Taking Notes // Bedroom Table Styling

I've been busy on making over our master bedroom for the One Room Challenge and one of the areas I've been particularly focused on is the eventual styling of our dresser and bedside tables. While so much focus on designing a polished bedroom goes into layering linens, my eye always gravitates to the layered personal effects that to me, really breathe life into this private space. 

While my goal is a completely polished and finished room, I'm wary about over styling. It's a slippery slope to design a photographable room without oversimplifying or cluttering up with needless artifacts. So often, I look at a room in a magazine and say to myself: yeah, but it looks like nobody lives there or none of that even belongs in a bedroom. In the end, I want the final ORC outcome to convey the space we will be living in everyday. While I may not leave my socks on the floor or the aspirin on my bedside table when I photograph our master makeover, it's important to me to style our bedroom in a realistic manner.  Most of all - I want it to feel finished. So I'm taking notes from the pros by browsing through some of my favorite bedroom table vignettes.

So much of the furnishings, art and textiles will read masculine. I'm a bit intrigued about the idea of displaying some traditionally feminine artifacts like perfume on the dresser. I've always tucked them away in the bathroom or in a cabinet (one less thing to dust!). But I may just pull out some of my pretty bottles and display them. Maybe doing so will even encourage me to wear my favorite fragrances more often.

I'm also a bit leery about clutter. But meaningful displays - personal collections, photographs and artifacts that will serve as a reminder of good memories my husband and I shared together are something I'm considering in our final design. 

Most of all, I plan to use table top displays as an opportunity to bring color and life into our room. We're in week 4 now and still very much in the 'laying the groundwork' stage. But by next week, I should be well into adding in some of the layers that will add color, texture and dimension to our master makeover.

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One Room Challenge Project Reveal // Guest Bath Redux

 A mere six weeks ago, our guest bathroom bore the band-aid paint job of a hasty, make-do-till-we-can-do-it-right make-over. Today, it is a peaceful, modern retreat nearly fit for a master en suite. Friends, today I'm happily sharing my results for the One Room Challenge, a six-week, semi-annual makeover event that takes the blogosphere by storm. This round, I threw my hat into the ring as a linking participant and while it certainly was every bit the race-to-the-finish line challenge it was always intended to be, the community spirit of this event has admittingly been one of the best blogging related experiences I've had yet. So before I pull back the curtain on my own effort, please let me extend a warm word of thanks to Linda of Calling it Home for hosting and encouraging design minded bloggers like myself to join in amongst the core group of heavyweight designers who shared their reveals yesterday. What a thrill to be sitting here, typing up this post with yet another room finally completed at Holtwood House.  

Over the last three years, our home has slowly transitioned away from dated mid-century finishes and bad 1980's upgrades, to a more modern California ranch-style, with desert and coastal influences.  In the early days following our move, we took the the guest bathroom and upgraded it a bit with some paint and accessories. It was never meant to be a forever solution, but the whimsical striped pattern we had painted on the walls served us well for the last couple of years while we focused on other areas of the house. The One Room Challenge upgrade I'm revealing today brings our plan full circle. We inexpensively remade this space with V-groove paneled walls, concrete counters, paint, hardware, artwork and accessories.

We achieved our objective of 'desert, modern, luxe' through a creamy and earthy mix of color and texture. The clay-like tone of the concrete countertop really drove the direction for some of the more earthier elements like the cactus pottery, Nate Berkus bath rug, curtain trim and the tweed upholstery on the stool. The creamy undertones of Benjamin Moore's White Dove on the paneling and walls brightened up the space and made it feel fresh, while blending nicely with the older tile we have yet to replace. Our hope is that the mix of hardware and fixture metals will also whether design trends as far as these things go. I'll probably always be partial to the warmth of brass, but the coolness of chrome always feels new and modern.

One of the most refreshing changes in this space has everything to do with the panels draped on the sides of the tub. The old shower doors were aged, mismatched and dirty. We were so concerned about exposing the dated square tile behind the tub, that we had kept them there, thinking we'd eventually replace them when we installed new tile. Problem solved - doors were removed and the tile was not as hopeless as we always assumed it was. It's not the subway tile I had my heart set on, but it's in good condition and cleaned up just fine. We hung the paneling high and gave the narrow room some much needed height. 

I think all of the different elements play together cohesively, but there are a couple of individual details that I wanted to highlight. The little vanity stool was a Home Goods find made over with some multi-toned tweed fabric fished out of the discount bin at my local upholstery shop. In person, the undertones read gray-green and compliment my favorite vanity color nicely. I sprayed an inexpensive chrome robe hook from Home Depot gold to match the cabinet hardware. I opted not to install a towel rack in the room, but the hook now offers a place for visiting guests to hang a towel if needed. I skipped the spray paint and applied gold leaf to our two factory-grade IKEA mirrors and then roughed them up a bit with a scouring pad to help give them a bit of a patina. I love the dichotomy of 'aged' metal against the pristine paneling.

So before I close this chapter on the One Room Challenge Guest Bath Redux, one more quick look back on where it all began:

A big thank you again to Linda and to all of you who took time to drop me a note throughout these last 6 weeks. What an adventure. I also can not forget to thank my Pops who spent quite a bit of time helping me panel and paint and of course The Mister, who always indulges me in all my design imaginations. 

You can read about my plan and weekly progress here:

Week 1 - The Plan

Week 2 - Paneled Walls

Week 3- Small Wins

Week 4 - Color Palette + Vanity Reveal

Week 5 - Loose Ends

 Please be sure to pop on over to Calling it Home and congratulate all of the talented, hardworking participants linking up today with their big reveals.  

Guest Bath Redux // ORC Week 5

   

It happened - my first moment of true One Room Challenge style panic. It was over something seemingly trivial really. All the bigger, time consuming projects are well behind me now in Week 5. But there I was, in the midst of a crisis, the likes of which I had not yet encountered in previous weeks - weeks when much larger tasks were tackled like hanging the paneling, constructing a concrete countertop and choosing paint and hardware.

I think it had everything to do with the fact that just one week from today, I will call this room complete and reveal a project that has really been my personal mission for 6 weeks. Fear of public humiliation or failure, are part and parcel to a public reveal of one of the most personal spaces within our home. 

That mini meltdown now behind me, I'm persevering and tying up all the little loose ends for our Guest Bath Redux. Here's what needs to happen over the next week so I can call this room complete.

It's reassuring to know that I'm in really good company for the home stretch! Be sure to stop by Calling it Home and cheer on all my blogger friends who are linking up as they wrap up their own rooms. 

You can read all about the One Room Challenge, a 6-week sprint to makeover one space, created by Linda of Calling it Home right here. 

You can read about my plan and weekly progress here:

Week 1 - The Plan

Week 2 - Paneled Walls

Week 3- Small Wins

Week 4 - Color Palette + Vanity Reveal

Guest Bath Redux // ORC Week 4

It's already Week 4 of the One Room Challenge and today I'm linking back up with many of my fellow 'design addicted' web-mates over on Linda's blog Calling it Home to showcase my progress on the one room that has been a challenge for me over the last three years. I'm not going to beat around the bush today... by the end of this post, I'm going to pull back the curtain a bit and reveal my favorite part of this guest bath transformation. 

But let me first lay the groundwork. The palette for my guest bath design really took shape from what would become of the counters. I knew all along the adjacent walls would be white and because we have already had a lot of success with Benjamin Moore's 'White Dove' elsewhere in the house, I decided that color would also appear here. I tested it against a brighter, truer white, painting a swatches right beside our dated bath tile and 'White Dove' won out for it's creamy undertones. Plain and simple- it actually complimented our tile quite well.

On the wall, 'White Dove' looks fresh and clean. I plan to pair it up with some of creamier tones to compliment and balance earthy colors that made their way onto our vanity. Mixed metals is my jam, so I'm mix-mastering it up with both polished and brushed brass accents and chrome fixtures.

The whole bathroom reno centers around these counters. You may have thought it was all about the paneled walls. That was a happy side outcome. What really motivated me to focus on this room for the ORC was the fact that I saw no end in sight to the 7 feet of outdated, shiny black laminate countertops. It was one of those unfortunate relics left behind from the previous owner that nagged at me day in and day out as dust and watermarks constantly blanketed the surface. A 7ft piece of stone is out of our budget for the moment, so I set to scheming, intending all along to transform this blight on my bathroom into the concrete counter of my dreams.

 There are many tutorials on Ardex Feather Finish applications out there. Though it is intended to fill cracks and smooth concrete flooring in preparation for tiling and other professional finishes, I may have found my soulmate in this versatile product. I tested the waters on a smaller wet bar counter in our dining room and realized through that experience what tools I would need to make the lengthier vanity top a smoother experience. In the end, I used everything from concrete and drywall tools to my mini cake spatula to get just the application I wanted. Three coats of Ardex, sanding in between with 220 grit paper and two coats of sealer later and I had it, the concrete counter of my dreams. 

For the first few days thereafter, I thought it couldn't get any better. But then, I found the paint color for the base drawers and cupboards. I thought for sure I'd go white or dark charcoal gray. I'm glad I decided to take a chance with Benjamin Moore's Aura line and a greenish-gray they call Rainstorm. I mean... I walk into the room just to stare at the richness of it all day long. In a surprise development, it's the scene stealer- not the glorious concrete countertops after all. The matte counters, flat color on the cabinets and polished brass pulls reassured me that I was moving in the right direction with this reno. That leaves just two short weeks to iron out all the little details before the big reveal. 

You can read about my plan and weekly progress here:

Week 1 - The Plan

Week 2 - Paneled Walls

Week 3- Small Wins

Be sure to check out progress by all the talented bloggers linking up today over at Calling it Home.

Guest Bath Redux // Week 3 One Room Challenge Link Up

It's time to link up for Week 3 of The One Room Challenge and today I'm sharing more developments on what we are calling our Guest Bath Redux. A 6-week deadline is motivation enough for steady progress and wouldn't you know, we're moving right along with this renovation and have finally gotten into some of the prettier moments and lighter DIY projects. 

Not caught up yet? You can always read more about the game plan (Week 1) and the most impactful change to come out of this renovation (Week 2) in earlier posts.

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Perhaps we should really be talking paint colors before accessories, but that post will have to wait. You see, I'm holding out on the paint discussion because that will also involve the vanity and well... I'm just not yet ready to reveal that perfect little piece of this puzzle. So let's get to some of the other ways we're working to achieve our desert.modern.luxe vibe for this galley bath. 

Gold Leaf Mirrors

I took an evening and gold leafed both of the existing Ikea Grundtahl mirrors. I had kicked around the idea of spray paint, but decided in the end that the result would be too flat and not really arrive at the right contrast I was hoping for against the pristine white breadboard backdrop. I opted instead to apply Gold Leaf sheets and even left some of the areas around the frame looking a bit distressed. 

Vanity Stool

I've had a deco style vanity stool sitting alongside the tub for months now. I had picked it up on a whim at Home Goods, sure that I'd eventually give it a little makeover. While most of the other elements in the space will remain neutral, I'm looking to add a little pop of pattern or color to the room through this stool. Those chrome legs might even end up gold. I'm still up in the air on that one, just as I am the final pattern for the seat, though I'm currently floating several potential solutions.

 Gold Pendants

Speaking of gold, the commercial grade stainless finish on our IKEA pendants (discontinued) got made over with my favorite Rustoleum spray paint. The shiny gold bases are the start of the mixed metal look that I'm planning to weave throughout the bath. We saved a little dough by recycling the fixtures, while  achieving an elevated look in just a couple of quick coats. Win, win. 

  Shower Doors

Sayonara you dated and mismatched shower doors. Oh I couldn't wait to get rid of you! True, their absence now reveals a dated square tile backsplash, but I'm going to make lemons from that lemonade. The tile is white and in good shape, as is the tub so I'll be polishing that 80's tile job up and will make do for the next 5 or 6 years until we are ready to really renovate the shower area. For now, it's appealing to my love of all things "geometric" and it's staying.

So that's where we are at the half-way point on this project.  Next week, I'll let you in on the some of big makeover changes happening along that 7 foot vanity. 

Until then, be sure to check out some of the progress by my determined and talented blogger friends linking up with Linda today over at Calling it Home.

Week 1 - The Plan

Week 2 - Paneled Walls

Follow along on Instagram for continued ORC progress and sneak peeks!

Guest Bath Redux // ORC Week 2

If I have one design quirk, it's my tendency to approach a project with a gross underestimate of time, money and ease (was that just one or three quirks?). I must confess that I've become a little notorious for convincing both husband and dad that whatever idea pops into my little head will be a snap with little hit to our pocket book. Though they may know better, I'm lucky these two fellas love me enough to help me make all my little plans and imaginations come to life. Take note of this piece of trivia, for it becomes a factor in the rest of today's tale. 

It's Week 2 of the One Room Challenge and today, I'm linking back up with an update on our Guest Bath Redux. You can read more about the One Room Challenge, created by Linda of Calling it Home and the Link Up I'm participating in right here.  

Last week, I shared my plans to give our primary guest bathroom a 'desert modern luxe' feel to sync up with the rest of the house. Today, I'm diving right in to share the first and arguably the most impactful element in this transition - the newly paneled backsplash behind the 7 foot vanity.  While formulating my plan for this space, I kicked around several ideas for this wall. But in the end, two things really drove the decision to go with V-groove paneling.

No window // The bathroom sits right in the middle of our floor plan with no window (peeve). We have a standard fan for ventilation, but ultimately I could not bring myself to paper a wall where it would inevitably succumb to condensation. Did I mention that while this is our guest bath, it's actually my favorite place to shower? 

Cost // We only needed to purchase three, 4x8' sheets of paneling. At $75 total, this was an inexpensive way to add visual interest and a contemporary backdrop for the rest of our makeover plan.

We also really liked the way it looked in inspiration images I pulled and the fact that it mirrors other paneled elements in our home made this a no brainer. A happy side effect was that once hung, the paneling also made this galley bath feel much larger and more open - the biggest win in my opinion.

But I naively approached the job with a "we'll just cut it and tack it up on the back wall" attitude. Dad had spent a little more time mulling the idea over and once we dug in, I understood why. Unless you are working with new construction (and even then it's iffy), walls never seem to measure the same height or width from one point to another. The mere fact that we were working with a pre-determined, lined pattern in the paneling would only accentuate this problem- and truth be told, it did.

We had decided to wrap the paneling around the short adjacent wall that feeds into the vanity area. It's the first focal point you see when you walk through the door to the bathroom so it had to be straight. Dad knew to start there. But lining up the paneling once we got to the backsplash revealed what he already suspected from the early project assessment. We'd end up with uneven spacing between the grooves at both the top near the ceiling and bottom at the vanity edge. It didn't help that the 40 year old vanity was not quite level either.

What should have taken only a couple of hours to complete turned into quite a custom paneling job, some extra spending and a good 12 hour day to get it right. Lots of learnings right out the gate. In the end, it all turns out more than ok, I promise. Be sure to check back next week for another update. I'll dish on some of the pretty already happening in here and share some of the easier to tackle DIYs that are helping to bring some of the desert luxe into our more modernized space.  

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Week 1: The Plan