one room challenge: week 2 - the plan

I'm writing this post at 1 AM because this Thursday has really snuck up on me! I've been very busy with e-designs this week, so I haven't had much free time to work on things in here. I did thoroughly clean out and organize the closet, steam clean the carpets, and put samples up on the wall. The top sample is Violet Pearl by Benjamin Moore, the middle is Hampshire Rocks, and the one below is New Age

In the photo below the order is New Age, Violet Pearl, and Hampshire Rocks. I immediately eliminated New Age because it felt too girly and I was afraid it would make the room look like a nursery. Hampshire Rocks was lighter than I wanted and came off as pink, so I eliminated this one as well. Violet Pearl ended up being the winner because it has the lavender color I want with just enough grey that it feels grown up. I also like how it looks with the color of our doors (BM Nightfall), the orange ottoman, and the drapery in the room.

This will probably change a thousand times, but here is my initial design for the room:

This will be the least used room in our house so I'm using a ton of things that we already own and keeping the budget super low (around $1,000). I've purchased the headboard, and it's supposed to be here by the end of the month, so that is a definite for the design. The only other items left to purchase are the pom pom basket, hanging planter, and throw.

My plan for this week is to get the walls painted, order the rest of the items, and finish working on the closet (I still have touch-up paint and shelves to hang). 

My to-do list for the next four weeks:

• paint walls
• paint baseboards and trim that I never finished (from two years ago!)
• touch up closet doors
• install crown moulding
• clean out closet, rearrange shelving (finished!), add shelves to right side
• fill gap at top of the closet doors
• finalize design plan (finished!)
• order new headboard (finished!)
• mount new tv (purchased, but not yet mounted)
• add accessories and finishing touches

As always, a big thank you to Linda from Calling It Home for hosting this challenge. The Wednesday participants  have some gorgeous things happening, as do the whopping 229 Thursday participants!!

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one room challege - week 1: the before

It's One Room Challenge time! This is my third time taking part in this challenge, and I'm excited to tackle another room in our home! During my first challenge I completed a renovation of our laundry room. You can see all of the photos in this post.

This bathroom actually took two challenges to complete. We never got past demo with the first one, and came very, very close to finishing on the second. You can see the complete before and after photos in this post.

I went back and forth on whether I'd be participating this round, but ended up deciding to tackle our master bedroom. I ordered this Serena & Lily headboard, designed the whole room around it and waited patiently for five weeks. After the sixth week I called to find out why it hadn't shipped and was told they had sold out of the size I ordered (cal. king), it had been discontinued, and I would in fact not be receiving my headboard :( I had planned the whole room around this piece and didn't want to rush and buy something I wasn't in love with, so I decided to move on to my home office. After lots of searching I found the perfect desk, but it is on backorder until December 30th. Since this is a major piece in the design this room wasn't going to work either.

Enter our music room/man cave/sorta guest room/sorta office. This room has been a weird space from day 1. I had originally intended for it to be Charlie's music room/man cave, but he literally never used it. We occasionally needed an extra room for guests so we slapped this sofa bed in there. Once it was in the room I instantly regretted my purchase, but salvaged it by throwing a blanket over it. Then I got the idea to turn this room into my office since it receives a ton of natural light. We ripped out the old closet shelves, installed a new storage system for my office supplies, and then never touched it again until very recently when we removed the sliding mirrored doors and put in bifold doors. I'm determined to finally turn this into a usable room, so I sold a lot of the furniture and this is how it looks today:

This is the wall that I'm planning to put a new queen bed. I had really, really wanted to do two twin beds in this room, but it's a small room and there are only two walls to work with.

My plans are to move the credenza to this wall and keep Charlie's guitars above. I don't love the guitars, but we don't really have another spot for them in our house, and I like that it keeps them off the floor.

The new arrangement won't leave room for the current tv, so I plan to mount a small one to this wall.

These bifold doors replaced our sliding mirror doors and made the room look 100 times better.

This is the closet system we installed. Believe it or not I actually cleaned out and got rid of a ton of stuff after we installed this, but it's slowly starting to fill back up with junk. Most of this is holiday decor that needs to be moved to the garage and old school projects that need to be tossed. I plan to eliminate a lot of this and just keep our printer and office supplies in here to make room for guests to put their suitcase and clothes.

My game plan this week is to test out paint swatches, steam clean the carpet to get rid of dents left by the old furniture, and clean out the rest of the stuff in here.

My to-do list for the next five weeks:

• paint walls (I'm thinking about a greyish lavender or a peachy pink – I'll hopefully be able to make the decision this week)

• paint baseboards and trim that I never finished (from two years ago!)

• touch up closet doors

• install crown moulding

• clean out closet, rearrange shelving, add shelves to right side

• fill gap at top of the closet doors

• finalize design plan

• order new headboard

• mount new tv

• add accessories and finishing touches

A much, much more manageable to-do list than my previous ORC endeavors! Thank you, Linda for hosting this challenge again. I think this is my year to finally complete a room on time!

Don't forget to check out the Wednesday participants and see what the other Thursday guest participants have up their sleeves!

on my radar: modern dressers repurposed as bathroom vanities

I am very much loving the trend of taking modern wood dressers and repurposing them as bathroom vanities. This is a great choice for a bathroom because it brings a lot of warmth to a space that is otherwise full of hard materials and cold surfaces.

photo via Emily Henderson

Photo via Decor and the Dog

Without a countertop you run the risk of ruining the wood with water or product stains, so I'd only recommend doing this in a guest bathroom or powder room. If it's used in a main bathroom I suggest having a piece of stone fabricated to fit the top like these pieces below:

Photo via Cre8tive Designs Inc.

Photo via Kristen Grove

In case you didn't want to track down the perfect piece of furniture to use for your vanity, I've included some of my favorite furniture inspired vanities below. My absolute favorite is number five. It almost makes me wish we had another bathroom to remodel in our house!

>> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 <<

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