For the first time, we are going to—hopefully—document and share one of our reno projects from beginning to end! (Insert salsa girl emoji, because that’s what level of excitement I’m at right now!) This is all thanks to the kick in the butt that is the One Room Challenge.
The One Room Challenge is a design and DIY event where 20 designers are invited to transform a room over the course of 6ish weeks, document and share it. Then, guest participants (people like us) are able to join in and share their at-home projects alongside the big shots. I’ve ogled over One Room Challenge projects since we started our renovation journey two years ago but the way we work and tackle projects (mostly on Nick’s whims, ha!) has just never aligned with the event’s typical October and April timing. (And uhhh I’m also terrible at regular blogging. LOL Wish me luck!) This year things worked out courtesy of a global pandemic (sigh): the organizer’s decided to delay the challenge to May and extend it a bit in light of the current situation. So we technically have until July 1 to tackle our…
Bathroom
This week I’m walking you through the before of our little lower level bathroom. Our house is a Mid-century split, so sometimes we refer to this space as our “basement,” when in reality, it’s only about 2’ below grade at most. So luckily, this space can get pretty bright—and once I put my favorite white paint on the walls, it will be even brighter!
We actually started tackling the lower level renovation in January, and the desire to renovate this bathroom is what initiated the project. But as soon as we started ripping down the knotty pine in here, we decided we might as well do it all while we’re at it—we needed a dumpster to haul away this reno debris anyways. You can see what our lower level looked like in this “before” tour of the house, and lots of reno progress in my stories over on Instagram. But now, this bathroom is ready for all the love!
As you can see, not only are we working with a ton of knotty pine, we have a sweet 1950s green-on-green shower to contend with. Complete with original faucet handles!
What you might not know about me yet is that I loathe beige. I’m so crushed that someone painted this 1950s knotty pine to begin with, but beige?! Unforgivable! Almost worse than beige are what Nick and I like to call “homeowner specials,” like this early aughts vanity and attempt to match a backsplash to the ’50s green shower tile…it’s not even close, folks. I do wonder if we should be parting with the sweet ’70s contact paper in the medicine cabinet though?!
That’s it! A beige blast from the past! But look at all that light streaming in…ahhhh.
Next week, I’ll share about demo of all the knotty pine and that beast of a mint shower. And maybe share a sneak peek at our plans for this renovation! And of course, in the meantime you can find all the latest from my house to yours on Instagram (scroll down!)…because, well, we’re stuck here. Thanks, COVID.
More about the ORC
- Check out the list of official designer participants
- Explore Week #1 posts from all of the guest participant projects
- Check out the ORC blog for the latest, plus tons of great past projects
