One Room Challenge- Week 6.2 The Reveal, A living room with a purpose

Posted on November 29, 2020

WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5

First of all, I want to give a huge thank you to Linda Weinstein and the team at One Room Challenge and the media partner Better Homes and Gardens for putting this event on even during these crazy times. This is my second ORC during COVID and this event has really given me something to look forward to and an opportunity to meet so many amazing designers.

Now let’s take a quick peek at where this room started. This is both the entry and the living room but it was not great at being either. It did not have a defined purpose and became more of a catch-all space. This room was a huge undertaking as I essentially built and installed everything so I was ecstatic when the ORC team announced an extension of time. With Covid, shipping delays are the new normal and I was happy to have any extra time I could get hence my week 6.2 update 😉

Built in desk

This odd corner of the room has been begging for a desk for some time and after shopping around and trying to find something that would fit the corner and match my style I quickly realized the best thing to do that was to build it myself. This was the biggest and most intricate build I have done on my own to date, but it was such a great learning experience and I was able to design the desk to fit the room perfectly.

I have to give credit where credit is due because this desk would not have turned out looking this good had it not been for my Kreg Jig and Kreg Hardware installation kit that was gifted to me. Having the right tools were necessary for this to come to life and seeing the girls sitting here doing their online classes brings joy to my heart knowing that I was able to give them this special space in our home.

Entry walls

Our home does not have a traditional entry, in fact, it doesn’t really have an actual front door. We currently have an old sliding glass door as the main door. This will be replaced soon, but the budget for that is a hefty one so it is the one thing we did not update in the room, YET.

That being said as you enter the house there are good size walls on either side of the door. I wanted to utilize this space to help keep this room organized and I had to build in a little surprise for our four-legged family members.

I started by defining these walls with a wood slat feature. I have always loved the wood slat look, and we have used it in several projects around the property, so it made sense to bring that look into our home. I went with vertical slats using mdf board cut into 3/4″ strips.

One one side of the room I built a small cabinet to hide the girls backpacks and school stuff that typically ended up sitting out in various places. I also added a few shelves with backets to hold the randoms like gloves, beanies, and umbrellas.

On the other side of the room I built an L-shaped cabinet that contains a pull out drawer concealing our dog food and a hidden cabinet for the cats litter box. I love our cats but the last thing I want is a litter box sitting out and they absolutely love their new hideaway.

The Fireplace

This is the one original thing in the space, I mean there was no way I was going to remove this gigantic beauty from the space. That being said it definitely needed a few updates.

We removed the mismatched marble pieces as well as the insert. We happen to have a second fireplace on the backside of this which is used as our main heat source. In the three years since we moved in, I think we lit a fire in this fireplace 2x. So with that and the knowledge that without a new insert we would have to redo the entire chimney, I decided that this fireplace update was all about the design. This is the first thing you see when you enter the house and I wanted it to look amazing.

I used 2″x6″ Fireclay tiles in Tumbleweed which are from their stunning new Desert Collection. These tiles really bring out the subtle pink in the quartz stone throughout the fireplace. I did a herringbone pattern along the hearth and a standard brick pattern on the inside. A huge thank you to Fireclay for sponsoring this project.

The Flooring

Now lets talk for a second about the flooring in this room, it had pink carpet that was not only pink but in pretty bad shape. thankfully I own a huge Turkish rug that almost covered the room, but in hindsite we should have ripped the carpet out when we moved in and just kept plywood flooring because it would have been better than that nasty stuff.

We have been planning to replace the flooring throughout the house, but when you live on a mini farm and have kids durability is just as important as style. Thankfully I found Flooret through my research and came to love not only the design of their flooring, but also the fact that their LVP flooring has a 40mil wear layer (the thickest in the industry) and was waterproof.

We may have had a few shipping delays due to COVID but I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Flooret on this project and grateful for their sponsorship of the space

Wrapping it up

This has been a crazy 8 weeks but I wouldnt change it for anything. I though that the Spring One Room Challenge was a challenge but this go around I pushed myself to learn new skills and perfect old ones.

I met so many amazing new friends and found inspiration from other challenge participants. Make sure to check out all of the amazing reveals from the other designers who participated here.