One Room Challenge, Week 1

Hey all!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm participating in the Fall 2020 One Room Challenge as a Guest Participant. My husband Barkley and I will be making over our 1990s kitchen and breakfast nook over a period of six weeks, with a tight budget (buying a house is EXPENSIVE, y'all) and a whole lot of elbow grease.

We've had these plans for our kitchen and breakfast nook for a while (they were already forming as we toured the house for the first time, before we even owned it... oops) but they remained in the drafts section of my brain until we decided to do the One Room Challenge. Barkley and I have slightly different design tastes. He's more of a mid-century modern guy, and loves natural textures and cozy spaces (not that cozy though.... he's 6'4" and hates low ceilings). My style has evolved a lot over the last few years, but at this point I would call it Parisian contemporary. I love Parisian rooms because the rooms they design could be beautiful with or without furniture, with their beautiful moulding and wood floors. However, I love to marry that ornate look with the clean lines of modern pieces, to more fully set off the details.

The first thing you need to know about Barkley is that he is NOT one of those husbands who doesn't care about the design of the house - his grandfather was an interior designer, so I like to think it's in his blood. He's always a great sport about listening to my one million big ideas, design and otherwise, and helping me refine and execute them. Thankfully, even though we have two different styles, we can often agree on items that have classic charm, clean lines, varied textures, and a neutral base with a pop of statement color. We also both love DIY projects - the phrase "I think we could maybe pull that off" is thrown around a lot around here.

Those elements - clean lines, neutral base with a statement color, and especially DIY - feature strongly into our design schematics for our kitchen and our breakfast nook.

KITCHEN

This is the design plan for our kitchen. Our kitchen at the moment is a lot of beige - with blonde wood cabinets and tan tile countertops.

We love the layout, but we wanted to change the color scheme of the kitchen entirely. We're planning to do white upper cabinets and slate blue lowers, with brass hardware. Barkley also wants to change our drop-in sink to an under-mount (which I at first thought was unnecessary, but after trying and failing to brush crumbs into the sink dozens of times over our short time here... I'm all in.)

We're not replacing anything in this kitchen, to stick with our aforementioned tight budget, and instead are just using what's there and making it over. We'll paint the existing cabinets, because we like the silhouette of them and think they're a classic design. We're also considering painting the tile floors - they're a textured beige, so I'm hoping to paint them a charcoal gray to give them more of a slate look. However, I'm going to try this project on a smaller scale before I commit to doing it in the kitchen, so I'll probably dig out one of the extra tiles from the garage to paint and see if we like how it looks.

One of the biggest projects for this room, however, is the countertops. We don't currently have the budget to replace the tile with quartz or marble. When looking for budget friendly alternatives, we ran across the idea of coating the existing counters with feather finish concrete. Ultimately we decided to give that a shot - so if all goes well, at the end of the ORC we'll have beautiful white concrete counters instead of beige tile! We'll paint the backsplash white to match with tile paint - and I'm planning on hand-painting marble veins on them to upgrade the look.

BREAKFAST NOOK

This is the design plan for our breakfast nook:

This previous home owner had a work table in this spot. It's a beautiful corner with lots of natural light already, so it won't take much to make it our dream breakfast nook.

My plan here is to give this space a Parisian bistro feel. I'll DIY banquette seating using Ikea bookshelves, thrift a cheap round table and paint it, and buy bistro chairs for the outside of the table. I'm also planning on hand-sewing cushions for the banquette, which I'm going to need my mom's expertise and help on (she's a brilliant seamstress, where as I can barely thread a needle.)

We're also going to replace the light fixture (the homeowner took the previous one, so what's left is a very basic light) with a beautiful gold chandelier. I'm obsessed with the one we found because I feel like it's a classic design with a sculptural element. It was love with first sight when I saw it online - I'm talking drive-off-to-Vegas-and-marry-the-chandelier-on-the-spot sort of love. Thankfully Barkley loves it too, so it's going to be the centerpiece of our breakfast nook.

That's basically it! If you're participating in the One Room Challenge, have recently married a chandelier in Vegas, or have experience with any of the projects above and want to lend your expertise, comment below - I'd love to pick your brain.This weekend we're going to do a lot of ordering and make a trip to Home Depot to purchase supplies. I'll update again next week - wish us luck as we embark on the next six weeks!

Much love,

Claire