Hi hi! I am excited and completely freaked out to be participating in One Room Challenge again. If you are new to it, One Room Challenge is an event started by Linda Weinstein that happens twice a year where participants are able to connect and cheer each other on as they renovate -you guessed it- One Room.
I’ve loved One Room Challenge and had such a blast participating as both a featured designer with this guest room and bathroom and as a participant with this coastal bathroom and this striped bathroom in our old home.
What space am I making over?
This year I have absolutely lost the plot and decided to redecorate not one room but one home. I’ll redecorate our old home, a sweet little saltbox that we moved our of pretty quickly when we bought our new one. We held onto it with family staying in it since then. Now we are ready for its semi-permanent resident, my mom.
My mom is retiring and moving to North Carolina and it’s hers for the taking now. It’s the perfect starter home, but also the perfect home for this season of her life. She is more than willing and able to live alone but with very few steps leading in and a downstairs primary bedroom and bathroom, this house can also take her well into the future. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also within a short drive of us if -heaven forbid- she doesn’t maintain her independence as she gets older.
So off to the races I go designing this home IN SECRET for my mom. How am I doing that you ask? I’ve blocked her on Instagram and here so let’s see how long the internet can keep a secret while I do this in real time with you.
What’s the direction we’re headed?
My mom’s style is very similar to my own. Think velvet sofas, wallpaper and the color blue. In fact, these photos are of my original childhood home’s living room (feel free to ignore the silly faces from my family). It has all the vibes that I decorate with even now. Because of how similar our style is you can consider this ORC a facelift and not a renovation. A “refresh” of sorts since we want it to feel “like her” and not “like us”.
While my mom’s style has definitely changed since then, mine clearly has not. Still running around in overalls and fair isle sweaters. Anyway, I think the core of my mom style is still the same and will fit nicely into our previous home. I am leaning heavily towards the Coastal Grandmother style, a lot of blues and white, rattans, stripes and simple florals. I’ve also been quietly collecting input from her on things that she loves and has always wanted to have in a house from what kind of bed se’s always wanted to own to what kind of fixtures she wants in a kitchen. Thankfully, there’s very little heavy lifting involved in the house since we renovated the kitchen and bathrooms in recently. So I can focus my attentions solely on the things on her wish list and little cosmetic finishes. Let’s take a look around.
Kitchen Before
The kitchen was and is our favorite room in this house. It makes up the vast majority of the first floor and is the closest to “complete”. We made so many changes in here over the course of us living here including new cabinet doors, changing the floors, building in this window seat and adding a pantry under the stairs. All things to make the space a bit more functional. We had every intention of living here for the long haul so it didn’t even occur to us to wrap up projects in this space for good. You can still see pencil marks from measuring the angles on the pantry and residual popcorn from scraping the ceiling. We’ll tighten up all of those little details -caulking, priming and giving a fresh coat of paint. I’m also highly considering painting the cabinets. I love how bright and light the kitchen feels with white cabinets but they are a bit fussy and already covered in stuck on food from 3 years of being this color.
Living Room Befores
I would hardly call this a proper before since I was already working in this space. Like the other rooms, we left this one “in the middle of”. In the living room, I plan to take down the book cases. We originally designed them to be able to crate our dogs when needed in the bases. But with that no longer being a need, we are going to demo them and possibly replace them with a slimmer silhouette. You can see the doors are off already. The fireplace is getting a slight refresh to remove the tile and the paint on the surround. After that, this long lean room will get a refresh of paint both on the walls and the ceilings.
Primary Bedroom Befores
Previously a guest room for us but this is actually the primary bedroom. It’s got a primary bathroom attached to it and it needs only cosmetic finishes with paint and some love. Too bad I don’t have a picture of it currently but it’s looking like yikes with how many items I have stuffed in it.
Primary Bathroom Before
This room is right off the guest room and it’s in great shape. We’ll change out the paint color and hardware on the sink. These pulls are not the easiest for folks to use. Considering it’s the bathroom that guest use when they come over since it’s on the first floor, we want to make that as simple as possible. To give maximum storage, we may also swap out the shelves above the toilet for something a bit more spacious.
Bathroom Befores
This room is from our last One Room Challenge in this house and nothing is getting changed. A fresh coat of white paint, caulk in the tub and a new shower curtain and we’re on our way. We’ll see if scope creep gets the best of me in this room but I still love it just as much as before.
Guest Bedroom Befores
This was previously our bedroom. It’s on the smaller side because it’s actually a guest room. We took over this room and the one across the hall as a suite. The changes need to this space are solely cosmetic. A little paint -and possibly a bigger fan now that I am giving it a good look lol- and we should be finished. We’ll dress this room as a guest room so I have some where to sleep when I stay over too late bothering my mom. We’ll see if I outfit the room across from it at all or if I’ll leave that space for my mom to outfit as a craft room herself.
Okay, that’s the quick scoop. I feel a bit better after talking this through since I realize most of this is going to be paint and blankets. Thanks for going me on this adventure with me. I can’t wait to share more with you all.