One Room Challenge (Pre-Week 6) | Painting Windows and Installing Bookcase Lights

Week Six of the One Room Challenge is here! Not sure how to title this post because it is week six, but not reveal week for me! I didn't expect it going in, but I will be taking advantage of this year's extension being offered.  Good work is still being done in the home office.  

I left off with this wrap-up list last week:

• Add center braces to desk
• Finish painting crown/bookcase/shiplap
• Paint windows (forgot about this last week!)
• Touch up wall paint around room
• Install new light switch and new light fixture (currently working on)
• Install bookcase lighting
• Rehang existing drapes (still need to hem)
• Style Bookcases and Office for Final Reveal

Let's walk thru some of those projects from this week. 

The Desk

This never ending desk project.  Thru trial and error, I got the cuts done for the center braces. 

The windows went black this week.  It is so good!  I used Masking Liquid to paint them and accidentally turned it into a science project. The purpose of the Masking Liquid is to avoid taping and scraping paint off windows.  I used a shellac-based primer on one window and water-based primer on the second one, just because I did the primer on different days, and had run out of the alcohol to clean the brush.  Well, guess which one didn't come off right?  The shellac-based one!  Totally my fault, because it was on the can to not use solvent based paints.  So lesson learned.  The one I did with water-based primer came off beautifully.

I had to take down the drapes and blinds to paint the windows.  Once they were painted, that highlighted how dirty they were.  And I did clean them in the spring, but spiderwebs takeover constantly.  So a good cleaning almost made me feel like my vision improved.  I sprayed the original hardware a brighter gold to pop against the new black paint.  And then to clean up my paint and old paint on the frames, I was able to use nail polish remover.  All of that combined has these old windows looking sharp!

They were so sharp that I briefly considered leaving them bare, but I am too paranoid at night, that someone is staring in that I can't see!  So I am putting back up the drapes, but not the blinds.  I did test out my linen panels from my family room, and LOVED them!  So I will probably add linen panels at some point in the future.  The final painting on all the crown molding also got done, allowing me to add the bookcase lights.  I went with gold sconces and turned them into plug-ins.

So what's left? 

Mainly to get the replacement for this ceiling fan up!  I think I've hit every snag possible outside of shocking myself, so I will be well-trained to write a what not to do tutorial, haha!

 I'm also planning to:

• Hem the existing drapes; they've always hung to long.
• Hang the new light fixture (Ran into a snag, but doing some research tonight!)
• And since I'm taking advantage of the extention, I'm thinking of adding back the printable art project.  
• Style the bookcases and office for final reveal

I really appreciate that they've made it no pressure to finish today or on the last day of the reveal time frame.  I'm going to make use of the time to get the space just right.  And I want to have fun styling the  space.  I hope you'll come back and see it finished.  I'll either have an update or the final reveal next week!   Now go check out some of the other designers and guest participants!

To catch up from previous weeks and see where it all started, visit the links below!

Week 1- Home Office Design Plan

Week 2- Vertical Shiplap and Bookcase Hack

Week 3- Foraged and Crowned

Week 4- The Desk Build

Week 5-Finished Desk and Project Tweaks