SPRING 2021 ORC – WEEK 3 – What Goes Up, Must Come Down

Sometimes, things do go as smoothly as you would have hoped. That is what describes the last week of working on my room. Let‘s start with what worked out.

The Murphy Bed

I wanted to make this space functional. One of the things to do so was with a Murphy bed. Both my husband and my family are from out of town so on the odd occasion, we would have multiple family members staying with us and not enough beds. We could have made this room a bedroom but then 80% of the year, it would just sit without use. So why not make a room that could be converted when we needed it too? Introducing, the Murphy bed!

I had quite a few people ask how we made the bed. We used a plan by Create-A-Bed. I would personally love to do a step by step here but instead, I will just share the plans here! We picked up the kit from a local store and the great thing about the kit is that is comes with a complete How-to guide and cut list!

STAIN

Now, onto the item that didn‘t go as planned but still worked out in the end – the stain on the shelves. Last week, I tried to decide what tone of stain I wanted to go with. As the shelves are birch and the counter is bamboo, both would take stain different. I ended up funded a combo that was the same tone on both woods. HOWEVER, the combo looked great on the test pieces but where far from on the actual project. This forced me to sand them down and start again. I left the stain on the bamboo counter top because I didn‘t mind it there. I then decided to use a totally different tone on the shelves. I still didn‘t like it…But this is where my risky thinking came in. What if I “white” washed it but also “brown” washed it? Following? I took a bit of white paint, watered it down slightly and then took ages glaze chalk paint and added it to the mix. This combo gave me what I called a ‘chocolate milk‘ colour. It would hide any imperfections from the wood and hopefully give me the warm and soft tone I was wanting. Side note – I am in love with this treatment!

DRAWERS

Last but not least – the one thing that didn‘t work out this week….the drawers on the bench. When I tell you I fought tooth and nail, 4 hours on one drawer, only to end up defeated…I‘m not lying. Tripled checked measurements and all and they still didn‘t want to “slide” into place. After a few hours of frustration, I decided to leave them for a few hours and think of ways to make it work. I discovered that when my husband and I cut them late the night before, the back part of the drawer box was cut just a hair too large, ultimately causing the issue for all 3 drawer boxes. As we used up old mdf we had, we didn‘t have any pieces to spare to make new cuts so here is the plan. We are going to router out a very thin grove along the two sides of the drawers for the drawer slides to ‘sit in‘. We are hoping this will fix the problem and the drawers will slide is smoothly, finger crossed!

But enough about the hassle of DIY, let‘s look forward to week 3! Here is the plan:

• Build built-ins beside and above Murphy bed
• Start to construct faux beams
• Finish trimming out built-ins and prepare for paint.

Here is to week 3 and hoping it runs so much smoother than week 2! Also, be sure to check out all the feature designers and guest participants as they also complete a room in their homes! You can check them out here! See you next week! Cheers!

Jenna