Spring 2020 One Room Challenge Kick-Off | Week 1

Guess what day it is?? The Spring 2020 One Room Challenge is officially kicking off and we couldn’t be more excited. Before I dive into our design plans (and finally tell you which room we’re renovating), let’s do a quick recap on what the One Room Challenge (ORC) even is. 

What is the One Room Challenge (ORC)? 

The One Room Challenge is a six-week design challenge, where 20 featured designers transform a room from start to finish. But, they don’t limit it to just featured designers. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to participate! 

” The One Room challenge™ will provide participants with a supportive, enthusiastic forum in which to share the process of transforming a room. The ORC is not a competition, but rather a celebration of creativity, inspiration, and original ideas.”

This year things are looking a little different given the current state of the world. Rather than a 6 week renovation, the wonderful organizers of the ORC are extending the challenge by a full two weeks. So if you’re on the fence about participating, join on in! There’s a lot we can accomplish in 8 weeks to get us one step closer to creating our dream homes. 

We’ve participated once before and man, was it fun! Check out how far our game room came during the Fall 2019 One Room Challenge. 10/10 recommend!

What room are we renovating in Spring 2020?

Since we laid out our 2020 home goals, the plan has been to renovate and organize our garage for the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge, but… things change. This change is something we didn’t see coming. It came out of the middle of nowhere, but we’re sure glad it did.

I was in the middle of mass deleting my emails and something caught my eye. It caught my eye enough to dig it back out of my trash folder and that takes some dedication. It was an email from Jeffrey Court announcing their Mood Board Challenge.

I don’t usually enter these types of things, but this time I did. I figured, worst-case scenario, we don’t win and I spent a few hours looking at pretty tiles. Not too shabby if you ask me. 

And we won! We actually won. Which means, Jeffrey Court is sending us all of the tile we need to renovate the entire room. How cool is that??

Since we’re getting some free tile sent our way, we wanted to put it to use ASAP, so we’re putting our garage renovation on hold. 

But instead, we’re renovating…

…our laundry room!

The Laundry Room Before 

We’ll dive into the design in a second, but first, let’s look at what we’re working with. 

It’s basically a blank slate. We haven’t done much beyond painting the door and adding a washer and dryer to the room, but don’t worry, we have a few plans 😉

Laundry Room Design Ideas 

What we need 

Before designing a space, it’s crucial to figure out the priorities. The first questions I ask my e-design clients are what do they need from the room and what are their wants for the room. That helps me narrow in on what absolutely necessary and what I want to try my best to add-in.

For us, our needs were simple:

• lots of room to hang clothes 
• lots of room to dry clothes
• hidden storage 

Our wants included:

• a place for our laundry cart 
• a bright and beautiful space 
• a place to fold laundry 

Our ideas for the laundry room 

Here are a few inspiration pictures that capture the feel that we want the room to have. We want it to be light and airy, but most importantly, it needs to be practical. 

Earlier I showed you our mood board that included our tile selections. I can’t wait to see them in person! Isn’t it funny how we grow up and suddenly tile is what makes us giddy like a child on Christmas morning?

Beyond the tile, our design centers around lots of cabinetry that will reach all the way to the ceiling. We’ll also add in a few wood elements to add warmth to the room.

The Game Plan 

Over the next few weeks, we have our work cut out for us. We’re going to be learning how to tile for the first time and adding more built-ins than we’ve ever done, but we’re up for the challenge. As always, we’re DIYing anything and everything we can in this space. So here’s what’s on the agenda: 

• Cabinets
  • build upper cabinets 
  • make shaker door fronts for cabinets 
  • paint cabinets 
  • install hardware 
  • make bottom section
  • make countertop 
• Drying space 
  • add rod to hang clothes 
  • make lay-flat drying drawers 
  • make fold-down drying rack 
• Tiling
  • remove existing tile 
  • lay tile on floor 
  • lay tile on wall 
• Other projects
  • make shelf for above washer/dryer 
  • make step-stool (Andrew might be tall, but I’m short) 
  • replace fluorescent light 
  • figure out something to hide the wi-fi router
  • decorate
• If there’s time (HA!)
  • accent wall across from laundry room 
  • add permanent shelves to linen closet 

Those last two would be awesome, but we’re not going to beat ourselves up if we can’t get to them. The accent wall is to help tie the luxury of the space in with the small wall across from the laundry room door (plus I love accent walls). And the linen closet update is so that we can store our vacuum some place other than the laundry room. See, those ideas aren’t totally random 😉

We were planning to start slow over the next week, but after looking at that list, I think we need to hit the ground running!

Do you think we can get it all done in time? The One Room Challenge reveal is on my birthday, so I think that’s a good sign!