One Room Challenge- Week 2

It’s moving week! It’s actually closing day on our Fayetteville home today. Tomorrow (at 3am) we’ll head out towards our new home, and our new lives in Frankfort. I’m so ready!

So where are we headed? What are we going to tackle?

If you’ll recall this is our new living room, and our One Room Challenge. My plan is to work with a lot of our existing “stuff”, but create something new, and fresh, and global in this space.

I have this memory of when I was a little girl. It feels very dreamlike. We went to visit my Great-Uncle in New York or New Jersey. Somewhere up North I know, but he lived in this house in the country. This dreamy stone house- Like some small Manor you’d see in the English countryside.

My Great-Uncle was a botanist in Africa for most of his working life, although my father swears up and down that was a cover and he was really a spy. Regardless of whatever his profession was he lived an incredibly colorful life full of adventure, and his home was full of curiosities, and mementoes of his life.

I remember big game trophies, zebra skin rugs, and I have a memory of a tiger skin rug that I buried my hands in in awe. His home was dark, but not scary. Intimate. It smelled like leather, and books, and pipe tobacco. There is something about this place and memory that has always stuck with me.

I remember his conservatory on the back of his house full of orchids and African Violets, which is perhaps where my orchid obsession came from.

I’ve had conversations with my mother about Uncle Warren’s house, and she is always astounded by the details I can recall. It’s funny how some memories imprint on you so deeply. That memory of my Great-Uncle’s home is my jumping off point for this space. Here are some of the rooms that have that same feel to me.

I want this room to feel cozy, and intimate but also like a multi-cultural celebration of art and beauty. I’m incredibly excited for this space to come together.

XO,

-Victoria

One Room Challenge- Week 1

I’m going to try to complete the One Room Challenge this year. To be fair, I always complete my ORC rooms, I just REALLY suck at blogging, and sharing them. That’s going to change this year. I’m going to be a new and improved version of myself.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

I’m an absolutely crazy person for signing up for this ORC for a few reasons.

#1- We are moving across the country (in a global pandemic) two weeks AFTER the One Room Challenge begins.

#2- Technically, I’ve never seen the room I’m planning on tackling (in person at least), and won’t see it until October 16. This is absolute insanity. Buying a house without seeing it in person is MADNESS, but that’s what we’re doing. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Here’s the rub. We’re moving into a house built approximately 140 years ago. It needs work. We are super excited to love her back to life again. There are things that need to be addressed immediately. A new furnace is one. Prepping, priming, and painting the exterior is another. Gutting and renovating the kitchen is also one.

None of those are the things I’m focusing on for the One Room Challenge. Instead, I’ve decided we’ll tackle the Living Room. With the holiday season rapidly approaching, I want to ensure we will have a space to gather as a family that is both functional for our needs as a family, and beautiful. I want to create a space we can gather away from the chaos of the renovation that feels warm, cozy, and intimate.

Without further ado, the Living Room Ladies and Gentleman.

She has ten foot ceilings, original seven foot tall windows, original floors and trim, an original coal fireplace (non-functioning), and all the charm you could ever want. I’m brimming with ideas and possibility for this incredible space.

I hope you’ll join me through this process. It’s going to be so good!

XO,

-Victoria

The Hall

I am officially the world’s worst blogger… We are inching towards a year and a half since the last time I touched this guy, and frankly- that is insane.

This past year we did a ton of work on the house including building a wall to give our son a private bedroom that guests wouldn’t walk through to get from the front door to the common areas of our home.

Our home is nearly 100 years old, and like a lot of century old homes the layout was a bit… quirky.

When we bought our home there were two entrances to our bedroom- one in the living room, and one in our son’s bedroom. We knew we would seal off the doorway in the living room which would give us a wall to put the television (before there wasn’t a single wall big enough to put our TV- which was a bit of an issue for my husband), and have the only entrance to the master be in our son’s room.

Obviously walking through a bedroom to get to another bedroom was less than ideal, so the easiest solution was to build a wall to create a hallway.

When we were in escrow this was one of the first things my husband and I agreed had to be done to make this home work for us. I was the handier of the two of us, and had no doubt we could figure out what needed to be done, but we ended up living with the weird layout for 3 1/2 years before we finally began the process.

Initially, we were just going to hire the wall out, as the house was old, and we were planning to put in a pocket door to our son’s room. We had a contractor come over, and give us an estimate, and after seeing all of the things we had done ourselves he flat-out asked us what we needed him for… that definitely made us feel confident that we could do this ourselves.

I had no doubt that we could frame out a normal wall, but was more than a little confused by the process when framing in a home where nothing is plumb, square, or level… Thankfully, my dad and brothers helped us figure it out, and having more than one electrician in the family saved our butts when it came to the wiring!

When we bought the house this space (along with the rest of the house) was such a disaster but it had a funky little nook that I thought might be able to work for a linen closet when we built the wall.

See the nook where the dog crate is? I just knew we would be able to make that a future linen closet.

The biggest issue with the nook was it was narrow. Deep but too narrow for a traditional door, so I knew I would have to get creative with the solution. Initially, I thought about just installing cabinetry there, but ultimately, I knew I would be putting in pretty molding, and I felt that cabinetry was just a bit too casual for the vision I had for this space. What I landed on was a secret door. Essentially, a full wall panel (complete with all the molding, on a pivot hinge to hid all of our junk.

The secret door open while under construction.

Building the door took some serious ingenuity on our parts… thankfully, my husband’s an engineer, and is able to do all the math to make my vision come to life.

To date, this was the most extensive project we’ve undertaken. And while we waited to complete this a lot longer than we had originally planned, the truth is we needed to complete our master before we built the wall, as we all lived in our son’s room during the master reno, and we never would have been able to fit once the wall was built.

This home has been a marathon from the start… more like an ultra-marathon due to the years of abuse before we rescued her. Little by little, she’s beginning to shine again.