One Room Challenge (Week 5): Cleaning Frenzy and DIY Central

Hello everyone!  It is really starting to get down to the wire as we arrive at 5 week mark for the One Room Challenge.  Just one short week left until the big reveal–eeek!!  I keep thinking that I have more time left than I really do…

Here is a quick time lapse of the transformation so far!

You can click on the links below to get the details on the progress from each week.

One Room Challenge (Week 1): The Plans!
One Room Challenge (Week 2): A Slow Start
One Room Challenge (Week 3): The Halfway Point!
One Room Challenge (Week 4): New Floors and a Tray Debacle

With all of the major items like the shiplap, the vanity and the floors checked off I started doing some major cleaning and organizing this past weekend.  I realized that I didn’t want to have this beautiful new space that has hidden clutter all over the place.  Even though it was messy and exhausting I am so glad I did it!

The first thing that I tackled was the linen closet. 

It was overflowing with fabric wrapped boxes that I once tried to use to organize all of our spare linens and toiletries.  I could never find anything with ease because we had so much unnecessary crap stuffed in there!

I started by taking absolutely everything out and it ended up filling up the entire bathroom!  It’s insane how much stuff I actually had in there.

I then splurged on some new baskets–if I’m doing this I might as well go all out, right? I stocked them with the items that we actually use and purged the rest. It’s amazing how many products we’ve accumulated in the last couple of years.  I threw away about three grocery bags worth of either empty or super old toiletry items.

I am so happy with the end result that I am seriously considering removing the door and keeping it open.  The jury is still out on that one though!

I also did a major purge on our vanity.  I first used some nifty dollar store baskets to organize the drawers. 

I then went though the cabinets and got rid of a bunch of stuff and only left the things that we use on a regular basis. 

With the cleaning and organizing checked off the list it was time to finally start on my DIY projects.

When I worked on our master bedroom last fall for the One Room Challenge I left all of the DIY items for the end thinking that they would all be super easy.  They actually took a lot longer than I had anticipated and I found myself kind of scrambling at the end.

Did I learn my lesson this time around?  Not so much haha.

For instance when I picked up this tray from Homegoods it seemed like that green paint would sand off in minutes.  Wrong.

About three whole sheets of sandpaper and 30 minutes later I got maybe half of it removed?  I finally busted out my Orbital Sander (affiliate link) and it helped speed things up tremendously but I still had to get in the tighter spots by hand.

After doing a heavy dry brush with some white paint this is how it is looks now.

So much more my style and well worth the time spent on it!

I have also been working on the bath towel hooks and the new hand towel bar but I’ll keep those a surprise.  Here are a couple of sneak peeks though–because I am just so stinking excited about them and can’t help it!

All that I really have left to do is do a deep clean on the shower and toss up a few more accessories.  I’ve had the new rug and shower curtain for weeks now but I have been waiting to put them up until the very end so that they can be the “cherry on top” and kind of announce the bathroom’s completion to me.

Be sure to check out how the other participants are doing here. 

See you all next week for the big reveal! 🙂