Basement Family Game Room Reveal: One Room Challenge Week Six

23 Comments November 7, 2019 hollandavenuehome

Five weeks ago, we knocked out a wall and began the intimidating process of finishing our basement for the One Room Challenge. The finished product is completely unrecognizable, and I am ridiculously excited to show you what can be accomplished with a little grit, a lot of perseverance, and a commitment to learning new things.

The Power of Paint: One Room Challenge Week Four

12 Comments October 23, 2019 hollandavenuehome

If you’re finding me through the One Room Challenge, welcome to my home on the internet! I’m Avery and I live in a charming 1910 Craftsman style parsonage in rural Iowa with my husband, Ben. You can learn more about me here, and see some of my previous design work in my kitchen, my High Style, Low Budget Sunroom from the Spring 2019 One Room Challenge, and my Cozy Eclectic Master Bedroom from the Fall 2018 One Room Challenge. My design style is warm, whimsical, and collected. I love sharing real-life home inspiration for people like me who want big style with a tiny budget. You can follow along with my homemaking adventures and thrifting trips & tips on the Holland Avenue Home Instagram.

For this round of the One Room Challenge, I will be finishing our unfinished basement to create a cozy family game room. You can catch up on my design plan through the link below!

Basement on a Budget: One Room Challenge Week One

Basement Demo and Waterproofing with Drylok: One Room Challenge Week 2

Catch-up and Ketchup: One Room Challenge Week Three

Week four is finished and we almost have a finished basement as well! Since last week’s post, we’ve been working hard to finish the drywall and get everything painted.

I chose our main paint color, Sherwin Williams Pewter Green, after seeing and loving it in Emily Henderson’s Portland House Kitchen. This kitchen is full of natural light (unlike my basement), but even after sampling the color in our low-light space, I knew it was the one.

(image credit: Emily Henderson)

After choosing Pewter Green as our main color, I decided to pull other colors from the Sherwin Williams Colorsnap Color ID Naturalist palette.

Colorsnap Color ID consists of eight exclusive palettes that have been thoughtfully curated to reflect your personality. The colors are perfectly coordinated, allowing you to mix and match with confidence. Simply choose the colors that move you and watch any room come together effortlessly.If you’re not sure which palette fits your personality, you can take the Colorsnap Color ID quiz to find your perfect match.

For our basement, I’ll be using three colors from The Naturalist palette.

We primed everything yesterday, and today we accomplished the step I’ve been looking forward to the most… PAINTING!

I was originally planning to have a dark accent wall (SW Pewter Green) and three lighter greige walls (SW Gossamer Veil) to keep things feeling bright. But when I thought about why I wanted “light and bright”, it was because I didn’t want it to feel like a cave, and I wanted the space to photograph well. Newsflash- those aren’t good enough reasons to choose a paint color. When I filtered the greige paint color through the “Do I Love It?” experiment, the decision became obvious. I did not, in fact, love the greige paint. (Sorry, greige. It’s not you, it’s me. You’re beautiful in other spaces, but you weren’t The One for my basement.)

I thought about how I wanted the space to feel instead of just focusing on how I wanted it to look.

It is a basement that we will use for watching movies and hosting friends and family. I wanted it to feel warm and cozy, like a hug. We live in Northwest Iowa where winter lasts for basically half the year. I know we will be spending a lot of time down here, so I wanted it to feel warm and inviting.

Those factors led to the decision to paint all four walls the same dreamy, dark, moody green. I don’t know what I was thinking before, messing around with the idea of greige. I would’ve had to rename my blog “Greige Avenue Home” and turn in my “Color Lover” card to whoever is in charge of auditing people who claim to love color. Don’t worry, though. I’m still a card carrying Color Lover and I have four green basement walls to prove it. I broke up with greige before placing the paint order, and brought home multiple gallons of Sherwin Williams Pewter Green.

Before I show you the dreamiest of all dreamy paint colors you’ve ever seen, allow me to remind you where we started four weeks ago.

Are you ready to see it? Behold, the Magical Enchanting Wonderland that is covered in Pewter Green (also known as my almost-finished basement).Want to see another before and after? Ok, I’ll show you another because I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE SAME ROOM. Except I can, because I’ve seen it transform over the last four weeks through one drywall nail, brushstroke, and ice-pack-on-my-neck at a time.

The other side is just as green, and just as good. It is just slightly more “entirely full of tools and stuff”, and other things. We used an extra door that was being stored in the basement to block off the storage room. I will sand it and paint it with Sherwin Williams Alabaster (the color of the stairway walls, stairway risers, and eventually trim). I have one coat of Alabaster on the risers, but I’m waiting until construction is finished to finish painting the stairs. Alabaster is also the color we used for the ceiling, and it is perfect. It is a warm white that is excellent for low-light spaces.

We’re using Sherwin Williams Emerald Interior Acrylic Latex Paint and it has changed my painting life forever. It goes on like butter, and dries so smooth. I used two coats because the green is so dark, and the coverage is incredible.

Ben is currently painting the exposed pipes to match the Alabaster ceiling. They are the pipes for our radiators. We possibly could’ve framed them in and covered with drywall, but it was less work to leave them exposed, and would make for easier repair if they ever needed to be accessed. I went back and forth on whether to paint them the ceiling or the wall color, but we decided the ceiling color would be best.

We have two weeks left to finish the rest of this space, and we are on schedule to meet that deadline! We decided to Drylok the floors since we have so much of it left over from the walls. It is an extra step, but it will seal the concrete floors to prevent any moisture or concrete dust from coming through onto the new flooring.

Here’s our schedule for Week Five:

Day One (Thursday): Drylok concrete floors and begin installing flooring
Day Two (Friday): Finish installing flooring and paint trim
Day Three (Saturday): Install trim and paneling/shelves for minibar with Kirk (my brother-in-law)
Day Four (Sunday): Rest
Day Five (Monday): Paint minibar cabinet and mini fridge. Begin building furniture
Day Six (Tuesday): Build furniture
Day Seven (Wednesday): Build more furniture

Next week, I will probably be sneaky and only share a few close-up shots as I prepare for the final reveal. We have a lot of furniture building ahead of us, and I am counting down the days until I can lay down on our new sofa and take it all in. Until then, you can find me lovingly admiring our green basement and considering which room I want to makeover with our leftover paint. No room is safe from Pewter Green.

Thank you to my partner, Sherwin Williams, for sponsoring this project!

You can follow Holland Avenue Home on Instagram for plenty of behind-the-scenes progress before it comes to the blog next Wednesday.

Head to the One Room Challenge blog to check out the other Guest Participants’ and Featured Designers’ posts for Week Four!

Thanks for reading!

Basement Demo and Waterproofing with Drylok: One Room Challenge Week 2

11 Comments October 9, 2019 hollandavenuehome

For this round of the One Room Challenge, I will be finishing our unfinished basement to create a cozy family game room. You can catch up on my design plan through the link below!

Basement on a Budget: One Room Challenge Week One

Week two is finished and I am so proud of the progress we have made so far. It never felt like we were making much progress this week because we didn’t start drywall until today. But when I look at the progress photos and think about how much we’ve already done, it makes sense that I am so, so tired. Finishing a basement is no joke, and it takes an incredible amount of preparation to ensure that your work will stand the test of time.

Before I walk you through the progress we made this week, here is a reminder of where we started.

And here is that same view today!

Here is the “before” of the other direction.

And a view of that same corner from today!

The pictures tell the truth: we accomplished a lot this week. We started by tearing down the wall that separated the two rooms, and removed the drop ceiling that was in half of the space. All of my HGTV-Chip-Gaines-Demo-Day dreams came true.

Here is a time lapse for part of the wall removal! Hauling the debris to the dump trailer took longer than actually ripping it all out. We started by whacking it with a sledgehammer, then ripped out all of the drywall and insulation. The insulation is itchy, so make sure to wear long sleeves. To remove the framing, we used a Sawsall to cut the lumber in half. After it was cut down the middle, we had leverage to pull out the frame.

Because I know you’ll probably ask, this was not a load bearing wall. Our church bought this house in 1990, and the wall was installed sometime since then. I don’t know how to find out if a wall in your home is load bearing, but do some investigating before destroying it with a sledgehammer!

Knocking out the wall was way more fun, way more messy, and way more impactful than I expected.

After we cleaned up the mess from demo, we were ready to make a different mess. (I’m convinced that renovating is just cleaning up one mess so that you can make a different one.)

The next step was to prepare our cinderblock walls for drywall by waterproofing with Drylok Extreme Latex Masonry Waterproofer. This product is created by United Gilsonite Laboratories, and is GUARANTEED to stop water. According to the product description, “Unlike ordinary paint that simply adheres to a surface and can be forced off by incoming water pressure, DRYLOK Extreme Masonry Waterproofer actually penetrates the pores in that surface, bonding to the masonry and creating an impenetrable barrier.”

In all of the research I did before starting this project, this is the product that people recommend over and over to waterproof cinderblock walls. While we’ve never had standing water in the basement, there was clearly a moisture problem due to the condition of the cinderblock.

Before using Drylok, it is vitally important that you prep your walls by removing any failing paint. If you have unpainted cinderblock, you should be good to go. Our walls were covered in multiple layers of old paint, which was chipping and peeling off in most places. We tediously scraped off all of the peeling paint, which took a long time but was absolutely necessary to ensure the quality of the application.

Before scraping, Ben cleaned off all of the spots that appeared to be covered in mold and mildew. If you need to clean mold off of your basement walls, be sure to have the proper safety equipment consisting of a respirator mask, eye glasses, and rubber gloves. People disagree on whether or not to use bleach to kill mold. After doing our own research, we used both diluted bleach in a spray bottle and a special mold cleaner that I found at Ace Hardware. Do your own research and choose the products that you feel the most comfortable using.

After cleaning the mold, we scrubbed all of the walls with a rigid bristle brush and a spray bottle of water to remove the chalky layer of dust. Then we were ready to scrape the failing paint.

Here is where we started before prepping the cinderblock. See the multiple layers of paint and grime?

It looks worse in a way, but this is what our walls looked like after we thoroughly prepped them. After scrubbing the walls with water and scraping the paint, we allowed them to dry overnight.

It is recommended that you apply Drylok with a 3/4″ nap roller. I found that this worked great on the flat parts of the cinderblock, but the cracks required application with a brush. Drylok makes their own brush that is available for $11 on Amazon, and it will make your application a lot more thorough than just using a roller. This is not a detailed job, so using their giant brush will make the process a lot faster.

For the first wall, I ended up using the brush by itself. This short time lapse video represents an hour and a half of work! This was not the best way to do this job.

After trying out a few techniques, I finally found one that allowed me to work quickly yet thoroughly. I found that it was easiest to brush all of the vertical seams, then all of the horizontal seams so that I worked in an even pattern. After that, I used the 3/4″ nap roller to cover the flat cinderblocks.

Drylok recommends applying two coats to cinderblock, and the time in between coats is three hours minimum. Here is what our space looked like after two coats!

Can you believe that this is the same corner?!?! Drylok comes in bright white, but it is also tintable. If you don’t want to completely finish your basement, but want to protect it from moisture and make it look less like a crime scene and more like a clean part of your home, then Drylok-ing the walls is an easy way to do both!

Application is straightforward, but I wouldn’t call it easy. While it only requires the basic skills of brushing and rolling, it took a lot longer to apply than we expected. Overall, I spent almost two full days working on our three walls. Expect to get elbow cramps from pushing the brush and roller into the cinderblock for hours at a time! (And then apply ice and elevate your arm! #iwouldknow)

Overall, I am super happy with the Drylok and I trust that it will do the job of keeping our basement dry and protected.

After we finished the Drylok (around 11pm last night), we woke up today with a blank slate! We decided to install drywall over the walls and ceiling. I won’t go into a thorough explanation of how to install drywall, but I’ll share a brain dump of some basic tips from a beginner’s perspective.

Before I share everything I currently know about drywall, I have a disclaimer. To prepare for this project, I’ve had three different knowledgeable people that I’ve consulted. Sometimes, I’ve gotten three different answers to the same question. Home improvement and construction have some rules that are universal, but a lot of it is based on personal opinion and preference. Do your own research, consult multiple sources, and make the decisions that work for you. (Within reason, obviously.) Don’t ignore what someone says because it may be harder. Get opinions and advice from people you trust to do a good job, and then make the decisions that work for your space.

Drywall typically comes in 4×8 sheets. They are heavy. You typically use 1/2″ thick sheets for walls, and 5/8″ thick sheets for the ceiling. We decided to use 1/2″ sheets for both. In order to install the drywall to the cinderblock, we first had to install furring strips. We used 1×3 lumber for our strips. These strips must be 16″ apart (measuring from the center of the strips) so that four strips can be covered by one sheet of drywall. To attach the strips to the cinderblock, we used a hammer drill with 1 1/4″ Tapcon masonry screws. They are blue, and they are expensive. Each furring strip needs about four screws throughout the length of the strip. Drywall and framing should not sit directly on basement floors, so we used half inch wood spacers during installation to create a gap between the strips and the floor.

It takes two people to install the strips. One person holds the strip in place while the other person drills a hole. After you drill your hole with the hammer drill, you can insert your screw using a normal drill. Here is a time lapse video of Ben and our friend Jimmy installing some strips. (P.S. Thanks for your help, Jimmy! Jimmy is one of our college friends who grew up in this area. He just moved back with his wife, Sara, who is one of my best friends from college! He has construction experience, and taught us all of this stuff today about installing drywall.)

After your furring strips are installed, you can start to hang your sheets of drywall. For this part, you need drywall screws. If you’re using 1x3s and 1/2″ drywall, you’ll want 1 1/4″ drywall screws. Before you begin to hang the drywall, make marks on the floor with a sharpie to remind you where the strips are so that you don’t have to guess (incorrectly) with your drill (Ask me how I know that).

When you screw the drywall into the furring strips, go slowly. You want the screw to JUST BARELY indent into the paper of the drywall. Keyword here is JUST BARELY. I definitely sank more than one screw by going too quickly. “Code” is to attach the drywall in six places on each strip. After you’ve done that, pat yourself on the back because you just hung a sheet of drywall! Now you’ve got the “hang” of it! 😉

If you are installing outlets, you’ll need to attach your outlet boxes and wire to the furring strips before hanging the drywall.

I think that’s everything I know about drywall so far. We finished about half of the installation today, and will finish the rest tomorrow. After that, we will figure out how to put it on the ceiling. And after that, I have to learn all about this mud/tape/sand business. I am the definition of a beginner, and am learning all of these skills as I go.

Readers have asked how I’m learning to do all of these things, and the number one answer is, “Annoying my friends”. Seriously. The internet is great, but if you can get an experienced friend in your basement to show you how to do it, you’ll be in much better shape. No matter what home improvement skill you’re trying to learn, you probably have an acquaintance or friend who knows how to do it. Ask them one million questions, and reward their patience with treats and coffee. If they are willing to help you, feed them and give them coffee. When the job is finished, feed them and give them more coffee. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

I currently have one day of drywalling experience, but that is 100% more than I had yesterday. If there is a project that you want to tackle in your home but you don’t know how, you can probably learn how to do it. But you won’t learn if you’re too scared to start. Ask around, recruit some help, and just try it.

I don’t know how to do all of the projects that will be necessary to finish our basement, but day by day I intend to learn and grow. Five weeks from now, I WILL know how to drywall and install new flooring and trim. When planning future projects, “I don’t know how” is not a limitation for me. If I don’t know how to do something, I have the internet, books, and talented friends who do. That excuse isn’t good enough anymore! I think it is totally okay to be afraid of learning and trying new things, but don’t allow your fear to keep you from growing.

That’s all of the progress we have for this week, and I feel like we’re in good shape to keep moving. After we finish hanging the drywall, we will be ready to mud, tape, and sand. I will feel really, really good when that is finished.

Here’s our list of things to accomplish this week:

Finish hanging drywall on walls
Have electrician install wiring for recessed lights
Hang drywall on ceiling
Mud, tape, sand x3
Pick up paint from Sherwin Williams
Prime fresh drywall
Paint, paint, paint

I hope to share a freshly painted space with you next Wednesday, but that is dependent on how quickly we can finish up this drywall and lighting installation!

Thank you, United Gilsonite Laboratories, for sponsoring this post!

You can follow Holland Avenue Home on Instagram for plenty of behind-the-scenes progress before it comes to the blog each Wednesday.

Check out the other Guest Participants’ and Featured Designers’ posts for Week Two of the One Room Challenge!

Thanks for reading!

-Avery

The Power of Paint: One Room Challenge Week 3

8 Comments April 17, 2019 hollandavenuehome

If you’re finding me through the One Room Challenge, welcome to my home on the internet! I’m Avery and I live in a charming 1910 Craftsman style home in rural Iowa with my husband. You can learn more about me here, and see some of my previous design work in my kitchen, and my Fall 2018 One Room Challenge: Cozy Eclectic Master Bedroom Reveal. My design style is cozy, whimsical, and collected. You can follow along with my homemaking adventures on the Holland Avenue Home Instagram.

Welcome to week three of my One Room Challenge! We are officially halfway!

Catch up on all of my progress for the Spring 2019 One Room Challenge:

Week 1: High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation

Week 2: DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables

This week, I saw monumental progress in my space through the power of paint.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Paint is the easiest and cheapest way to completely transform a space. If you make smart and bold paint choices, you can achieve a significant transformation without breaking the bank.

This porch was previously pale yellow with wood trim around the windows. I started painting it white in 2017, and it took me hours because I was doing it all with a brush. One half of the walls are house siding, and the other half are either bumpy concrete, paneling, or window trim. A roller just didn’t work. So I spent hoooours on the porch during the warmer months, and only completed about 60%.

Enter, the paint sprayer.

Why, oh why, didn’t I just pursue this in the first place? Probably because I didn’t have any experience with a paint sprayer, and moving all of the furniture out seemed like a pain. (Spoiler: it was. But it wasn’t as painful as spending more hours of my life out here with a paintbrush.) My friend, JJ, is a painter, and said he could have the entire porch (including the ceiling) sprayed in under an hour if I already had everything prepped. SIGN ME UP.

The thought of me (a 5’2″ woman) painting a 300 square foot ceiling with a ladder and a roller just didn’t sound like my idea of a good time. (Shocking, I know.)

On Tuesday, Ben and I moved all of the porch furniture out. I filled the MANY nail holes, and cleaned the cobwebs and dust bunnies. My friend, Tessa, came over to show me how to use a masker. It is a neat tool that lets you load a roll of tape and a roll of paper, and puts them together for you as you roll the paper out and tape it to the windows. It is easiest to do with two people. We had the whole porch masked off in about an hour. When you are spraying, be sure to mask off EVERY SINGLE THING you do not want painted. We needed to cover the oak front door, which was difficult to do with the masker, so we left it cracked just a tiny bit, covered it with a tarp, and taped the tarp to the door frame so that overspray wouldn’t get into our house. That left about a three inch opening towards the bottom of the door where the tape wouldn’t hold it together, and our entire main floor was covered in a thin layer of white dust.

JJ was right- the painting took less than an hour. He showed up, set up his sprayer, showed me how it worked, and had the entire room finished in 45 minutes total. He let me do one wall, and I enjoyed using the sprayer!

Enough talk. Here are some incredible before & after photos of the white paint. I used three gallons of Sherwin Williams Extra White in a satin finish.

This one is Ben taking a picture… of me… taking a picture.

Louie, my furry photo assistant.

The “before” just felt kind of dirty. (Partially because it was… don’t @ me)

This was the chaos of our living room after moving in the porch furniture and masking off the windows and doors. We’re going for a “maximalist meets flea market meets condemned house” aesthetic in here now.

Now for the big reveal…

IT FEELS SO CLEAN! We didn’t worry about masking off the floors, because they will be painted next week when the weather permits open windows. I can’t believe what a difference the white makes in this space. Before now, I could only dream of what awaited me on the other side of a long-term, on-again-off-again relationship with a paintbrush.

Please excuse my paint buckets and mountain of paper and tape. Maybe this could be a new decorating style. I would call it “Reno-Chic”. It’s where you leave out all of your renovating supplies, but in an artistic and revolutionary way. So edgy.

I also started painting the navy accent wall, but not without a little lettering fun!

The paint is still drying in this photo, so it looks streaky. I’m going to take the navy all the way up to the ceiling- I just ran out of time to finish it today! I also have to figure out whether or not to paint the half of that concrete column. It is incredibly bumpy, and I’m a bit worried I won’t be able to get a clean line. It will be covered by curtains, but I don’t want to leave a mess for future occupants of this house!

Continuing the navy all the way to the ceiling will draw the eye upward, and ultimately make the space feel taller. I still need to paint the window trim on the outside walls (the ones on the right), and paint the inside of the door on the right. I would love to paint the actual front door because the stain is uneven and looks very worn, but I don’t paint original woodwork in this house since we don’t own it. (Except for the upstairs porch, where the window trim was damaged beyond repair and needed a coat of paint for protection.)

I used three gallons of white paint, and one quart of Annie Sloan Aubusson Blue for this space! I’ll be using a light grey epoxy paint for the floors next week, and black paint for the window trim. This was not a complicated or expensive update, but it made a very significant impact! I’m very excited to see how it all looks once the floors have a solid, fresh coat of paint as well.

That’s all I have for this week! The other major progress will be happening this weekend. My brother-in-law, Kirk, will be showing me the ropes (literally) of building a bed swing. I showed him my vision, and he created a custom plan for beginner builders that utilizes a twin sized mattress and dimensional lumber. You will be able to buy the plans if you want to tackle the project yourself! I’ll also be working on dyeing the curtains and painting the floors next week. Things are coming together quickly now, and I’m still enjoying the process and trying to have fun at every stage!

You can follow along on the Holland Avenue Home Instagram and Instagram Stories for behind-the-scenes progress before it comes to the blog. I’ll be sharing weekly updates here on my blog, and you can get reminders every time a post goes live through entering your email into the “brighten my inbox” tab to the right of this post.

Don’t forget to check out the design plans of the Featured Designers and other Guest Designers on the One Room Challenge Blog.

Thanks for following along, and stay tuned for next week’s project- the bed swing!

Catch up on all six weeks of my Spring 2019 One Room Challenge:

Week 1: High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation

Week 2: DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables

Week 3: The Power of Paint

Week 4: DIY $150 Bed Swing and Painted Concrete Floors

Week 5: Finishing Touches

Week 6: Before & After High Style, Low Budget Sunroom

DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables: One Room Challenge Week 2

11 Comments April 10, 2019 hollandavenuehome

Welcome to week two of my One Room Challenge! Last week, I revealed my High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Design Plan. Here is a quick recap of my moodboard.

I’m planning to tackle quite a few DIY projects for this space, and I finished the first one yesterday! I originally planned to make a coffee table with wood and strips of leather, but that was before I saw these stumps in the lobby of an antique store.

I frequent Celia’s Antiques in Storm Lake, Iowa. The owner, Celia, is a cheerful and welcoming woman who is always sporting a pair of oversized overalls, and has a gift for styling her unique collection of antiques. These two stumps were in the lobby, and I “went out on a limb” to ask her how much she wanted for them. Her exact, surprised response was, “You want the stumps?!?!” I told her that, yes, I very much “wanted the stumps” and would like to buy them. She told me that if I wanted them, I could just take them! I couldn’t be-leaf it!

I came back later with my husband and our Honda CRV, ready to load them up and make some magic. Celia gave me a small cart to get them into the car, and sent me home with it so I could get them out, too!

On the way home, we stopped by Rent-All in Storm Lake so that I could rent a sander. (I actually don’t own any tools, but I am hoping to pick up a few now that I have discovered a love for projects galore!)

Rent-All is a magical place where you can rent anything from a hand sander to a bouncy house to a forklift! Our friend from church is the manager, and he always hooks us up with tools for projects and inflatables for church parties.

I asked him if he knew how I could level out the uneven stump, and he went out to the car to take a look. He said it would be easy enough with a chainsaw, and they had it leveled that afternoon!

I made a quick trip to Ace Hardware for my supplies before heading home.

If you want to do this project, you’ll only need a few supplies. (Some of these links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I will make a small percent commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase anything from Amazon through my links.)

DIY Stump Coffee Table Supplies

A dried-out stump of your choice (or two!)
Dewalt Hand Sander
Minwax Polycrylic- Semigloss (I bought a gallon, but only used about 1/4 of it for two coffee table sized stumps. I would recommend buying a quart for this size or smaller project.)
80 Grit Sandpaper
100 Grit Sandpaper
220 Grit Sanding Block
1 yard felt (My Walmart had precut yards of felt in the fabric section)
Nail-on Furniture Glides (four per stump)
Mask to cover nose and mouth
Safety Glasses

Instructions

Choose your stumps. If your stumps are freshly cut, they will need time to dry out completely. (These stumps were inside the store lobby for a few years, so this step was already finished!) Make sure that your stump is not rotten or infested with bugs. If you are choosing two stumps and you have options, try to pick two that aren’t exactly the same height. You can look around on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for people getting rid of stumps, or contact a local lumber yard or tree removal service. You might get lucky!
Remove the bark. This step was also already finished when I got my stumps. If your stump has bark, you will need to remove all of it with a hammer and chisel or pry-bar.
Sand top and sides with 80 grit sandpaper. I sanded the top very thoroughly, and sanded the sides where it was possible with the electric sander. I wanted the smooth parts of the stump to be a little smoother, but didn’t worry about smoothing out every nook and cranny. They are trees, after all, and I didn’t want them to look like a bowling alley.
Sand top and sides with 100 grit sandpaper. The lower the “grit”, the more abrasive the sandpaper will be. Always start with the lower number, and move up to the higher grit.
When you are content with the smoothness, sand lightly with 220 grit for a reeeally smooth finish before coating.
Wipe away dust. You can use a wet rag- just allow to dry completely before moving on.
If you want to stain the stumps, do that before the clear coat. I chose not to stain my stumps because I like the natural look of the unfinished wood. (And definitely not because it was just less work! 😉 )
Apply first coat of poly. This step makes a huge difference. I used clear, semi-gloss polycrylic, which darkened the stumps just a bit. Watch for drips around the top and out of any cracks down the sides.
After poly is dry, sand with 220 grit sanding block. Repeat this poly/sand process until you’ve done three or four coats of poly with a light sanding in between.
Cut out felt for the bottom of the stump. I flipped my stump upside down after the poly was completely dry, and draped the bottom with my yard of felt. I roughly cut out a piece of felt that was about an inch smaller in circumference than the stump.
Nail in the furniture glides. I tried to space them out evenly around the stump. (I’ll share a photo of this step later.)
Secure the edges of the felt with tiny nails.
Admire your new fancy coffee table and laugh at all of the places that sell them for $1,000+
Take some ibuprofen because your back will probably KILL in the morning (especially if you had to move the stumps around by yourself!)

Here are some photos of my process. This is a beginner level project, and using this hand sander is actually the first time I’ve used a power tool by myself!

This photo was taken after completing the stump on the left, just before starting on the other stump. The poly gave it a really nice, high-end finish, while maintaining the organic stump-like features.

One finished stump, and one raw stump. Just a little bit of work made a tree-mendous difference!

This is the bottom of the first stump after the poly was dry.

To create the felt base, I draped my yard of felt over the stump and roughly cut a piece that was 1″ in diameter smaller than the edges of the stump.

I nailed in the furniture glides, and then secured the edges of the felt with tiny nails. (Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of this step!)

I don’t have a photo of both finished stumps because they are still in my garage, and we’ve had rain today! I can’t wait to see them em-bark on their new journey as coffee tables in my sunroom.

This project took me two afternoons (about 7-8 hours total), and about $35-$40 in supplies. (I bought a $50 gallon of poly, but only used 1/4 of it, averaging about $12)

Cost Breakdown

Stumps: free

Sandpaper: $15

Poly: $12 (would be $20 to buy a quart)

Felt: $2

Nail-in Furniture Glides: $8

Total: About $40

If you want to skip the DIY and just buy a stump coffee table, here are a few options. First, allow me to wish you luck in getting approved for a coffee table loan, and second, allow me to walk away so I don’t accidentally laugh to your face about how expensive these are.

$2,500 Arhaus Clayhill Coffee Table (The top is composed of 1/4 inch slices of petrified wood. The table itself is made from resin. Oh, and shipping is $500.)

2. $1,499 Arhaus Root Outdoor Bleached Coffee Table (This is made from concrete)

3. $449 Crate & Barrel Teton Natural Solid Wood Table (Okay, at least this one is real wood!)

4. $287.25 Etsy seller Shefford Woodlands (this is a more affordable option if you really love the look, but don’t think you can find stumps. This listing is for one large stump.)

5. $120 Amazon Teak Reclaimed Stump or Stool (Here is the normal-person option if you really want the look, but take note that it is only 10 inches wide and about 16 inches tall!)

I documented the whole process of finishing these stumps on my Instagram stories! You can follow along there for behind-the-scenes progress before it comes to the blog. I’ll be sharing weekly updates here on my blog, and you can get reminders every time a post goes live through entering your email into the “brighten my inbox” tab to the right of this post.

Don’t forget to check out the design plans of the Featured Designers and other Guest Designers on the One Room Challenge Blog.

Thanks for following along, and stay tuned for next week’s project- PAINT!!!

Catch up on all six weeks of my Spring 2019 One Room Challenge:

Week 1: High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation

Week 2: DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables

Week 3: The Power of Paint

Week 4: DIY $150 Bed Swing and Painted Concrete Floors

Week 5: Finishing Touches

Week 6: Before & After High Style, Low Budget Sunroom

Don’t forget to save this post on Pinterest!

High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation: One Room Challenge Week 1

9 Comments April 3, 2019 hollandavenuehome

For this round of the One Room Challenge, I will be transforming our sunroom!

This space has incredible potential, and will be a dream come true once it is given a little love (and a lot of white paint). It is on the front of our house, and has three walls of windows. It is a “three-seasons” porch, meaning it is too cold to use in the winter. But for the glorious warmer months, we put this space to work for morning coffee, hosting friends in the evenings, and every excuse we can find in between.

For those of you that have been around Holland Avenue for a while, the “Before” of this space is the beloved “Granny Porch”. This space was (and still is) very sad underneath, so I created a temporary fix to add some cheer through bright colors and vintage decor from our wedding. We bought a mustard yellow floral couch for $30 on Facebook, which gave the sunroom some much needed “sunshine”. The space was fun, but the bones of it were still dreary. I plan to give this room new life through fresh paint, warm textiles, and a cozy bed swing. Here is a “before” photo of the “Granny Porch”.

It is definitely “fun”, but I’m hoping to give it a more sophisticated (yet cozy and comfortable) upgrade. I’ll be focusing my energy on the far end that used to have the yellow couch, but the other end with my mid-century gingham furniture will be getting some love, too. This porch is 9×30, and presents some unique design challenges because of the long and narrow layout.

The “Granny Porch” served its purpose of concealing my half-finished paint job and the unpainted concrete floors, but a sad scene remains underneath all of the granny chic glory.

Here is a more recent view of what the porch looks like without anything to cover up the bones (and my less-than-half-finished paint job).

In a word? Rough. In another word? Potential.

I believe that paint is the easiest and most affordable way to completely transform a room, and I plan to put that belief to work in this space.

The first step of transforming this room will be finishing my white paint job with the help of a friend who is a pro, and painting the concrete floors in a refreshing light grey.

After that, I plan to build a bed swing with the help of my awesome brother-in-law.

There will be plenty of other DIY and affordable elements (like the wood stumps I am getting for FREE), and I will also be taking advantage of a few blogger “perks” in the form of sponsored products. (Companies regularly “advertise” through bloggers, and will send us free product in exchange for advertising. I limit the number of advertising partnerships I take on, and am committed to only showing you products I either already use and love, or have specifically chosen with my mission and readers in mind.)

Enough “telling”… let’s get to the “showing”! I’ve tweaked this plan so many times over the last month, but allow me to reveal my final design plan for my “High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation”!

It will be a lot of work, but I am excited to finally give this space the love it deserves. I’m planning to include warm colors and textures to create a sophisticated-yet-comfortable lounge space. I’ve already received a few of the elements in the moodboard, and a few of the pieces are coming from other places in my home (because #budget). This design is what I am working towards, but certain elements may be tweaked and refined along the way. I hope you will follow along with me as I transform this sunroom through resourceful and attainable projects, and that you will be given the confidence to work with what you have to tackle a space of your own.

Be sure to follow Holland Avenue Home on Instagram for plenty of behind-the-scenes posts and sneak peeks of my progress. I’ll be sharing weekly updates here on my blog, and you can get reminders every time a post goes live through entering your email into the “brighten my inbox” tab to the right of this post.

Don’t forget to check out the design plans of the Featured Designers and other Guest Designers on the One Room Challenge Blog.

Thanks for following along, and stay tuned for a High Style, Low Budget transformation!

Catch up on all six weeks of my Spring 2019 One Room Challenge:

Week 1: High Style, Low Budget Sunroom Transformation

Week 2: DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables

Week 3: The Power of Paint

Week 4: DIY $150 Bed Swing and Painted Concrete Floors

Week 5: Finishing Touches

Week 6: Before & After High Style, Low Budget Sunroom

Follow along with the rest of my One Room Challenge posts!

Week 2: DIY Tree Stump Coffee Tables

Cozy Eclectic Master Bedroom Design Plan: One Room Challenge Week 1

1 Comment October 3, 2018 hollandavenuehome

Hi, everyone! I’m back after a short break from blogging and traveling to New York City for the Better Homes & Gardens Stylemaker Celebration. I’ll share a recap of my trip later this week, but long story short- it was incredible!

If you’re finding me through the One Room Challenge, welcome to my home on the internet! I’m Avery and I live in rural Iowa with my husband. You can learn more about me here, and see some of my previous design work in my kitchen. My design style is cozy, whimsical, and collected. I’ll be sharing my One Room Challenge progress on my Holland Avenue Home Instagram. Thanks for following along!

While I was in NYC with Better Homes & Gardens, I went to Mood Fabrics and the Chelsea Flea Market and picked up a few souvenirs for our home. I planned to use the fabric from Mood to sew some new pillows for our bed, which snowballed into the decision to enter the One Room Challenge as a guest participant! If you’re not familiar with The One Room Challenge™, here is the description from their website.

The One Room Challenge™ , currently in its fourteenth season, is a widely anticipated biannual event every April and October. Each round, twenty design influencers are selected to take the challenge and transform a space. Every Wednesday, the designers document their process while sharing their sources and professional advice over the six weekly posts.

In addition to following along, everyone with a blog is welcome to join the fun as a Guest Participant by linking their own room transformations up during the six weeks. Each Thursday, the internet and social media are flooded with interior design inspiration, ideas, and encouragement.

To date, more than 2,200 rooms have been transformed through the One Room Challenge™.

All 20 featured designers shared their design plans yesterday, and all guest participants are sharing design plans today. For the next six weeks, you can follow along with the featured designers on Wednesdays and the guest designers on Thursdays.

Now on to my design plans!

I wasn’t planning to buy fabric for pillows, but when I saw this gorgeous floral bird fabric at Mood, I wanted to sew all of the things. It is only available with a white background online, but in the store I was able to purchase the same print with a lovely berry colored background.

This fabric was the inspiration for my entire design plan, and I’m so happy that my inspiration could come from something I loved and not from another person’s previous design. Creative inspiration from other designers can be good, but in the age of Pinterest it is easy to be influenced too much by what other people have already done instead of relying on your own creativity. I am making my own uninfluenced decisions without searching for a design to inspire me, and it feels incredibly refreshing.

Here are some recent “before” photos. The bed used to be on the opposite wall in front of a window, but we recently moved it to this wall. I don’t have a photo of the other side of the room (which is currently COVERED in clean laundry that needs to be put away. ~~At least it’s clean?~~). We have a dresser to the left of the bed in between the door to our room and the closet door. There is a door to the right of the bed that leads to a master bedroom sunroom.

The lighting in this photo was a bit strange because the light from the window was reflecting off of the headboard, but the headboard has a lot of different warm wood tones.

You can see the door to the sunroom in the reflection of the mirror.

Here is an older photo from when the bed was on the other wall (so you can see the curtains. )

I will be keeping all of our current bedroom furniture because we love it and there isn’t anything wrong with any of it!

My updates will come through paint, new pillows and additions to our bedding, refinishing the nightstands, and meaningful artwork.

Here’s a look at my moodboard!

I’ll be painting an accent wall behind our bed, and leaving the other walls the same pale grey. I plan to stain the nightstands a darker color, and switch out the Ikea knobs with some unique Anthropologie knobs. I’ll be keeping our white bedding, but adding an indigo throw from the Chelsea flea market and some accent pillows with my fabrics from Mood.

I said on Instagram that I would keep this next part a surprise, but I want to make sure I’m abiding by the rules of the One Room Challenge, so I will go ahead and share the surprise now!

In addition to the main part of our bedroom, I will also be updating our master bedroom sunroom!

A few months ago, I began painting the room white. It previously had a dated wallpaper border, beige walls, and a lot of damage to the wood trim from the sun and extreme temperatures. I decided to paint everything white to give it a fresh and clean look. We don’t use the room, so I’m hoping that giving it some personality and love will encourage me to spend more time out there.

Here are some “before” photos from before I started painting the room white.

The above photo is very old (2 years). The desk was in the house when we moved in, and we sold it on Facebook. We’re also currently trying to sell the giant chair and ottoman. This room has been so neglected, and is currently being used to store our suitcases, random decor that I’m planning to get rid of, and clothes I’m going to sell. It still has the pale green shades, which I’m planning to remove.

Here are my plans for the space!

The room has beautiful hardwood floors, and the beginnings of white paint have really brightened up the space. I’m picking up the West Elm glider from Des Moines on Friday, and it might just be the best Craigslist deal of all Craigslist deals in the history of Craigslist deals. We already have all of the other decorative elements in the moodboard.

The main attraction in this space will be the hand painted mural! This photo of a mural from Anthropologie is serving as a placeholder for my own hand-painted mural. It will be inspired by the style and colors of my pillow fabric from Mood.

That’s my design plan, and I’m sticking to it!

Be sure to check out the One Room Challenge Blog to explore the other Featured and Guest Designers, and check back next week for my progress! If you’d like to receive an email when new posts go live, enter your email in the “Brighten My Inbox” tab on the right side of your screen. I’ll also be sharing daily updates on my Instagram Stories.

That’s it for this week- thanks for following along!