One Room Challenge Week Three- Floors and Walls

Victoria Ford

3 years ago

Happy Wednesday, friends! And welcome back to yet another week of One Room Challenge where today we’re talking floors and walls. Quick recap, the One Room Challenge is an biannual (ordinarily) six week challenge (eight this week due to COVID) that creates space for designers and guest alike to have a support space to transform a room. Or two in my case. If this is news to you, you can see the previous weeks of my room renovations here:

Check out other weeks of this One Room Challenge

Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5 / Week 6 / Week 7 / Week 8: Guest Room Reveal

All caught up? Awesome. Before I go any further, I have to shout out the amazing sponsors who have gifted product and are mentioned in this post.

Apt2B / Calico / Fireclay Tile

Now, this week, we’re going to talk walls and floors in both spaces. Like most rooms, these are going to play key roles in our spaces.

Bedroom Walls and Floors

First up, the bedroom. For the bedroom walls, the goal was clear; simple, classic, timeless. I wrestled of what that looked like it application but no matter what it looked like, first order of business was to get the wallpaper border, down! I mean, it wasn’t even complete.

I’ve removed so much wallpaper in this house, I’ve got it down to a science. So here’s your first tip of the day coming at ya.

Tip 1: Easy Wallpaper Removal

In a bucket, combine water as hot as your hands can handle boiling water and cheap fabric softener in a 4:1 ratio. Score the wallpaper using a wallpaper scoring tool. I use this one called the Piranha. We’ve been besties in wallpaper removal since we moved here and it’s done great.

After you score the wallpaper, rub the hot water into the wallpaper using a sponge. The scoring allows the hot fabric softener combo to get pass the wallpaper’s finish and into the actual adhesive that was applied to the wall. Look how easy that wallpaper came off. I even look happy in this screen grab from a timelapse.

The Beadboard or Not to Beadboard

I had a hard time deciding on the exact wall treatment but I knew I was including this window pane wallpaper from Calico. Calico is a one stop design shop with tons of goodies from custom window treatment and furniture to wallcoverings, like this wallpaper. I chose this Magnolia Home Wallpaper called Sunday best. It’s from York Wallcovering so I knew the quality was going to be A1 and it’s pre-pasted. If you are a beginner, pre-pasted, water activated wallpaper is your best friend. The hardest part becomes lining up the pattern when you aren’t dealing with paste.

This wallpaper was perfect for this space. And while went back and forth between full length paper and half the wall and finishing with bead board, ultimately, the full wall won out. While bead board would have been perfect for our home style, the view of the main wall would have been thrown off by the decorative bed. But if I ever have a change of heart down the road, I’ll bring in 60″ tall bead board with a nice thick shelf.

For now, the wallpaper is in and the room already feels brighter and more inviting without feeling stark since the wallpaper isn’t true white. And most importantly, no more incomplete border.

Bedroom Floors

As for the floors in this bedroom, I’m leaving them alone. We love the hardwoods in our home. They may need a refinishing down the line but for now, the red wood matches the bed perfectly. All that’s left to do is bring in rugs. I’ve got two picked out for this space.

The first will be for under the window. I wanted something that pulled together my art inspiration to real life. This Loloi Rug from the Grand Canyon collection is definitely the right choice. It’s going to fit perfectly in the window and create a cozy reading area for guest. By bringing in a little western without going to far (after all, we tend to lean nautical usually) this rug is going to be perfect. And best of all, it doesn’t break the bank.

I’m also going to incorporate Nuray rug from Apt2b into the main area of the room beneath the bed. The red will call to the floor and the art again and tie them together nicely. This Turkish loomed rug also has the feel of some of my favorite antique rugs without the antique price tag. The low pile on it will be great our guest rooms are surprisingly high traffic areas and this will wear well. On to the bathroom now shall we?

Bathroom Floors and Walls

I’ve spent the better part of the last week walking pass the bathroom and peaking in, hoping inspiration strikes. This idea may feel counter intuitive to what seems to be the case for ORC but I like to spend the first two weeks solidifying lingering choices so that I don’t have to reinstall which brings me to Tip 2…

Tip 2: Don’t Demo Until You’re Ready

This feels obvious but in past ORCs, I’ve demoed before all of the pieces to my project were available. You want to wait until all of the major pieces have arrived before tearing apart if it’s a space that you can’t live without. Looking at you kitchens and bathrooms! Waiting until the major players are in and major decisions are made is just more efficient and you aren’t sitting with exposed walls and no shower any longer than you have to. Which brings me to tip 3

Tip 3: Treat Your Home Like An Extension of Your Mood Board

Real life materials look different that what is on paper or on the computer. If you are someone who uses physical moodboards with your materials, you are probably light years ahead. But it helps to visualize all of the materials together and in the space.

Bathroom Floors and Walls Design

For this bathroom that means laying out the tile. And then laying it out again. And then laying it out again. Until I make a final decision that I feel good about. Why am I laying it out so many different times? Because my husband has very few opinions about design choices but what opinions he does have are strong. He feels very strongly about the floor tile in this bathroom. I want to make sure I get this right for him.

The tile for the bathroom arrived this week and my neighbors experienced my squeals of joy first hand. I selected this Glossy 2×8 subway tile in the color Nautical from Fireclay Tile. It’s a stunner! It’s just the right balance of moody and nautical without being on the nose (despite its’ name). One of the best parts of this tile is that its’ included in Fieclay’s quick ship which means it leaves the California factory in five days. For hand made tile, that’s incredible.

I have every intention of using this beautiful 2×8 tile for the shower and to create half walls for the bathroom. At the moment, I have a few of them propped up on the bathroom wall and I’m watching them as the light changes throughout the day to make sure I still love them. (I do!)

Mosaic Floor Tile

Mustard Seed // Hunter Green //Dusty Blue // Blue Velvet

The floors on the other hand haven’t been as simple but no less beautiful. We ordered the 1×1 sheeted tile in white and threw in a handful of these colorful tiles that coordinate to our color palette. A handful means about 50 of each square. We’ll use these tiles to create a simple mosaic pattern.

American Restoration Tile has this image of historic patterns for both straight and broken joint square tiles which we’ve leaned on heavily for inspiration. Our sheets of tile are straight, all the grout lines are straight instead of offset. We tend to love the simpler patterns of the staggered joint tiles which we realized long after we ordered. But Fireclay Tile is the only company that has this variation of colors for their mosaics so we are still jazzed to make it work.

Source: JAM Architecture Photo by: Gieves Anderson

And this photo has been the guiding light in terms of what good looks like. It’s historically accurate but still feels stylish and simple. I love how few of the colorful tiles are in the design. For us, that is going to be key since our four colors don’t match in the traditional sense. Here are a few of the many designs I’ve tried so far with none of them feeling quite right.

So there we have it folks. I’m absolutely going to narrow down my choices this week so that this bathroom can be pulled apart. It helps that I don’t have a tub or a toilet yet so I would be in a holding pattern anyway. You gotta love delayed shipments and long lead times due to COVID. But we are going to get there and hopefully the next time you stop by, I’m be down to the studs.

See you next Wednesday in the same place and in the interim, check out the other featured designers who are up to nothing but good things!

ORC Featured Designers