It was not even my plan B. My original plan was to create the bestest IKEA hack ever and transform a Skogksta tray with a cheapy Target mirror I've had foooorever.

Isn't that an awesome idea? Wouldn't you have been, like, so impressed? Wouldn't it have looked amazing if I hadn't, entirely predictably and about three minutes into the process, done this?

Womp wompity womp womp womp. Okay, that sucks, because I was hoping to upcycle that and tray and mirror, but hey, maybe there's something else here I can ruin.

Yes! Perfect! You might remember this mirror from our tiny laundry nook, and you may be interested to learn that I totally hate it. It was in the donate pile when I pulled it back into duty, and I was not that happy to have it back on the team. It's shoddily done, with pretty sloppy gold accent paint, and I just hate the design, too. But hey, you know how I never met something I didn't want to spray matte black, right?

So I sprayed the thing, while I was already spraying my cheapo L brackets - and, you may notice, our hideous, scratched, painted 90s brass doorknobs. Taping over that thing was not a monstrous pain in the patooty at all, and I was not at all disappointed when it still looked like total crap afterwards. Apparently, I didn't even take a picture of it. I will, and I'll send it to you. It's terrible.

So, now I need a mirror, and I thought I'd try one more time to ruin my luck for the rest of life and precariously balance that rectangle mirror on this shelf to see if it will suffice. It actually looks sorta fine, but sorta fine will not cut it for the One Room Challenge. No, sirree! So now I need to find a new mirror. It must be round and large, and I'm looking for a white, gold/brass or wood frame. I'll keep you much posted, you can be sure of that. Check back next week for my final choice. I'll also finally pull the trigger on a rug. Once I saw how taupe my stencil was and decided to roll with it, I ruled out the bright yellow rug in my original mood board. Clashy, in my humble opinion. So now I am TORN about blue versus black and pattern versus jute and painting my own design versus trying not to ruin anymore perfectly mediocre crap. There's a lot happening over here. I have about a dozen rugs in about a dozen online shopping carts, and one day soon I'm going to actually buy a few of them.

This is actually my favorite view of the whole thing. This little sliver peeking out from the hall and adding so much depth and texture to the kitchen and family room: it's just what I wanted! I'll provide more panned out views when I can clean more than a 3 square foot area. So maybe a few weeks from now? In the meantime, be sure to check out the other guest participants and featured designers over at Calling It Home! Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll see you tomorrow; if not, Monday!