One Room Challenge - Week Five: The Home Stretch

This week in One Room Challenge news I've discovered that if you work all day on projects in your room that by the time you're ready to snap some pics you've lost the light and are reduced to taking iPhone photos with the room's lights on. Oof, sorry! You can catch up on all of the other participants of the One Room Challenge and read more about it on the Calling it Home blog.

This week I completed the desk area, updated a sorry-looking filing cabinet, and gave the room a touch of light-hearted whimsy.

My clients' filing cabinet had seen better days but I knew that a little TLC could perk it up and help it look like it belonged in the beautiful new room.

The filing cabinet was wood and had modern lines but it had suffered an uneven paint job while the top was laminate and had seen better days.

First up was touching up the paint with some glossy black latex paint and adding handles to the drawers. I couldn't find the shape and size handles I wanted in a gold finish so I bought silver and spray painted them. When I ran out of gold metallic spray paint after the first coat, I bopped over to Lowes for a new can. To my horror I discovered that the local Lowes no longer carries metallic gold Rustoleum spray paint. At all. WTH, Lowes? Every other metallic color is there, but even the shelf tag for gold is gone and the helpful paint department guy had no idea why gold was discontinued, only that it was. You guys need to get on that, Lowes, a girl's got to get her gold on!

Next up was constructing a new top for the filing cabinet. I basically built a hat that fits snugly over the existing top. It's made of ash and maple and stained a rich walnut color.

The squared off edges of the new top take it right out of the 80s and into this century, while also making it compatible with the room's mid century modern furniture. Check out the side by side difference.

The final touch was building a simple riser for the printer to sit on, that would store excess copy paper and add a pop of color to the desk side of the room.

The next project for this area was all about adding some whimsy into the space. My clients' son, the occupier of the room currently away at college, is a star athlete and has many sports trophies. I wanted to add a nod to the trophy idea without altering his actual trophies. I hunted down some vintage 4H trophies on eBay (see what I did there?) and went to town with an orangey coral spray paint.

I love the levity of the rabbits and the cheerful color they are now. Adding something fun and unexpected to a room gives it so much more personality and takes it away from catalog perfect and cookie cutter. Go bunnies!

If you remember last week, I marked out the location for two shelves over the desk. This week I hung them and added storage containers, art, and accessories. The shelves and brackets are from Ikea, as are the tailored, tweedy boxes.

The desk lamp is a placeholder until I can find something more interesting and I'm also on the lookout for a stellar chair.

Here's hoping that I (and all of the other ORC participants) can make it across the finish line next week. It's been a wild ride - and so much fun to see what the other participants are up to!