Well, we are down to about T-minus ten days until reveal and, per usual, the beads of anxious sweat are pouring down our faces. We took a family vacation last week, and I was away all weekend and as good as it felt to take some much-needed breaks, it’s left us with a lot to catch up on in these last days of the One Room Challenge.
I was very lucky that Billy was both super-dad and super-worker and super-husband this past weekend. I had a girls’ weekend booked for a very long time, and despite us being behind with LOTS of things, he solo parented like a champ, while also staying up until the wee hours of the morning working on the speakeasy space. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that he’s never done more than very basic upholstery and he is absolutely NAILING a complicated channeled upholstery job on the speakeasy banquette. He also built the banquette from scratch, so there’s that. And he did all of that while I sipped mimosas with my friends.
THE CUSTOM BANQUETTE
I’m going to give a quick run-through of the upholstery process for the bench. First, a few weeks ago we hit up the fabric store and picked out a super chic green velvet for the bench. We didn’t want anything with a pattern since the seat and the back were both getting channeling. When we saw this fabric, we both just looked at each other and knew it was the one. Billy usually doesn’t care about things like fabric, so I was excited that he actively liked the one we were picking out.
Next, we chose a three-inch thick foam for the seat to make sure it had enough cushioning with the channeling. For the back, we chose a two-inch think foam to make sure it wasn’t too bulky. Billy cut each foam piece to 5 inch-width strips before gluing down the foam pieces to the wood with spray adhesive. Next, Billy sprayed the adhesive on 1/2-inch batting that fits around all the edges of the foam. The last step is stapling the fabric down. I will be sharing this process on Instagram in video format as I think it’s much more easily explained with visuals.
TO DO
Next up will be painting and upholstering these swivel barstools. If you’ve been following along on Instagram Stories, you might know that I scored these barstools at the thrift store for a total of $4 (for both!). They were priced at $4/each but when I went to check out, they were 50% off. I’m going to paint the barstools black, and then we’re going to see if we can have a local upholsterer do this job for us on a tight deadline. We have so many details to finish up (and are currently in the midst of a different yet-to-be-revealed project), so any small details we can get some help with will be clutch timesavers for us at this point!
After the barstools, we we be tackling floor tile, and finishing up as many details as we can over the next ten days. There are MANY small details to finish, but we have never been able to complete all the small things in time for an ORC reveal. We keep trying to remind ourselves that this time will be no different…and that is totally OK.
It’s also satisfying to be able to do easy, quick details that have such an enormous impact, like these gorgeous prints from Minted. I can’t wait to get these on the wall this week!
Be sure to follow along on Instagram Stories in the final days as tackle as much as possible. Everything is saved to my highlights under ORC 2021.
As always, be sure to head over to the One Room Challenge blog to check out all of the other incredible projects happening this season!
I’ll be giving another update in just a few days…and after that is REVEAL!
Until then,
