WEEK 6 // ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: CALIFORNIA CASUAL LIVING ROOM

Originally, I had today marked on my calendar as "reveal day". But for this round of the bi-annual One Room Challenge, we were given an extra week to bring our room designs to life. I took full advantage of the extra time we were given and tried to space out finishing tasks on our California Casual Living Room so I wouldn't make myself completely nuts. Nothing like going into the holiday season with a newly finished room and my sanity still in tact. 

That's not to say that these past few weeks have been completely smooth sailing. I've had my share of delays, costly screw ups and frustrating projects. This is my 6th One Room Challenge Room and despite weeks of planning and prep, those disruptive bumps in the road still managed to sneak in. There were times when I wondered if this was finally the one that would do me under.

For today's update, I thought I'd share a few of the challenges I encountered as I redesigned our living room. 

Challenges

Windows |  Dressing our large wall of windows was one of the greatest challenges I encountered during this redesign - and I knew it would be. Those windows were one of the features that drew me in when touring the house before purchase, but they have given me a lot of grief over these 7 years. From afternoon sun that fades furniture and raises the temperature in the room to scale to the odd triangle shaped windows that sit at the top - how and just what to hang became my focus for many weeks. In the end, I settled on a solution of layered shades (solar underneath, woven roman on top) and drapes.

Scale |  The ratio of couch to available floor space in the room presented some challenges around what size rug to buy for this space. We have deep a sectional that takes up quite a bit of real estate in the room and choosing an appropriate (and available!) rug size gave me lots of headaches early on. Same with artwork - we went quite large with our final selections and even taped off sections of the vast white wall for visual planning and placement long before we placed our order. Still - there was still quite a bit of head scratching (and holes in the wall) when it came time to hang them.

One Costly Screw Up

I had to buy our woven window shades twice.

It was a big deal when I finally purchased these shades. I did a lot of research on whether to buy a custom or standard size, fretted over color and material selection and when I finally found the right ones and got them hung, I celebrated - for about 30 minutes until I ruined them ALL with a pair of scissors. 

In my defense, what I SAW were plastic tags (you know the kind that allow price tags to hang from clothes in the store) holding the pleating together for shipping on the face of each shade. What I failed to realize until it was too late was that they actually held mechanical ribbing together on the back of each shade. So when that plastic tag was cut from the front, it consequently rendered that ribbing useless and my shades fell flat to the floor and would no longer draw up. 

Bummer. I thought about trying to sew them back in place, but in the end - I went ahead and bit the bullet for a second purchase of the same blinds. 

So yeah, that sucked.

Alls Well That Ends Well

But now here we are and suddenly its install day - err... weekend. Over the next couple of days, I'll be fluffing, fussing, arranging, rearranging and photographing the room for the big reveal next Thursday. I'm impatient so its possible you may see some sneak peeks in my Insta Stories (@holtwoodhipster) over the coming days. Wish me luck as this challenge finally draws to a close!

In the meantime, there are a couple of hundred other designers with rooms in progress who can use some extra support over at Calling in Home. So hop on over for lots of inspiration! Lots of talent in this group.

WEEK 5 // ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: CALIFORNIA CASUAL LIVING ROOM

In today's post, I'm sharing another update on the road to our California Casual Living Room, designed for the One Room Challenge. In Week 5, I'm turning focus away from art and windows to the adjacent narrow dining area that is essentially an extension of this space. 

Just prior to the start of the fall edition of the One Room Challenge, there was already quite a bit of progress made here through paint, moldings and new wood flooring. The former owners had utilized this area as their formal dining room. But in designing some of the more functional aspects for our own use, my husband and I felt it important to keep it casual and skip any fuss. We designed and built our own counter-height dining table from simple steel legs, powder coated in black and a wood table top from African Mahogany. For the past couple of years, that is all that existed in this pocket of our extended living room - that is until this past summer when we added four director style chairs to the mix. 

New molecular-style statement lighting helped to create some visual interest here and casts a pretty glow from both inside and outside the expansive windows that look out onto our backyard fire pit. One of the challenges we've faced in this redesign was that the space is quite narrow and tunnel like. Adding a large scale mirror near the window allowed for a lot of natural light reflection within the space and helped us solve that design dilemma. 

You can also see in the before and in-progress after photos above that we worked a bit to update the original aluminum window with paint and molding - that is after we painstakingly scraped off the dated mirror-like film from said windows (THAT was fun, but sooo worth it).

This past week we also turned focus to the credenza area. We wanted to elevate our IKEA cabinets with a new top - to both warm up the ultra modern feel (hard to tell here, but the cabinet fronts are glossy white) and hide the cabinet seams visible from the top. The cabinet itself is working well and the fact that it floats helps to balance out the heaviness of the furniture in the center of the room.

I took a trip to our local lumberyard and had them cut some white oak boards to size. In the coming days, those boards will be glued up and refinished into a solid top which will then be screwed into our credenza for a more finished look. I'm already loving the way it ties in with the new floors.

So a quick update again this week, but things are progressing nicely. Our frames and artwork arrived just yesterday so my homework this evening will be to begin the framing process. Lots of anticipation for the outcome here. The artwork is one of the elements I'm relying on to help tie everything together for my design. Cross your fingers for me... 

In the meantime, be sure to check out the work in progress designs from nearly 200 other design bloggers over at Calling it Home, as they too burn the midnight oil to finish their spaces by November 16.

WEEK 3 // ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: CALIFORNIA CASUAL LIVING ROOM

 I can hardly believe that we're smack dab in the middle of the 6-Week One Room Challenge and here I am still revealing snippets of my design plan. Perhaps I want to suspend the element of surprise just a wee bit longer or maybe I am still in the midst of decisions and purchases. Could be a bit of both. But I feel the room really starting to take shape and I'm not yet feeling too anxious or nervous about that hard deadline on November 8 (ask me in again Week 4...). 

If I had to pick a theme for this past week's work, it was all about art. I stripped the old DIY framed art off the walls this past weekend, expecting to commence with a lot of wall repair. Somewhere down the line I had adhered those hex mirrors from Ikea all over that wall and I guess I forgot that the ensuing repairs had already been completed. So happy surprise there. 

I've been researching art options for quite sometime now, archiving those that I really liked and what I found as it came time to make some purchase decisions - the tone of the art in a singular shop was really drawing me in. I was concerned that purchasing from one artist would appear that I did not put a lot of thought into art decisions, but the bottom line is that when you know, you just know.  I got buy off from the hubs (which was a miracle because we're rarely on the same page with artwork) and set to taping the room off to get a better idea for scale.

We have some really big walls in this space and I've been challenged with sizing the art correctly against them. The one over the couch is 15' long and in this room's previous iteration, we had hung a 72" photograph under plexiglass above the couch. But here, I'm looking to break up the space a bit with three separate works and feel like the smaller scale above the couch will work out well. By taping it off, I got a better sense of how it will play out, knowing the frames may buy me a little more visual real estate. Do you do this too? 

While new artwork is in the cards for this makeover, a full furniture overhaul is not. The final design will work in a few new pieces, but will put to use pieces we've sort of been collecting with the idea that one day it would all come together. The couch and coffee table will remain (that's our couch, but similar table to ours shown here). I scored a crazy deal on a pair of contemporary metal side tables earlier this year, but the jury is still out on whether both will reside in this room (I have just the place for the extra table if needed). The counter-height director's chairs were also scored during a Memorial Day sale, so they are already in place within the adjacent dining area, as is the molecular lighting fixture. So what about recent purchases? That rug. Oh lawdy - that rug... I ordered it from Istanbul from an international seller on Etsy a week ahead of the ORC kick off date, thinking it would take forever to arrive. Little did I know I'd be unwrapping it a mere 3 nights after I placed the order. It's everything and fingers crossed when it all comes together that it will be the tie that binds in my design.

Next week's update - we'll talk windows and possibly a little DIY action I have planned if I can make that happen over the coming weekend. My husband thinks I'm a little nuts with this idea that I've floated, but then I reminded him how many of my nutty little experiments are still living with us in our home.

You know, my family always asks what I get out of this - what is the prize if I "win" and always give me a funny little look when I tell them that there really is not competition per se except that I am giving myself this challenge to complete a design in 6 weeks.  I feel like the tight timeline, personal budget and to be frank -internet audience - push me to do things I might not otherwise try if I didn't feel that little added pressure. Some things I'm really proud of have come out of past seasons and I'm hoping to pull the same off this Fall.

Want to be inspired? You should really check out the other guest participants challenging themselves this season. There are 200 of them all linking up alongside me at Calling it Home. 

Catch up on Week 1 and Week 2 Here

Week 2 // Fall One Room Challenge: California Casual Living Room

Vanessa Alexander

Today we round the corner into Week 2 of the One Room Challenge, a biannual room makeover event hosted by Linda of Calling it Home.  Last week, I shared a look at the evolution of my living room - my focus for this challenge - and how it has slowly morphed through renovation and decor trends over the last 7 years.   This week, I am checking in with you to share more about my direction and the design influences for the California Casual design I will reveal on November 9. 

We've lived in our home while we've renovated and over time, focused sporadically on each room as budget has allowed. Two recent changes - a new floor and our recent kitchen remodel - have both helped solidify our design plan and created an easier, open feeling flow from room to room.  As I work to complete a more finished look with our adjacent living room and adjoined dining area, its important to me to not only create something complimentary to other rooms in the house, but continue with something that is aesthetically aligned with aspects that are important to my husband and I in our private living space.  In the end, what will our living room reflect about us and how will we live in it?

Design Influences

California Casual is a style that has recently come into better focus through the widely published work of local California designers. But I feel like its been evolving for quite some time. I can think back to places I frequented as a kid in the 80's and remember hints of what it has now become embedded into those early furnishings.  Nostalgia aside, what has drawn me most to this style are the airy rooms, earthy, muted tones, clean lines and soft textiles - all things that are comfortable and soothing for two people who spend most of their time saddled in front of a computer or navigating their way through LA traffic all day.

Amber Lewis

Laura Singleton

Surf Shack - Photo by Brittany Ambridge

Design Goals

Our design goals for this space are well defined and will continue to unify the rooms throughout the house. We will transition away from trendy accessories (many still packed away from when we put the floor in this past Spring) and work toward something modern, but a little more timeless.  

In next Thursday's update, I will share work in progress and a first look at some of the materials that will be brought into the room ahead of the final reveal. In the meantime, catch sneak peeks on Instagram (@HoltwoodHipster) and be sure to check out progress by the other guest participants on Calling it Home.