Lincoln's Room Update

Some of the things I ordered for Lincoln's room started arriving a few weeks ago- like his wallpaper and rug! I immediately pulled everything out to get a better look at them (If you need to get caught up on the plan for this room, click right here).

The wallpaper was gorgeous- it's a huge scale mural pattern and I couldn't wait to see it up on the wall!

The rug...I wasn't so sure about. I initially tried to just take a peek at the corner in case I needed to send it back I wouldn't have to re-package it. My initial thoughts were that it wasn't working...the wallpaper is definitely a dustier blue and the rug had a lot more baby blue/green in it. My sweet husband Kris offered to unroll it so we could get a better look..and then re-roll if I decided it wouldn't work. He also offered to hold up the wallpaper so I could try to envision it, ha!

It actually ended up looking pretty great on camera, but in person the color variation was really bothering me. I left it rolled out for a few days to think on it. I don't think I've ever actually returned a rug...it's such a pain to roll it up, load it into the car, and lug it to the fedex store. But that's exactly what we ended up doing. I shopped around a bit more and found this rug... I love the fun pattern and it's a nice neutral that I think will play nicely with all the other neutral tones we have going on.

Meanwhile, Kris ripped out the window seat in Lincoln's room so we could flatten this part of the wall. I just wanted it to disappear and be a normal flat wall.

Little did I know there was going to be a giant air duct inside (Can you see that shiny foil underneath that wood? That's the air duct- UGH!). I should have known, the window seat looked like a total after thought and completely unintentional. I started brainstorming solutions and originally thought about building the bed in around the window seat. The bed we ordered had come in so Kris built part of it and held it over the window seat to see how it could work. He really loves holding things so I can get a better look, haha- not, but he's a great sport about it!

I thought this looked good and I liked that it would make the window seat completely disappear, but another option was that the twin bed could slide in right next to the window seat for it to make a little nightstand area. This would have been a lot easier too and wouldn't require completely rebuilding the bed...I decided to table the decision (have you noticed I like to think of things a bit?) and move on with painting the room and repairing the window seat.

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I had seen this photo on Pinterest and loved the how the paint treatment added so much interest to the room. I thought it might be kind of busy though. I kept thinking that white in this room was going to be the best option to let the wallpaper shine...but every time I thought about all of the walls that were going to be white and not have wallpaper I worried they were going to be so boring...

I realized that the color in our main bedroom looked really pretty with the wallpaper and we had almost an entire gallon leftover from when we painted in there.

Which is how we ended up painting the top 1/3 of the room in Farrow and Ball's De Nimes.

I chose a muddy grey neutral color for the bottom part of the wall- Benjamin Moore Balboa Mist. I started out by measuring a few different lengths down- 24", 30", and 36" to see what felt right and the 30" option felt perfect. So I made a few pencil marks around the room just so we could eyeball how far down to bring the blue. I didn't want to tape anything off until we had a nice full two coats of both colors. Once we had that then I meticulously measured 30" down in multiple places on each wall and marked it with a pencil.

Then I lined up my Frog Tape with all of my pencil marks. After taping I always took a second to stand back to make sure my line looked straight. There was one spot where the line looked crazy crooked and turns out I had mis-measured so I had to go back and re-tape that section.

I feel like math and numbers aren't my forte'- measuring is obviously essential, but my eyes have never failed me! Once I had the tape down then I painted the Balboa Mist color over it first, this is a trick I learned from Vintage Revivals, this is to ensure that any bleed color is the main wall color. Once that first color was down then I painted the Farrow and Ball De Nimes color over that. It made for nice and crispy paint lines!

While we were painting we also had someone come out to repair the window seat.

They did an amazing job! But I couldn't help but kick myself since it was an expense that could have been avoided. It cost $350 to get that hole patched up and basically just repair what we had torn apart. I keep telling myself there is absolutely no way I could have known it had an air duct inside, but also...I should have known that this random window seat was hiding something.

We chose not to paint this back wall since the wallpaper was the next project on the list! I had Kris hold up the wallpaper so I could envision everything together and I started to get SO excited!

This is about the time I found out I had tested positive for Coronivirus and everything came to a screeching halt. Don't worry, I had a very mild case and am just fine, but I did have to quarantine away from everyone at this point since I was the only one who tested positive. I realized on day two or three of quarantining that there was no reason I couldn't also quarantine in Lincoln's room away from everyone...since it was a construction zone in there it wasn't like anyone needed to be in there! So that's when I decided to tackle the wallpaper project all by myself.

You can read all about I installed the wallpaper by myself here, it seemed like a very intimidating project it was also completely doable! If you are considering DIY-ing your wallpaper installation I am here to tell you- you can do this!!

So that's how we ended up here with a fully wallpapered wall and Lincoln's room finally starting to take shape!

I still have a ton of projects left on the docket including:

- building his light fixture. yes, I have a plan for something special and I'm going to be building it! (Finished it, you can see that post here!)

- painting his dresser- I originally wanted to buy him the Ikea Tarva dresser, but that one was sold out when Kris went to Ikea for me so we grabbed a Hemnes and I'm brainstorming ideas to do a cool paint treatment to it (Done! You can see how his dresser turned out here).

- his curtains need to be hung and hemmed

- I have a fun idea to create a big art DIY inspired by this piece from Pottery Barn, which I considered buying but figured a DIY would be way cheaper! (done- you can read about that DIY here!)

Once those projects are completed then it will be time for all the fun styling finishing touches, which is always the best part of any project- I'm so close I can feel it!! My goal is to wrap up this room in the next two weeks before Christmas, let's see if I can get there!

Lincoln's room is finished! You can see the final room reveal right here!