Happy Thursday ! Can you believe we are almost at the end of this round of the One Room Challenge?! We are two weeks away from the big reveal day and I am thrilled to be so close to the end. As always, thank you to our host Linda from Calling It Home and media partner, House Beautiful, for hosting this challenge. As a first time participant, I found joining this challenge has been extremely motivating in finishing a room. For us, this room has been a place to store random things in between projects. To see it so close to the end, is an extremely satisfying feeling and I cannot wait to show the completed project.

Last week, I completely forgot to mention that the ORC has been EXTENDED!!! Sadly, so many people were impacted by the hurricanes that hit the southern part of the country that there have been a lot of delays with their projects. While we were blessed to not have any storm activity up here in Indiana, I welcome this extra week.

At this point, I really cannot share pictures of the actual room without giving away too much. Last week I shares some of the art and ceiling light purchases that were made.

The ceiling light has been installed (although we are having some technical issues!). The doors between the living room and office have been painted in the same as the wall color, Cloud Cover by Benjamin Moore.

About a year ago, I shared a before and after of some louvre doors in my living room. I DIY'd oversized lucite and brass handles and received many requests on a tutorial. I will be posting a tutorial soon after the ORC is complete but as a sneak peek, I thought I would show you the basics of what you need.

I am using 18'' long and 1" diameter lucite rods. These will be installed tomorrow and will take a whopping five minutes.

Another DIY that has been a labor of love is my soon to be new lamp. If you recall from my mood board, I referenced this lamp by Arteriors Home. I am OBSESSED with it but unfortunately it's a few bucks (or more) over my budget. Using a scrap piece of wood, I attempted to go for it with nothing but time to lose!

After drawing the shape of the snake on a scrap piece of wood, we used a jig saw to cut it out. It took patience due to the all the curves of the snake. I made a simple three tiered pyramid, like the picture, as the base. Then.....I sanded. I sanded....I sanded.....I sanded......took some breaks.....and sanded. I probably sanded this snake as much as I sanded our stairs before refinishing them.

After I sanded until I could not sand anymore, I patched the seams and cleaned them up. The original lamp from Arteriors is made out of cast iron. To achieve a similar appearance, I sprayed it with several light coats of Rustoleum Stone Finishes to give it a textured look. I used it in a dark brown color but this was not going to be the final color so I suppose it really did not matter. Once this was dry, I added several light coats of Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint. Between the texture of the stone paint and the metallic warm tone of the bronze, I am very pleased with the iron look it created.

At this point, it is just a sculpture, but a lamp kit is in the mail and hopefully I won't mess that up too bad. ;)

We are down to two weeks before the big reveal and I am not going to lie, I am stressing over getting this room done! I will be out of town for good chunk of next week so that will put me behind, but I am hoping to go into super sonic production mode this weekend!

The fabric for the chairs arrived today and I am having new cushion covers sewn but will be tackling the body of the chairs myself **gasp**

Other than the chairs, what's left is the details and it is the details that will elevate the design of a room.

That's all for this week. Hopefully I accomplish a lot this weekend and do not miss the deadline of my very first challenge!

Saher