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 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 1 // Fall 2017 One Room Challenge: A California Casual Living Room

Today marks the start of another round of the One Room Challenge, a biannual room makeover event hosted by Linda of Calling it Home. As I've done many times before, I am throwing my hat into the ring to makeover a space in my own home and will blog about my progress over the next 6 weeks. Each Thursday, I'll share an update here on the blog and I will link up with other guest participants sharing their own progress report. I'm certainly no newbie to this event and all the work that goes with it - last round I even redesigned our Modern Farmhouse Kitchen. For the Fall 2017 One Room Challenge, I'm completing the design of our Living Room/Adjacent Dining Area. To get a better idea of the design scheme throughout our home, you can see other rooms I've completed for the One Room Challenge linked up in the sidebar.

For now, let's take a closer look at the focus for this challenge.

In full transparency, you can see that our redesign has been underway for some time. We've been slowly renovating and remodeling our 1967 rancher here in Orange County, California for the last 7 years. I would have liked to have come right out the gate of our purchase with a full remodel done the right way. But as first time buyers looking at original 1960's everything, it took some time to find financial footing to back our plan. In the end, time was on our side because our plan has evolved quite a bit while living in our home these last years. After laying some of the groundwork, today we're finally feeling sure of our direction.

We gutted the room immediately upon purchase and started with a clean slate. Lighting, paneling and paint went a long way for a long time. We almost didn't want to clutter up the space with furnishings because after living for 9 years in a cramped beach area back house,  it felt so, so good to finally have these big empty rooms to call our own. We picked a glossy dark floor in haste and it would be nearly 7 years until we realized that it was the root of our mistake. In the process, we threw some good money after bad, redecorating and trying to brighten up a room darkened by the heavy contrast of the flooring we chose. It also took some time to find the tone of our home. Home trends and the romantic idea of owning a midcentury rancher with a pool sent us traveling down a decor path that leaned too desert glam for our everyday tastes. What resulted was a lack of cohesiveness in all the mass produced, hollywood regency-meets-boho accessories that had started to accumulate.

We recently brought in a more muted white oak floor that was a game changer for us. The path was clear and even more defined as we wrapped up the remodel on our kitchen for the Spring 2017 One Room Challenge. There is now a greater synergy from room to room as you walk our halls and ultimately there is a greater vision for what we want one of the most lived in spaces of our home to reflect about us.

In next Thursday's post, I'll share the game plan with you.

Want to be inspired? Check out the other guest participants in the One Room Challenge over on Calling it Home.

WHAT WE LOVED AND DIDN'T ABOUT OUR MODERN FARMHOUSE STYLE KITCHEN REMODEL

Well hello there!

We are fast approaching the 90-day mark on the backside of our Modern Farmhouse Kitchen reveal for the One Room Challenge (can you even believe it?!). As far as room makeovers go, I know I often wonder how the people living in the space feel about the "after" once the buzz of renovation activity has waned. Would they do anything differently given a second chance?

In that spirit, I thought I'd be a good time to circle back and let you know how things are holding up with our own kitchen remodel, what we're loving and if there are any things we'd reconsider if I had to do it all over again.

A quick reset to catch those of you up with our primary goals for this project.

Improved functionality in our smallish kitchen workspace
Durability across our selection of upgraded surfaces
Lots of layers and textural details
Creative use of space to maximize our what we have
Project an overall brighter background in a shady area of the house
Design it to flow and function well for entertaining
Ensure the update is complimentary with other areas of house

You can see what we started with [here] and what became of the adjoined kitchen / dining areas after in the reveal post [here].

So, let's break it down. Are we loving the changes we made? In short yes. Are there things we'd do differently, well maybe.