Holy moly. It is week 3 of the One Room Challenge and that means that we are half-way to the finish line of this project. For the newbies to this particular brand of design geekiness, quick recap: twice a year, Linda of Calling It Home invites 20 bloggers to refresh one room in six weeks and share that transformation in real time. And twice a year, anyone and everyone can play along at home as a guest participant by refreshing a space in their own home. This fall, I’m working on my girls’ shared bedroom. You can catch up on the first two weeks of the challenge here and here.
Since we are at the mid-way point, it seemed like a good time for a little progress report. Here’s what we’ve done so far...
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It's week two of the One Room Challenge and while most participants are totally off to the races, I'm still hanging out at the starting line. Tortoise and the Hare, baby.
There are three things that you really need to have when you start a design project: an idea of the needs of the inhabitants and challenges of the space, an idea of how the space needs to feel and how it will flow with the rest of the home, and a budget. Let's start with the easy thing first: needs and challenges.
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It’s the first week of October, which means it is time for the One Room Challenge. For the non-design nerds among you, twice a year, Linda from Calling It Home invites 20 bloggers to fix up one room in six weeks. Home viewers with a penchant for crazy can play along as guest participants. Last year, I took a small, weird side closet in our new house from weird side closet to family room in (a little more than) six weeks.
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Today, I’d like to introduce you to Lilly. Or rather, I’d like to introduce you to Lilly’s room.
Lilly is 10 years old and wanted a room that looked more like the tween that she is without giving up her collection of horses or stuffed animals. Lilly’s mom wanted to declutter Lilly’s room, give her more space, and do it all for $200 or less.
Challenge accepted.
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A funny thing happened a week or so ago at the Hobby Lobby. I almost didn’t buy something in my favorite color because it was just too trendy. My daughter, who professes to hate my favorite color, insisted. She wasn’t being unreasonable. We were purchasing “wallpaper” for her dollhouse, and therefore, she claimed, what really mattered was whether she liked it, not whether I thought it too trendy. I simply couldn’t argue with that.
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Those of you who know me or have read this blog for any length of time know that I am a total magazine junkie. I’ll take all the magazines, please and thank you. Pinterest was made for people like me – idea hoarders with binders of ripped out magazine pages, collected over years and years of information consumption. I digress.
This summer, I picked up a copy of Traditional Home in an airport enticed by the cover’s headline “Living with style and kids too”. I mean, right? Who doesn’t want to live in style with their kids? Boy was I underwhelmed. I was reminded at first glance of a page in a kids’ book (“What Are You So Grumpy About?” – you should totally get this book) that asks if the kid is grumpy because he had to go over to so-and-so’s house and not touch anything and listen to adults talk about boring junk. You were a kid once. You know this place. I’ll tell you what. The pages of Traditional Home’s July/August issue were filled with don’t touch anything rooms.
I decided to write a letter to the magazine outlining why these featured homes were completely unattainable and prone to depressing those of us parents trying to live the dream surrounded by daily kid clutter. Ever the recovering lawyer, I went back to the magazine for fuel to support my position. You’ll never guess what I found.
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