{one room challenge} Week 3 - The Rock & Roll Playroom Got a Dose of Not-So-Heavy Metal

Another week of the One Room Challenge has come and gone, and I'm definitely starting to feel the pressure, especially since I'll be out of town for five days next week traveling to and attending the SNAP blogging conference. I am so excited to be headed to SNAP for the first time and for the opportunity to catch up with some of by blogging girlfriends, and to make lots of new friends. But the timing of the conference - during week 4 of a 6 week design challenge - is, shall we say, less than ideal!

The good news, however, is that we had a very productive week 3 and I'm feeling pretty good about where we are at right now!

You can read more about our plans for the under stair playroom {and why this project is extra special to me} in my Week 1 post. One of the most exciting parts of this project is that our boys don't even know this long, thin space under the stairs exists. We've previously only used it to store a few items {mostly some Christmas decor} and the kids have never shown any interest in looking behind that door. However, this also leads to one of the biggest challenges of the project {aside from that pesky six week deadline}.

Since the kids didn't previously know about this space - we really want to continue to keep the secret until we're ready for the big reveal! But that means that our time to work on the room is limited to nap times and after bedtime. Except this past weekend, when my parents took the boys with them to the mountains for the entire weekend! We knew we had to make the most of it, so we worked our tails off to accomplish as much as possible during those 48 free hours. Scott and I both marveled at how ironic it was that we could work that hard for two days straight {until 4 a.m. one night}, and yet the weekend without the kids still felt like a vacation. :)

First and foremost - we installed the sheet metal wall on the right side of the long, thin, soon-to-be playroom. Last week I talked about the challenge of finding large enough sheets of metal to cover the wall, and the need to avoid any sharp edges. We ended up working with a sheet metal fabricator near our house, and they did a fantastic job of creating each of the panels in an interlocking manner that leaves no exposed edges. It all fit in perfectly {something I had been losing sleep over because of the angle of the ceiling}, and the installation process was not difficult, but it was a bit time consuming.

I'll share all the full tutorial on this sheet metal wall in a few weeks, but for now you can get a good laugh at these photos of us working in very tight quarters!

As we worked on the playroom over the weekend, we kept coming up with new ideas to improve upon the design - resulting in numerous trips to Home Depot. On one of those trips, we decided that the white light switch and outlet just wouldn't cut it on the sheet metal wall... so hubs did some light electrical work and now we have a much more rock and roll situation going on!

Once the sheet metal wall was up, we were ready to cut, paint, and install some trim molding.

The black molding might seem out of place now, but once all the records go up on the ceiling - the black will make a lot more sense. The molding I chose even has ridges in it that remind me of the grooves in a record {I'll make sure to give you a better picture of that down the road}.

On a more colorful note, we finally settled on a color palette for the playroom. We wanted it to be bright and fun, so we picked some of the predominant colors from the labels of the vinyl that will be going up on the ceiling. If you follow me on Instagram {you don't? why not?! :)} then you got a look at the colors over the weekend...

There will be a few different elements of the playroom getting the spray paint treatment, but up first were a whole lot of plumping pipe fittings.

All these colorful pipe fittings, together with various lengths of ABS pipe, will ultimately make up a very fun ping pong ball "wall coaster." 

Next up, we'll be adding the magnets so that we can stick all of these pipe pieces up to the sheet metal wall!

We have a handful of other projects in the works, but I'll update you on those next week. One of those projects is the art wall {opposite the sheet metal wall}. I'm thrilled to be partnering with my local Ikea store {Ikea Centennial} on this art wall. Cooper and I spent yesterday afternoon picking up all of the frames and other supplies we needed. His face says it all... we are always happy to be at Ikea!

That's all I got for this week, friends! I'll be sharing more sneak peeks on Instagram, and I'll be back with another progress report next week! But for now, I'm planning to take a little work break to pop over to Calling It Home to check out all the progress on all of the other One Room Challenge rooms, and I hope you'll do the same! 

If you missed last week's post, or you are curious to see my One Room Challenge rooms from last spring or fall, you'll find that all here.

Let's get social!