Walls that pack a punch - week 2

Week 2 of the One Room Challenge is here. There are still so many ideas and plans that are rolling through my brain.

While I continue to wrestle with and ponder those, I started with the parts of the room that I'm certain about: the walls!

the stairway leading down to the basement is to the right of this photo, so the big wall with the window is the first wall you see when you come down the stairs.

The "wallpaper" wall: For the long window wall, I knew I wanted something fun and quirky since this is the wall you first see when you first round the corner into the basement.

I wanted it to look separate from the adjacent "playroom" area - but yet, to still work with it.

While browsing online, I found a wallpaper design that I was really into.

However, my budget for this room is very low and the money I do have saved for it needs to be used for the builds I have coming up.

When it comes to wall designs, I always know I can do something fun with paint!

I started by painting the entire wall "accessible beige" by sherwin williams.

I had this color on hand already and love the sandy/grey tone of it - it was the perfect earthy compliment to my colorful basement.

After two coats of that, I rummaged through my stockpile of paint and found a few that I thought might look cool to use for the design on the wall.

I ended up choosing the color "crisp linen".

It's a very warm, creamy white, with yellow undertones which created a soft effect that balanced out the busy pattern I would be painting.

Using a small paintbrush I started painting a design similar to the one on the wallpaper I liked.

This wall is long - so this took quite a few hours to finish.

Since I'm working during nap times and bedtimes, "a few hours" actuslly means it took a few days. I quite literally painted half of this wall with a towel on my head because I had taken the worlds fastest shower so I could utilize as many of the nap time minutes as I could workingon this project.

After I was done with the design, I went back with an old makeup brush and blended some splotches of the crisp linen color all over the wall, to create an even softer/worn appearance.

It's hard to capture this wall in a photograph with the lighting and the windows - but it's such a fun wall and once this carpet is out of here, it's going to pop even more.

The faux-cement wall: For the second accent wall, I wanted to create a faux cement wall.

I started by painting the entire wall a dark grey I already had on hand.

I knew I wanted to blend lighter greys into that, so for my first attempt, I used a cleaning sponge and dabbed lighter grey paint onto the wall, sprayed with water, and tried to smear/blend it around with the sponge.

It did not work at all like I planned and left harsh lines and quite frankly just looked like a terrible paint job.

See picture:

I painted over the entire wall with the dark grey and tried again.

This time, I used a rag (an old hand towel).

I dabbed it lightly in light grey paint and applied it to the wall in a circular motion.

Then I used the rag to blend it around as well as I could.

Then I sprayed with water and blended even more.

Water blending is key - you want to blend it and spread it so the paint is so thin and soft that theres no harsh lines or any abrubt "ends"!

Anywhere that seemed too harsh for me, I added more water and blended until I achieved the look I wanted.

It was important to work in small sections because the paint dries so fast when you're putting it on this lightly.

I did this all across the wall, but made sure not to cover every inch.

I wanted some of the dark grey to show through too.

Once I was done with that, I did the same thing with a few other shades of grey I had on hand.

When that was dry, I finished by doing the same thing with the original base color: the dark grey.

This is what really tied it all together.

All in all, it only took a few hours and I was able to finish it in one night.

Once you get a feel for it, it goes pretty fast!

I am obsessed with the finished look.

It is gorgeous!

Cant wait to punch some bags in here!

There's still one more wall to paint - but I haven't decided for sure what I'm doing with that one yet, so whole I wait to figure that out, I decided to get started on the ceilings.

Yep, popcorn ceiling removal.

My favorite (not.)

You may remember I did this during week 2 of the spring one room challenge in my bathroom. Read about that here!

Definitely not my favorite job and the basement is about 15x bigger, so this may take me awhile.

It's also a very tough job to do when you're working around kid's schedules because it's such a messy job.

The set up and clean up alone takes a lot of time and it's not something I can just leave out because the basement is also my playroom.

Its an incredible big job for the time frame Im working with.

This week I've also been dealing with a house full of sick kids which has made sleep very scarce for everyone.

So at this rate, I may be working on this ceiling for weeks 3 and 4 too (hopefully not, pray for me! :P )

You know me, I'm gonna power through this somehow.

Can't wait to get at it again tomorrow!

That's all for this week!

Stay tuned and be sure to follow along in my stories on instagram.

And check out all the other amazing participants in the Fall ORC here!