One Room Challenge: Week 1 (the Before Shots)

The One Room Challenge begins today! Twenty designers and design bloggers will each be sharing room makeovers from start to finish over the next six weeks. I’ll be taking on our bedroom and its adjacent room. Two rooms, technically, but I’m treating them as one because they’re open to each other. Also, one side clearly needs a lot more help than the other.

Here’s a shot from when we moved in, so you can better understand how the two rooms work together. The farthest doorway, through which you can see a kitchen sink, is no longer there. We removed it when we turned a former kitchen (from when our house was divided into a 3-flat) back into a bedroom.

The Bedroom

Our home was shot for the Christmas issue of HGTV Magazine last year, and at the time, the bedroom looked like this.

We upgraded from a queen-sized bed to a king last fall, and when we did that I bought a new bed that I absolutely love. I gave away all of our old too-small bedding and picked up a pink linen duvet cover and pale pink sheets. The new bed is much higher than our old platform bed, so I also needed new bedside tables. I found one as a floor model on clearance, and decided that a long, low dresser would work next to the bed on the other side. MegMade is a local Chicago company that refinishes vintage furniture, and they invited me a while back to their showroom and warehouse to select a piece. I chose a vintage 9-drawer dresser (three drawers are hidden behind that door) and had them paint it white.

If you’re noticing that blue mesh guardrail hanging down from the bed, no doubt you are jealous of its beauty. Calvin is co-sleeping because by child number three we have given up. Have at it, children! Raise yourselves! I was working from a desk in the bedroom for a while after he was born. I’m not now, but the desk is still in the room (having moved from the windows over to the french doors). We can’t open the doors now with it in the way, so it’s gotta go.

If you read my last post about the debacle that has been our Victorian’s rewiring, you know that there was a lot of damage to the walls and ceilings. This portion of the second floor fared well though, with only half a dozen relatively small holes to repair.

On the other side of the room, we have two doors with just enough room for a dresser between. The door on the left is the entrance from the hallway, and on the right is the closet/dressing room.

The Den

Moving on the other side of the french doors, we have the adjoining room. The Victorian has some quirks to it and a name hasn’t really stuck for the space (sitting room / den / TV room / family room), but I suppose “den” is appropriate enough. This is the part that really needs to most help during the One Room Challenge. It hasn’t changed much since we threw all of our mismatched furniture in there.

This is where we watch movies or play video games because we don’t have a TV downstairs. We aren’t big sports fans (nobody’s coming over to watch ‘the game’) and with tablets and streaming, I feel like the role of a TV in the home isn’t as important. Our needs may change as the kids get older, but right now this setup works for us.

When we remodeled the second floor, we returned the hallway to its original configuration and were able to remove the extra door. You can play a game of spot the differences below. The white rug is in a different room now, that little lantern came down when the room was rewired, and simple curtains went up a while back. Little changes that didn’t amount to much, but things will soon be looking a whole lot better.

There’s a play table, shoved in a corner, that doesn’t need to be there. The armchair is nice but it isn’t great in that spot. Again, we hadn’t done much in this room beyond the initial attempt to just make it functional. Comfy couch? Check. TV? Check. The bookcases will stay because we have too many books. There are some holes to fix in this room too, but nothing as bad as when we removed that door, so small potatoes.

The Plan

Paint, paint, paint. Do you want to get mad at me for painting the millwork this week, or the next? (It’s going to look amazing.) The bedroom is in a good place but needs a bench at the foot of the bed, a rug, something over the dresser, curtains, and other finishing touches. The den is getting a new rug too, chairs, and a whole lot more. I’ll have all the details of the plan for you next week, complete with a couple of mockups.

I cannot wait to show you. I’ll be sharing tons of sneak peeks and behind the scenes stuff on Instagram and Snapchat, so follow along over there too. The painting is already underway!

Follow along with the One Room Challenge participants!

• Claire Brody • The Curated House • Design Manifest • Driven by Decor • Honey We’re Home • Hunted Interior • The Makerista • Making it Lovely • My Sweet Savannah • Pencil and Paper Co. • The Pink Clutch • Savvy Home • Simplified Bee • Sketch 42 • Jill Sorensen • Orlando Soria • Thou Swell • The Vault Files • Waiting on Martha • The Zhush • Media Partner House Beautiful • TM by CIH