One Room Challenge Fall 2018 | Week 3: Clean Tile, Painted Door & a Light Fixture

I can’t believe we are at Week 3 of the One Room Challenge, or ORC! If you are new here and have never heard of the ORC before, it is a 6 week challenge hosted by One Room Challenge and Better Homes & Gardens. The challenge encourages all participants, both Featured and Guest, to rally behind one another to tackle a one room makeover in just 6 weeks! This is our second time participating in the challenge, and we are tackling our master bath (We remodeled our kitchen in the Spring).  You can also check out all the other participants by visiting the main ORC page HERE!

If you are just stopping by for the first time, you can check out the previous weeks posts here:

Week 1 | Week 2

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Week 3 was quite a bit slower for us than Week 2 (where I tiled/grouted EVERYTHING!), mostly because we were out of town for the weekend in Arizona.  It was a lovely getaway after how crazy exhausting Week 2 was!  But you bet I still made this week count!

Here is my updated list of completed tasks; I bolded the items I completed this week:

• Tile shower and mirror wall
• Grout tile and seal/caulk
• Install new floor tiles
• Install barn door
• Install wallpaper in water closet (Well, ALMOST done here – waiting on our contractor to come patch a giant hole in the wall!
• Spray paint sink fixtures and reinstall
• Have contractor return to install shower fixtures
• Paint cabinets (we’ll be using Giani, Inc. cabinet paint)
• Paint countertops (also with a kit from Giani, Inc.)
• Paint floors (I’ll be using a stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils)
• Install new cabinet hardware
• Install new shower rod and towel hooks
• Install new doorknobs
• Install trim on water closet door and paint
• Fix baseboards (some were ruined during the tub demo and install)
• Remove closet door and install curtain
• Install new light fixture
• Style and photograph!
• Restore sinks to original condition (they were well… loved?)
• Clean & Hang mirrors (these italicized items weren’t on my original list erroneously, but needed to be done regardless!)

Every time I go through that list and cross things off, I feel I haven’t accomplished much at all!  I certainly have a lot left to do, but I keep reminding myself of how far I’ve come!

Here’s a quick reminder of the before:

Builder grade and ICK is about right…

And here was the status right before the challenge started (we had the contractor demo and install the new tub prior to the challenge, because NO way would I have finished otherwise!):

The backer board and mudding was done, and the new tub was installed prior to Week 1, but as you can see, we basically started from Square 1!

And here is where we are now:

Slow and steady progress – 3 weeks left to go!

I really can’t believe what it looks like now, y’all!  So this week, I was about to clean the tile (and that was a real doozy y’all, charcoal grout haze is NO joke).  But now the tile is shiny and bright! I also sealed it with spray on sealer.  The grout we used was pre-sealed, but you can never have too much protection on your tile/grout when it comes to the bathroom – what, with lots of water and soap and bath products flying around.  After all this work, I certainly want this bathroom to stand the test of time.

I used a VERY strong (as in plastic bucket and thick rubber gloves) acid cleaner to get rid of the grout haze.  You would think with ACID (HCl to be exact), the haze would come right off.  Nope – it still required quite a bit of elbow grease to get off, but it only took about 2 hours total. (I looked at is my workout for the day!) Without this cleaner though, I think it may have taken me all dang day to do!

Be VERY careful if you use this stuff, y’all – definitely read all of the instructions! That said, it worked great and even helped me restore my sinks to bright white again! (Make sure you also only use this on the materials it is meant for.)

I also was able to get the trim installed on the water closet door, and then I painted it black (YES! BLACK!, as you probably noticed above).  First, I installed trim onto the door with my nail gun.  I used this same process to update our kitchen doors (pantry and back doors) during the last ORC.

This was the one of the doors in our kitchen during install of the trim – I always add a bead of wood glue to the back to hold it in place and add a bit of extra strength. I then tape and allow it to dry just until the piece is held in place. Then I use my nail gun to nail it right into the door (be sure your brad nails are not too long that they will go through your door on the other side).

I used the same technique I described above in our bathroom, and installed the trim on both sides of the door.  As far as the placing of the trim, I don’t use a specific method, other than ensuring I use a level!  Otherwise, I just work out from the center of the door and draw out what looks pleasing to my eye.  You can read more about how I transformed out plain builder grade doors with this technique HERE.

Once the trim was installed, I painted.  I used the “glue trick,” as I call it – essentially, I painted a base coat of a kind of taupe-y colored chalk paint onto the white door and let it dry.  Then, I used plain Elmer’s glue (not the kind labeled “washable”), and painted straight onto the base coat of paint in random places (make sure to work in sections because the glue needs to be wet when you paint on top of it).  Once the glue is on, I just painted straight onto it with the black chalk paint.  The secret to this technique is that as the glue dries, it creates crackles in the paint so you can see the base color below.  It looks perfectly vintage if you ask me!

Chippy furniture (and now doors) is my love language!

I had to order my chalk paint on Amazon because it is really difficult to find BLACK chalk paint, usually they are charcoal or graphite.  But I wanted a true black, so Amazon it was, and I am SUPER happy with the color on this – it is indeed, a true black.  That said, it is a slightly different consistency than chalk paint.  Normally, with the glue trick, the crackling will occur over time as the glue dries.  With this chalk paint, I needed to blow dry the paint to achieve the crackle – air drying didn’t work.  But it was a small price to pay to get my door looking exactly like the vintage door I wanted.  Now all I have to do is give it a quick wax and it will be done!

I really love the contrast of the black door with all the white tile!

Lastly, we got our new light fixture (also from Amazon) installed – hubs helped me with this part, and I am so thankful!  I am thrilled with how it looks and can’t wait until my brighter light bulbs come in from Home Depot!

I love the black with a touch of brass!  I can’t wait to get the new mirrors up above the sinks!

And that’s a wrap on Week 3! Considering we were gone for 4 days, I’m pretty happy with how much we got done!

Week 4 is going to be jam packed again (think painted countertops, barn door install, and possible painted cabinets!), but I can’t wait to see the progress a week from now!  I hope you’ll follow along!

And if you want real time updates, you can follow along on my Instagram – I post story updates on the Challenge regularly!

See ya next week, friends!

XO,

Ana