one room challenge – simplify the chaos

Spring 2022 One Room Challenge Week One: Baby Boy Nursery Plans!

Today marks the start of another round of the One Room Challenge and I am excited to join in the fun once again! I’ll be honest, up until yesterday, I didn’t think I’d be participating this time around. But I have been feeling a growing nesting urge to start in on the nursery for baby boy and I decided this would give me a great opportunity to focus in on his room while I’m still in my second trimester sweet spot of having the energy and drive to tackle it!

I’m currently 21 weeks pregnant, and in this post a few weeks ago, I revealed that we’re having a boy and shared my initial thoughts of what to do with the nursery now that Vi has moved over to a shared room with LJ. At first, I just planned to do a few minimal updates, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go a little bigger. Justin and I feel confident that this will be our final pregnancy, and it’s the first time we’ve found out the baby’s sex before birth. Since it’s the first (and only) time I’ve had the opportunity to plan out all the nursery details in advance, I decided why not have some fun with it?

Here’s what the room looks like right at this very moment:

An absolute hot mess.

As Vi shifted over to LJ’s room, we had to move some furniture around and this room basically just became a catch-all storage spot until we can decide what we want to keep for the nursery and what we want to get rid of. Here’s what it looked like when it functioned as Vi’s nursery:

I have a feeling that this renovation is going to be one of those times where things slowly come together piece by piece, but I threw together a simple mood board with some of the initial ideas I have for the space. This just gives me an sense of the direction I want to head: lots of earth tones and graphic prints, with plants to bring in an organic feel and soften things up.

First things first, the pink scalloped wall needs to go. While it is super cute, it was really done as a simple solution to update the room and move it away from feeling like a sterile white box for Vi. This week, my plan is to prep and paint all the walls (99% sure I’m going to go with Sherwin Williams Evergreen Fog). I’m also strongly considering adding a ceiling treatment in the same color – perhaps something similar to the planking we did on the ceiling in the office? We’ll see!

I’ll be sharing my real time progress over on Instagram, so be sure to follow along there if you want more frequent updates. You can also check out all the other ORC participants here – lots of fun projects happening this time around!

ORC Week Six: Laundry Room Shelving, Lighting, and More!

This week was a big week for progress in the laundry room! Shelving was built, lighting was installed, doors were finished – the room is really coming together and I am loving it.

And because it’s always fun to look back on how far we’ve come, here’s where that same view was six weeks ago:

Originally, I envisioned creating floating shelves from wall to wall, but as it came time to work on the shelves, I decided to pivot a bit.

Floating shelves are pretty time-consuming to make from scratch and I haven’t had as much time as I had hoped to work on this room lately. Plus, the more I thought about it, I realized that since this is just a phase one renovation (we still plan to fully gut and renovate this room and the adjacent bathroom to create a bigger laundry + mudroom in a few years), shelves with brackets would be easier, quicker, and less expensive. It just made more sense to keep this project simple!

Justin had a few extra 1 x 8 oak boards leftover from a previous project and they were the perfect width to create two shelves. Using our miter saw, I cut two boards down to fit wall to wall and then gave them a light sand with our orbital sander + 120 grit sandpaper.

I wiped them down with a tack cloth and stained them with a stain we already had. Once the stain dried, I used a foam brush to apply a layer of this polyurethane and boom – shelves were ready for install!

I purchased these black brackets and Justin installed them after work using his new laser level (this thing was SO handy and I know we’ll be using it many times in the future!) The whole project took maybe 3-4 hours of active work time start to finish. Simple, easy, and inexpensive – win, win, win. I am so thankful to have functional storage that looks great!

A few other things that happened this week: I finished painting all the doors and trim and Justin installed new matte black door hardware. It’s always surprising to me how small details like door hinges and levers can pack such a big punch!

We also finally updated the two boob lights. I wanted a recessed light for the ceiling above the hallway portion but the type of junction box that had been installed prevented my first two choices from working. I settled on this low profile light and we’re happy with it – it is inconspicuous enough that it sort of just fades into the ceiling and doesn’t take visual attention away from other elements of the room.

I mentioned last week that the initial light I wanted for above the washer and dryer was out of stock or backordered on several different sites, so I once again decided to pivot a bit. I really liked this light from Rejuvenation but I struggled to pick a color. It’s just so hard to know if the color you see on screen will translate to real life like you expect! At $229 . . . I wanted to be very sure I liked the light. Then yesterday evening, I was walking through Lowe’s and happened to see this light out of the corner of my eye. I was immediately inspired to do a little DIY upgrade and create the look I wanted for less.

I purchased the light and a can of this spray paint. I use painter’s tape to block off the lightbulb hole of the dome and set it down flat on a large piece of cardboard. I sprayed several light coats of the spray paint until I had even coverage and let it dry. Justin installed the mount and I screwed on the dome.

The Rejuvenation light was $229 and this one was $59. Add in tax and the cost of spray paint, and this light ended up costing me around $70. A big savings and I think it’s a pretty good dupe! This also served as a reminder that a little creativity and bravery can go a long way. Justin couldn’t believe I would spray paint a brand new light, but I knew the look I was going for and just went for it. I’m so glad I did – I’m thrilled with the light and the way it fits the space!

We’ve got two weeks left in the challenge and I’m just about finished with my to-do list. I still have some tweaking to do – for now I just shopped my house and pulled some art, a rug, and a few little decor pieces to get a feel for what works in the space. I also still need to create some hanging storage for coats above the shoe bench to finish off the little mudroom corner. The end is in sight!

Be sure to check out all the other ORC participants here!

ORC Week Two: Black Windows + Layout Options

We’re one week in to the One Room Challenge and over this past week, I’ve made a small amount of progress with our primary bedroom.

Since I am still waiting for our bedframe to arrive (the original delivery date was supposed to be tomorrow, but now the updated tracking says Monday), I’m not able to make many other decisions on colors and textiles yet. One thing I knew I wanted no matter what was black windows, so I tackled that this past week!

I’ve been slowly painting all our windows Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black in a satin finish and I just love the way it makes the windows pop! I ripped off the old trim because we’ll be replacing that anyways and it made the windows much easier to paint.

It might not be much, but I’m happy with this simple change and I’m excited to keep moving on the project!

I’ve been using floorplanner.com to try out a few different layout options and get an idea for how I’ll actually set up the room. The room is very large (we think too large) but it has some design challenges with door placement and shape of the room. Here’s one layout option with the king bed in the same place our queen bed currently is:

The benefit to the above layout is an easy room flow – the door on the left side of the room leads out to the hallway and the door on the bottom leads to our bathroom. It does make the room feel too heavy on one side, and with a king bed, I think the walkway between the bed and the corner of the wall down from the bay window might feel a little cramped.

The other layout I’m considering is:

This room feels more balanced, and I love that I could get a little chair or vanity in the bay window area. The downfall is, now we have to walk all the way around the bed every time we walk through the room and we’re not sure how annoying that would be. My gut is leaning towards this bed placement, so I think we’ll at least try it out. If we hate it, we can figure something else out!

I’m crossing my fingers that my bed actually arrives Monday so we can keep moving on this project. In the meantime, be sure to check out all the other ORC participants here!

Spring 2021 One Room Challenge Week One: Primary Bedroom Mood Board!

I’m so excited to be joining in as a guest participant for another round of the One Room Challenge and this time, Justin and I are finally addressing our bedroom!

I forgot to take “before” pictures prior to our new adjustable base getting delivered yesterday, so right now the room looks like this:

The base is heavy, so we had them set it up and once our mattress is delivered we’ll take down the old bed and move the base in place. You probably get the point, but here’s a few better shots of the room without the extra bed from back in January 2020. As you can see, we’ve done almost nothing to it since then!

The room feels like a blank slate. All we have done since moving in two years ago is replace the overhead boob light (if you know, you know) with a matte black ceiling fan and paint the walls from the same brown that was everywhere in this house to white (Sherwin Williams Alabaster). That’s it! We have no art on the walls, no window coverings at all (don’t worry, we have enough trees for privacy), just nothing inspiring or relaxing or anything. It just feels like a room, and while I know we’re lucky to have it and we don’t need a single thing for it to be functional, we’re really ready to treat ourselves to a nicer, more relaxing space.

We’re also ready for some upgrades. Our mattress was my college graduation gift so it’s *cough* 10 years old, and while it’s still in decent shape, it’s not providing us with the best sleep anymore. We’re using an old comforter that used to be in our guest room. Our bedside lamps are now mismatched because the other matching lamp died a few months ago and we just used a spare we had. It feels a bit like a minimalist hot mess (is that a thing!?) We’ve just never wanted to spend money on “ourselves” and our bedroom before, but it finally feels like the right time to do it.

I’ve been gathering inspiration for months now and I put together a mood board to help me home in a direction for the room. Here’s my inspiration for the space:

I want our bedroom to feel like a retreat, but like, a colorful, moody retreat. I think bedrooms that are light and airy and done in a neutral color palette are beautiful, but that’s just not the direction I want to head with this room. I’m also not a huge fan of all white bedding (serious question: how do people keep it looking crisp and clean!?) so I’ll be incorporating lots of different textures, patterns, and colors in the bedding. The room is actually very large (too large – who needs enough space for a dresser, a queen bed AND a king bed!?) and there is a lot of wall space so I’ve been thinking of ways to add some interest without overcommitting to a huge project and an accent wall doesn’t feel like a great option because there is a window or door on every wall. Right now, I’m leaning towards trying a limewash paint but I’m going to hold off on making a decision until I can pull more elements of the room together.

Our base is here and our mattress and bed are on their way – I’m really excited to start tackling this room! I’ll be posting weekly check-ins on Thursdays but if you’d like to follow the process more frequently, I’ll be posting more real-time updates on my Instagram @simplifythechaos

Be sure to check out all the other participants and their projects here!

One Room Challenge Week Three: Slow and Steady Progress

We’re another week in to the Fall One Room Challenge and since last week’s update a LOT has happened! And yet, nothing has been finished.

We are very much in the messy middle of this project and if I’m being honest, it feels a little frustrating to not be able to check anything off our list. Our cabinet doors arrived and they are so pretty! But they’re still not painted or attached to the cabinet. We took our ugly fluorescent light down and our new fixture arrived! But it’s not installed yet so we just have wires hanging from the ceiling. We’ve started the window and door trim and I’m loving the new look! But we still need a couple final pieces of trim to complete each one. So many things are in progress and nothing is fully complete, but it feels like we’re nearly to the top of a steep hill and once we get there, we can roll down and everything will pick up speed.

The thing we really need to do in order to reach that hill top is finish all the planking. So much is waiting on that: installing the ceiling fixture, crown molding, window and door trim, baseboards, painting, etc. The planking needs to be done first before we can tackle anything else.

The reason this step is taking so long is because we’re covering all the walls and the ceiling and there’s a lot of measuring and troubleshooting involved. None of our walls are square, we have a bay window, and there are so many tricky little cuts involved.

Just look at the photo below. Between the three windows + trim and the bay window + all the angles on the wall and ceiling, you can see its a lot of precise measuring and cutting with each board used. We’re cutting out notches, figuring out angles, finagling wonky corners – it’s a time-consuming, meticulous process.

It’s also not really a one-person process. The walls are one thing, but the ceiling is absolutely a two person job. We’re using 12 foot planks and there’s just no way for one person to be able to hold the plank in place and nail everything at the same time. So I not only need Justin to be home to keep making progress, but we need our kids to be napping or have someone else watch them in order to work. Needless to say, we’re working with small, inconsistent windows of time to get things done.

This weekend, LJ is going to visit my parents so we’ll have some extra time when Vi’s napping to hopefully finish out the rest of this planking. From there, progress is really going to pick up so I have a feeling that next week’s check-in is going to be full of finished updates! I can’t wait!

Make sure to stop by the One Room Challenge blog to check out all the other projects in progress!

Fall 2020 One Room Challenge Week One: My Dreamy Office Plans!

I am so excited for another round of the One Room Challenge!

After tackling our basement kitchen renovation in the spring challenge, I was inspired to choose another space to renovate for the fall challenge. If you’ve been following me on Instagram lately, you know I’ve chosen to renovate our home office and make it the dreamy office + library of my dreams.

Here’s where we started at the beginning of this challenge:

One Room Challenge Home Office Renovation

When we first moved in, this was one of the rooms I was most excited about. From the first moment I saw it, I knew that this could be a special room. First of all, I think the French doors (which aren’t really pictured but you can see a bit of them in the first image) set the stage for a dramatic space. My heart was immediately invested in the idea of built-in storage along the far wall and I could picture this being a warm and cozy space to work on a computer or relax and curl up with a good book. Unfortunately, this room was not high on our priority list so for the first year (yes, year!) of living here it looked more or less like this:

I joked that this was our “Room of Requirement” (Harry Potter anyone?) because it had all the unpacked boxes from our move. All the extra stuff that we didn’t need yet was stored here and whenever I needed to find something random, this was usually where I found it. It was a hot mess of a room and didn’t get fully unpacked until July (14 months after moving in). Throughout that time it rarely ever got used as an office – I would typically just work in the less-cluttered kitchen – but it did sometimes double up as an overflow guest room. The picture below shows how last fall, my in-laws stayed in here because our guest room was mid-renovation AND a couch from our living room had to get moved in as well because of our Christmas tree in the living room. All our boxes were shoved either behind the couch or under the desk on the left side of the room. Suffice to say, this room has been a workhorse for us.

Now that we’ve tackled a few of the more pressing needs in our house, it felt like the right time to address this room and I can barely contain my excitement! My goal to create storage with the built-in cabinets + bookcases while still allowing plenty of room for a desk and office chair. I’m also hoping to create a cozy reading space tucked in the bay window area.

The Plans

This is the largest-scale DIY room renovation that Justin and I have ever tackled on our own. Justin was admittedly nervous that my plans would be too difficult to actually implement ourselves (in all fairness, I do tend to make things sound like they’ll be easier to do than they actually are haha) but so far we’re cautiously optimistic about completing this project! Our to-do list includes:

-remove all existing beadboard

-DIY built-in storage along the back wall with closed cabinets on the bottom and open bookshelves on top

-install vertical planks from floor to ceiling on all walls (and hopefully the ceiling too!)

-replace window and door trim

-replace baseboards

-add crown molding

-PAINT!

-replace light fixture (that fluorescent one has got to GO)

-finishing touches: curtains, cozy seating, all the fun stuff!

We’ve already ripped out all the beadboard and the built-ins are underway! If you follow me on Instagram (@simplifythechaos) you can see all the progress there. We just finished all the trimming out and plan to fill all the nail holes this week. I’ll share all the details on the DIY built-ins next Thursday! For now I’ll leave you with this little sneak peek:

I’m SO excited to transform this space into the office + library of my dreams. Check back here on Thursdays to watch the progress unfold! 🙂 In the meantime, you can check out all the other ORC participants and their chosen rooms here.

One Room Challenge Week One: The Plan for the Basement Kitchen

The One Room Challenge (ORC) is a bi-annual challenge where twenty featured designers choose a room in their house to focus on renovating and finishing in a six week timeline. Because of the pandemic, this year’s challenge got postponed to May and the timeline is extended to eight weeks. The ORC always encourages guest participants to join in and I have decided to participate this time around!

I love that this is not a competition, but a way for everyone from top interior designers to little amateur DIYers like myself to inspire and encourage one another as they work to transform a space in a focused amount of time. I’m excited to join in and work on renovating . . .

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. . . our basement kitchen!

The Space

We love to entertain and host events, so this basement space was a huge selling point for Justin and I when we bought the house last year. The basement level is mostly comprised of a large, open-concept living space and this kitchen, although it does also have our guest bedroom + bathroom. There is potential for this level to be its own living quarters as an in-law suite or space for an adult child living at home, but for the foreseeable future we will use it as a gathering space for hosting friends and family. To the right of the kitchen is a door leading directly to our patio and pond, so it is definitely going to get a lot of use, especially in the summertime.

Truthfully, there are a lot of things I would love to change about this kitchen. The half wall + ledge along the refrigerator side of the kitchen isn’t ideal but it has to be there because it is part of the house foundation (that side of the house is built into a hill, while the other sides are not). I have a several ideas for larger projects that would make this space more functional and visually appealing and would love to completely re-work the layout, replace the tile, upgrade the appliances, the whole shebang. Since this not our primary kitchen though, I just cannot justify allocating a substantial budget to remodeling the space. It doesn’t make sense to pour a ton of money into a full remodel when there are many other rooms in the house that I want to address that we’ll use more often.

That being said, since this will be a major entertaining space, I don’t want it to feel dated. I want it to feel cozy and welcoming for our guests. I want it to feel like a reflection of us and fit in with the rest of our home. I want to freshen it up and make it shine, I just don’t want to spend a fortune doing that.

So I’m putting my own little spin on the ORC and issuing myself this challenge: incorporate budget-friendly cosmetic upgrades and DIY changes that are high impact but low cost.

The Plan

–Flooring: I actually have already worked on the flooring and upgraded our boring tan tiles using the power of paint! I used a Rustoleum system that required 7 days to fully cure, and I wanted to get that out of the way before I started working in the kitchen so I completed this last week and the floors finished curing yesterday. I plan to write up a blog post on the process I used so look for that next week, but in the meantime, here’s a peek at the new floors:

–Cabinets: The cabinets are in good shape, but I don’t love the wood tones. My plan is to give them a dramatic face lift by painting them a dark, moody color and upgrading the hardware on them.

I also want to make the space feel larger by removing the awkward single upper cabinet to the left of the sink and replacing it with artwork or possibly a small floating shelf.

–Walls: That burnt orange needs to go!

–Countertops: This is the item that is the most up in the air. I really dislike the counter tops, but my options for upgrading are limited with my budget. I may try a simple upgrade like painting them, or I may go for a DIY counter top option using butcherblock or even concrete. Or perhaps I’ll just learn to deal with them as is. I need to wait and see how the rest of the kitchen comes together before making a decision about them, but I would really like to do something.

–Remove trim around the half wall: The half wall + ledge extends through the whole length of the side of the basement, and while there’s nothing I can do about its existence, I can make it look a little more modern by ripping off the decorative trim on either side of the ledge and creating a cleaner, more streamlined overall look. I’ve already removed it from the living area ( wrote a blog post here about the process) and I plan to follow the same steps in the kitchen.

–Replace window trim: I want to change the look of the windows with a chunkier trim to match what we did in the guest bedroom and plan to enlist Justin’s help with this. 😉

–Finishing touches: Different barstools, some artwork, maybe a patterned runner . . . just a few little touches that finish off the space and make it feel complete and not like an afterthought kitchen.

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The Challenges

Two big challenges with this project: the budget and the fact that I’m a stay at home mom to a 2.5 year old and an 8 month old. My goal is to spend $1500 or less on this entire project. That feels like a lot but is actually not much $ for a kitchen renovation. I really believe I can make a big impact on this space without blowing a ton of money! I think this will also challenge me to learn to love the space we have – it’s not going to be a brand new, shiny kitchen that was gutted to the studs and replaced with the best of the best, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a great space when I’m done!

The fact that I’m going to attempt to do this as a stay-at-home mama to two very small children is no small thing. My kids are both in pretty needy stages of life, and they are definitely not at a stage where I can leave them unattended for more than a few minutes. The current pandemic means I don’t have the option to have my babysitter come over or swap childcare with a friend. This makes it tricky to get things done, but not impossible. I have built up confidence over the last few small projects I’ve tackled (our DIY date night, our basement updates, the height wall in the garage, this dresser makeover, the secret nook under the stairs, the scalloped accent wall in Vi’s room, the painted tile floors in this very kitchen) to feel like I’m ready to take on a bigger scale project with my kids at home. I know that I can get things accomplished in the small windows of time throughout the day, particularly if I utilize time well during nap time and after bedtime. I just need to stay flexible and keep my expectations managed: there will be days I can’t make a dual nap happen or someone wakes up early or is feeling sick and needs extra snuggles, etc. so I will just need to roll with the punches and know there will be days where I don’t accomplish much in the kitchen.

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I’m really excited for this project and hope you’ll follow along with the transformation over the next eight weeks! And you can also see the other participants and their rooms by checking out the One Room Challenge blog. I think this will be fun!