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It’s Week 3 of the One Room Challenge, which means we’re more than halfway through! Things are moving quickly and I’m starting to get more excited about the finished room. Up until now, I’ve been so focused on planning and getting everything moving that I haven’t been able to think about the final results. Keep on scrolling to see the progress photos from this week. 

 

If you missed the first two weeks, don’t stress, you can visit the previous posts: Week 1 (design plan and before images), and Week 2 (demo, electrical, and the new skylight). 

 

 

I always recommend seeing how a paint sample looks in a room before making a final selection. Since we bought pre-assembled cabinets from a local showroom, I knew their white color would look different in my laundry room compared to the lighting in the showroom. Once I saw the cabinet color in the space, I decided on Dunn Edwards’ Whisper white which has a slight warm undertone. With the color finalized, I got down to one of my least favorite things after sanding drywall patches…painting! Ugh, it actually has PAIN in the word because it is such a tedious process. I primed the walls to cover the original gray paint and added two coats of Whisper before the cabinets went in. If you have the chance, try painting a room with as little in it as possible. It’s much faster to paint without having to edge around cabinets or trim. This will also save time once everything is installed because I’ll just have to touch things up.

 

After painting the walls, I focused my attention on the wainscot panels in my garage. I had to special order the wood wainscot panels at my local Home Depot because they only stock the vinyl wainscot panels. Each panel was about 5-inches wide and 32-inches high with a matching baseboard and top rail that are already notched so the panels install easily. Normally, you would paint the panels after they’re all installed, but I needed to paint them first to minimize the downtime between their installation and when I could put my washer and dryer back. So I painted them all by hand so I only had to worry about touching them up later.

 

Side note: I had no idea how much I would need to do laundry during this challenge. I did all my laundry before starting, but thank goodness a friend let me crash her home and use her machines for a few loads of laundry. If you’ve been following along with my Instagram stories, then you’ve seen my laundry lamentations this last week.

 

Here’s a fun tip that I learned from professional painters: brush strokes almost disappear when you add an extender to latex paint. Adding the extender is helpful when you use a paint sprayer to keep the nozzles from clogging, but its great when using a brush to paint too. By laying things like trim, molding, and panels horizontally on a work table, the extender helps to encourage brush marks to level out before drying. I used this technique on the wainscot panels and they’re turning out great.

 

 

This week I also enlisted my handyman to help speed things up. I knew I didn’t have the right expertise and tools needed to rework the base cabinet for the gas and exhaust lines for the dryer. You can see in the photo above that he made such easy work out of the job. He used a periscope dryer vent kit to help angle the vent, which I didn’t even know existed right off the shelf from the hardware store. I’m glad I asked for his help instead of trying to do it on my own. Since we aren’t doing a total gut renovation of the laundry room, we couldn’t move the utilities so “make it work” moments like these are functional and save money.

 

 

Other than my laundry woes, you might have seen the grout poll I posted on my stories too. Ask any designer, sometimes you just need a sounding board for your ideas to know you’re on the right track. I wanted the texture and color of the backsplash tile to be more prominent so I was leaning towards the Bright White or Snow White grout colors. But Alabaster and Antique White were darker and would show off the pattern of the tiles more. In the end, I decided that Snow White let the tile shine the most and had the same warm undertones as the paint. Don’t you just love the texture and irregularity of the tile? Be sure to check back in for Week 6 when I not only reveal the final room, but also all the sources for the project.

 

There’s still a lot to accomplish in the weeks ahead. My handyman got the base cabinet installed first so my go-to countertop fabricator could create a template and fabricate the countertop in our tight timeline. Next week I’ll show you the awesome soapstone remnant he helped me get and my handyman will be back to help install the upper cabinet, the wainscot, and hopefully the backsplash tile.

 

What do you think of our progress so far? Don’t forget to click the logo below to see how other designers’ rooms are coming along.