Adventures of my wildly eclectic interiors experiments
Here we are, looking pretty fabulous so far.
I’m not 100% sure about the gray areas (which are meant to denote pebbles).
And these beauties are my ammonite fossil stepping stones made by a UK sculptor, Andrew Mckeown.
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all 20 Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
This week things are really happening.
The landscapers tore out the grass and dug out enough dirt for a 2-tiered step into the dining room. Now we have a gravel pit instead of a mud pit.
Yes, it looks as bad as it sounds (see below).
On a good note, this gave me time over the weekend to plant my window boxes and hanging planters and make ALL THE MESS I wanted without having to clean up the soil.
And since we had some major moss growing on the fence, which we stained 3 years ago, I decided to go ahead and re-stain that this weekend too while we’re at it.
And I finally found my stepping stones; not the round ones I had hoped for, but I think they’re not too shabby during the COVID-driven materials scarcity.
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all 20 Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
What?! Its Week 4 of the One Room Challenge already?
On a good note, FINALLY there’s some movement.
There’s been A LOT of garden clearing happening to prepare for the landscapers, who are arriving tomorrow.
And my outdoor fabric from My Fabrics (to make new covers for to this thrifted and upcycled seating situation from Gumtree ) is on its way from Germany. Just feast your eyes on the pattern and color joy, will you! It even has the illusion of texture to add some more depth to it.
Although, due to Brexit, we now have new shipping rules to contend with. I had to order my 10 meters of fabric in two parts (WTH?!) because of the exorbitant shipping costs to EU vendors, which translates to higher shipping costs for UK residents. Thanks Brexit!
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all 20 Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
Well, we’re into week 3, but it’s sllow-going atm, because we just finished getting quotes and trying to find enough of the tiles I want has been insane! Let’s pray it goes through as planned and we get it done by June 27!! 😳 No pressure!!😅
I put my inspo board and layouts together and we have finalized the contractor to do the work.
In the meantime, I ordered the fabric for my DIY cushion recover.
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
Since I’m going to be working on my backyard makeover coincides with the One Room Challenge, I decided to throw caution to the wind and join along.
Everybody else is 1.5 weeks into this thing, so let’s see if I can catch up — real quick like!! LOL
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
Backyard Boujie
Well, here we are again…
I’m joining the One Room Challenge again this spring, because, let’s face it…
My backyard does NOT look like this anymore and a I need a good swift kick in the pants to revamp this before July.
So, let’s get started, shall we?!
But first… What is THE ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, you ask?
Currently in its 18th season, the ORC is only THE BEST place for interiors-related inspiration, ideas, and encouragement! As a widely anticipated biannual event–every April and October–each round, 20 design influencers are selected as Featured Designers to transform a space.
Also, anyone with a blog or Instagram account can join the challenge as a Guest Participant (me) by linking their own room transformations up during the 6 weeks. Since 2020, because of The Rona, it’s actually 8 weeks, which should give me plenty of time, right? Uhhhh, sure, yeah, let’s go with that. Each Thursday, we report back to the powers that be, flooding the internet and social media with the latest and greatest news, updates, and trials and tribulations of our room transformations.
So, thank you to Linda Weinstein, the creator/owner of the ORC who started all of this fabulousness, and BETTER HOMES & GARDENS, ORC’s official media partner, for the support and holding us accountable!
You can get more info about the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE, all Featured Designers, and a record-level 500+ Guest Participants (including me) by clicking here.
Since I had to remeasure the turns on the steps and send the material back to our stairway runner peeps to sew the edging on, it was necessary to go ahead and do the second stairway now. It did set me back time-wise, but it was a necessary move since I want everything to look uniform.
So, I’m not going to meet the ORC deadline, but I’m glad about doing it this way, because it all gets done at the same time.
It’s OH SO close to being done, but I’m not going to rush it.
I’ll keep doing updates to this post to keep you all informed of my progress!
In the meantime, here’s where we’re at with the hallway…
While I’m continuing on all of that, go check out all the fabulous REVEALS from all the One Room Challenge Featured Designers here and Guest Participants (like me) here!
Week 7 is not the week to run into a snafu, but such is life. I’m just rolling with it, though.
Recapping from last week: Our stair runner guru from Stair Runners Direct sent me these sexy little Salvador sisal stripe stair runners, so I couldn’t wait to play around with it.
Isn’t that dark blue edging the perfect color to pull the entire space together?! It’s a bold, vibrant, extravaganza of color, prints, and textures!
Wouldn’t ya know it, though. I had to go and pick out the hardest pattern to try and match up on winding stairs, especially when your carpet guru isn’t local and can’t come to the house to measure directly with the material on hand.
If you look at the arrows on the pics below, you can see those winding stairs aren’t quite a match on the edges. So, the Stair Runner Direct people being the wonderful human beings that they are, offered to send me the uncut material directly this week so that I can cut it myself while installing the straight part of the stairway.
So, once I’m done getting the perfect cutouts, I’ll send them the materials so that they can sew on the dark blue edging. No biggie, though. It’ll just be 2 stairs that won’t be finished while I wait for that to happen.
Plus, with all the Covid-related warehouse/shipping delays, I’m waiting on my super-fantabulous Ourika Berber-style Runner from La Redoute Interieurs. Fingers crossed it makes it before reveal time!
So, we’re back to this:
While I’m scrambling to catch up on all of that, go check out all the One Room Challenge Featured Designers here and Guest Participants (like me) here!
As for getting my walls done during week 5, let’s just say “disaster” would be an understatement. But since I’m all about putting it ALL out there for you guys–the good, the bad, AND the ugly–the photos below will give you an idea of last week’s shenanigans. I definitely don’t make things easy for myself. LOL
I was looking to transition some colors from the lower stairway to the upper stairway in a fun, bright way, but after playing around with multiple colors and designs, I wasn’t feeling it anymore. It all distracted too much from the blue palm wallpaper in the guest bedroom, which is my pride and joy. Plus, all that orangey-red was giving me an eye twitch!
So, I was reminded of that old U.S. Navy design principle, “KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE,” and painted the entire stairway and hallway in those fabulous Valspar Glistening Aqua and white stripes. Much better, right?
Speaking of changing my mind, I was going to have the same runner for both stairways as well as the hallway that joined the two, but now this whole situation was just turning into a STRIPE-A-PALOOZA, which I wasn’t feeling anymore either. So, back to hours, and hours, and hours, and hours of online shopping I go!
The hallway needed a good color mix–along with some graphic and textural intrigue–to tie the stairway, hallway, guest bedroom, and living room (my next ORC revamp) together, and this super-fantabulous Ourika Berber-style Runner from La Redoute Interieurs was love at first sight! (I Photoshopped the rug into this image from ORC Week 3 to see how it would look, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’m all GIDDY about it!) Hopefully this little honey will get here before reveal week, though.
Speaking of super-fantabulous, here’s a closeup of those sexy little Salvador sisal stripe stair runners from Stair Runners Direct. I chose a dark blue edging to give the other colors that extra pop!
Needless to say, this week it’s gonna be ALL ‘BOUT THE STAIRS:
While I’m doing all that, go check out all the One Room Challenge Featured Designers here and Guest Participants (like me) here!
You know that feeling of excitement when you’re ready to paint a wall? Yeah, I thought I did too, but that feeling of excitement rapidly faded into the murky deep abyss of this stairway below and was replaced with pure exasperation — and a few choice expletives!
After I got done caulking the baseboards (which look fabulous now!), I had to go back and re-spackle the ENTIRE bottom edge of the wall — from the top of the stairs ALL THE WAY DOWN to the bottom of the stairs — because there were some gouges left in the drywall (meaning: I left them behind after I got overzealous with the caulk scraper last week while removing the old, cracked caulk).
Anywho, moving on….
So to derive SOME joy out of this week of tedious tasks, I decided to at least measure out my stripey-muralish wall and slap on as much blue painter’s tape as I could, so that it looks like I actually DID SOMETHING!
Then we had NIGHTMARE #2: Making stair runner templates
And since I don’t like making things easy for myself, I decided to go ahead and order stair runners for the 1st floor stairway AS WELL AS the stairway leading from the 2nd to the 3rd floor. So, that meant making 3 separate sets of templates! (NOTE: this 2nd stairway would be FAR TOO AMBITIOUS to include as part of the 8-week ORC, but I don’t want to go back next year and find out that the rug maker no longer produces the stairway runner I chose, because that would be MY KINDA LUCK! So, I’ll be completing this section later in the summer, at my leisure, with wine).
Anyway, you may be asking yourself, “Why is she making three separate sets of templates?! Aren’t the angles pretty much the same?”
Well, a logical person would certainly THINK SO! But whoever was responsible for putting in these stairs must’ve missed a few weeks of trig class, because the angles on these stairs were a HOT MESS!
Let’s just say the sum of 3 angles = 180 degrees of pure crap! So, it took me several hours to make each template from scratch, because of varying hypontenuses (hypotenusi? hypotenusen? whatever the plural of that word is). So, this is what I eventually ended up with. They’re all packaged up and sent off to the fabulous Nicola at Stair Runners Direct so she can work her magic.
So, that’s my crazy week in a nutshell.
And since crossing things off a list makes EVERYBODY feel better (read: MUCH LESS likely to throw out some choice expletives), here’s what I got accomplished this week in list form:
And the ceiling paint came in this week (in much less time than the original estimated 30-day timeframe, I might add), so I’m definitely WINNING AT LIFE from here on out!
So, I’m all set for the weekend.
Meanwhile, go check out all the One Room Challenge Featured Designers here and Guest Participants (like me) here!