08 Oct Living Room Salon Makeover | One Room Challenge | Fall 2020 | Week 1

Happy fall friends! What happened to summer?  Oh, that’s right, we’re in the middle of a Pandemic!  It feels like we only finished the spring One Room Challenge yesterday, as it was extended and ended July 5th. No wonder I feel like there was NO time in between!!  All of a sudden, after a mini-break in August, the fall One Room Challenge is here!  Can you guess which room I’m making over this time? (Hint: it’s connected to our kitchen and breakfast nook.) I’m so excited, but already feel behind and it’s only Week 1. However, do not fear, all will fall into place in 6 weeks, as it always does. So hang on and get ready for a wild ride as I redecorate our Living Room Salon for fall 2020 One Room Challenge.

How about a little inspiration – a teaser

 

 

Welcome to the 2020 Fall One Room Challenge

 

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. – Linda Weinstein, founder

For those new here, I’m Deborah Main, The Pillow Goddess and this is my fourth time as a Guest Participant in the One Room Challenge (ORC).  I’m a luxury pillow designer and blogger who writes about design, art, architecture, travel, and everything in between. I particularly love writing about luxury brands and you’ll find many of our incredible One Room Challenge partners on this blog.  I live with my husband in Austin, Texas and we have two grown children and one grown foreign exchange student that’s like a 2nd daughter. Oh, and another Italian one, who’s like a 3rd daughter.  We’re very blessed with a wonderful family and home we love.

 

How transforming one room turned into an inspiring community

After 28 plus years of raising our family, we are finally empty nesters, and one thing I’ve been doing in addition to my business is spreading my wings into decorating our vintage bungalow in Austin, Texas.  The One Room Challenge (ORC) has been THE perfect opportunity to do this!  Check out my Spring 2020 ORC HERE.  and 2019 fall ORC Here. These two rooms are part of the trio of rooms that make up one big room in the front of our vintage bungalow.

The One Room Challenge is a widely anticipated bi-annual event open to amateur decorators, home stagers, and stylists to DIYers and experienced interior designers who want to makeover one room in six weeks.  It’s all the brainchild of Linda Weinstein and we are forever grateful!

Because of the One Room Challenge, I have been able to practice my design skills in a supportive community and learn something new each time, all within my own home.  It’s been such a wonderful experience, and the bonus is you have a room completely done. I’ve made many friends, learned from other designers, and feel part of an incredible community of supportive women and men doing the same thing.  So it really doesn’t matter your experience, you just need to be active on Instagram and/or have your own blog.  You can makeover a bathroom like my friend Alisa of @glassofbovino who is the queen of thrifting, or go full tilt and makeover a large living room and kitchen all at the same time, like my friend @jewelmarlowe of Jeweled Interiors. I swear, these two talented designers have done probably every room in their homes and their ORC rooms are to die for!

 

Congratulations to the fall 2020 Featured Designers

Every season, ORC selects 20 top interior designers/decorators to be a Featured Designer. This season is unique because it’s the first-ever, all-digital One Room Challenge® event creating 20 breathtaking 3D Virtual Room Designs. It’s sponsored by the largest home furnishings industry trade show in the world, High Point Market , with Sherwin Williams as a color partner.

Better Homes & Gardens is once again the official media partner. Thank you!

 

Featured Designers

Ever wondered what it’s like to work with a professional designer?

Well, here’s your chance to follow these twenty Featured Designers as they take you through the entire process of designing a space in six weeks. Learn professional tips and tricks for planning, researching, and selecting home furnishings to help you create your own custom room design. The designers have access to endless design possibilities with all the fantastic products available at High Point Marke at their fingertips.

These designers have already started to take you behind the scenes as they journal their techniques via blogs and social channels. Watch for extra features this season like Q&A’s, interviews, live chats, and introductions to new products and trends. All twenty gorgeous virtual room designs will be revealed on Wednesday, November 11th. Congratulations to the featured designers!  I can’t wait to see your virtual rooms.

Now onto my One Room Challenge story

 

Fall 2019 One Room Challenge – Breakfast Nook Makeover

I started with the Blue and White Bedroom in the spring of 2019, because we rent our master suite out on Airbnb, The Collier Guest Room. and moved into our daughter’s bedroom full time which was a hot mess. Then, I swore I would never do another ORC! But, as you’ve seen, it becomes very addictive. Especially if you still have rooms to finish in your home, and most decorators, designers, DIY-ers do. (Secretly, some of us are really messy and have fabric everywhere…not naming names here.)

So next up in fall 2019 was the Breakfast/Dining Nook (above). This was when I dreamed up my overall design plan of doing all three rooms that connect.  Then in spring 2020, was the Kitchen Makeover (below). Oh boy, was THAT a challenge in the middle of a Global Pandemic! In fact, please be careful if you’re participating in the ORC, because I came down with the virus right in the middle of tiling our kitchen. Thankfully, my husband and I are fully recovered.

Spring 2020 One Room Challenge – Kitchen Makeover

But you see, there IS logic behind my madness!!  Truly there is.

Now that we live in the front part of our home I really wanted to get it looking as pretty as our Blue and White Bedroom which we absolutely love. It makes me so happy to wake up to the color blue and look out my window seat to sunshine every morning.  Since we live in a tiny bungalow, 1, 796 s.f to be exact, our kitchen is in our living room and our breakfast nook, and our living room is in our kitchen and breakfast nook, and our breakfast nook is smack dab in the middle of our kitchen and living room.

You get the idea, right? All one big room that is totally interconnected, the heart of our home, and the hub where all the action is.

Honestly! When we used to entertain (ya know, in those wonderful Pre-Pandemic days) all our guests would jam themselves into our tiny kitchen and breakfast nook and spill over into the living room.  Even when we had a HUGE family room/dining room in the back of the house.

Let’s Start at the Beginning (you’ve got to see how the rooms interconnect to fully appreciate the transformation!)

 

Room 1 | The Breakfast Nook | dark + drab

Room 2 | The Kitchen | dark + outdated

Room 3 | The Living Room | 1980s sofa 

How a vintage blue velvet Tuxedo sofa started the transformation

We all know that sometimes it takes years to make changes in our home. How many of you have lived with torn curtains, a broken lamp, a leaky kitchen sink? Raise your hand! Or, that infamous extra room we open the door and toss in anything we need to quickly get rid of when guests are coming. We’ve all been there.

Well, my plans started when I fell in love with this dark blue velvet, vintage Tuxedo sofa and just had to have it. It was THE beginning to make our living room into a formal Living Room Salon. I had no idea then that a few years later I’d be a Guest Participant in the One Room Challenge!

The sofa transformed our living room and made it cozy. I replaced the custom silk window treatments that were 20 years old. Also, we recently inherited the banjo clock and I had my mother’s favorite chair and ottoman, even though I had re-upholstered it 36 years ago in a ghastly floral. What was I thinking?

Zabel liked to nestle in the reading corner. I was training him to sleep in these beds so he wouldn’t get cat hair all over the chair and ottoman. Well, somewhere down the road that went out the window and this chair and ottoman became his thrown. Did I also mention this corner was the worse place to put my mother’s Art Deco cabinet? Every time we sat in the chair, we’d bump into it knocking out a little bit more of the glass.

Before I knew my life would consist of four One Room Challenges right in a row, I instinctively knew that we needed to repaint the entire interior of my home a bright cream to lighten up the place. The dark green and caramel colors and all the red, brown, and green became SO heavy and drab. I couldn’t wait to get out from under it all. So in the summer of 2018, pre-Covid, we were fortunate enough to take a 5-week vacation back east and boy am I ever glad we did! Who would have ever predicted we wouldn’t be able to travel in the summer of 2020?

This is what our living room looked like (above) prior to the painters staying in our home (they are friends) and painting the interiors all one color. Did we factor in anything we’d have to do to live in our home afterward? No! Like NO curtains. Thank God The Great Curtain Company helped us get some modern ones up in the weekend we returned from our vacation. And the curtain installers took pity on us and said they had some paper shades in the truck we could use for the breakfast nook. I never even knew paper shades existed! They were all we had for over a year until I decided it was time to do something with the breakfast nook.

Okay, so now that you’re caught up, this is how our living room looked when I started the breakfast nook. Sometimes just moving furniture around makes the world of difference. We finally found the perfect wall for the antique cabinet and a perfect spot for the music cabinet underneath the clock. We still have too small a rug and a yard sale lamp from we purchased when we first got married 36 years ago, but at least it was prettier than before and perfect for guests when entertaining.

And we finally found the home for my gilded gold, vintage mirror I had always wanted. It works beautifully over the antique Shaker table that was a wedding present for my parents and then for us.

Here I decorated it for Thanksgiving, I think last year.

And Zabel was perfectly happy because his beds somehow got lost in the shuffle (did I already say that?) and he could stretch out as he pleased.

So as you see, our front living room is gradually transforming. It’s grounded with six antique pieces of furniture – my mother’s piano and end tables, the shaker table, the Art Deco cabinet, my grandfather’s coffee table, and the music cabinet and clock. Plus two vintage cushion furnishings, a sofa and chair and ottoman. What’s missing are all the details to truly finish out our space to match up with our newly remodeled kitchen and breakfast nook.

 

Living Room Salon Wish List

There are 12 areas that need attention to help make our Living Room Salon look and feel more like an elegant, comfortable living space. The chandelier in the breakfast nook is really the focal point once you walk into the front door, so I really want to make the living room as special as that Deco chandelier by and the newly remodeled kitchen:

1. Re-upholster vintage chair + ottoman,
2. Find a longer rug to fit all the furniture,
3. Replace wooden chair with a modern cushion swivel,
4. Wallpaper entryway,
5. Move current drapery to the family room and make new drapery,
6. Replace antique coffee table with gold glass one,
7. Find permanent seating for the breakfast nook,
8. Find permanent seating for the bar,
9. Add art to gallery space and breakfast nook,
10. Find a pair of matching lamps for end tables,
11. Add greenery throughout all three spaces, and
12. Style salon with breakfast nook and kitchen to feel unified as one large room.

 

Now onto the fall One Room Challenge – Living Room Salon Makeover

This below is my attempt to imagine a large tree in the corner behind the chair and ottoman. And I am also once again training Zabel to sleep in a cozy basket so he’ll behave himself with the re-upholstered chair in this fabulous geometric fabric from partner Kravet. I can’t wait to get the see it done!

The Living Room Salon Makeover schedule

Week 1 – everything I’ve been doing to get ready for the makeover

1. Accent Upholstery picks up chair and ottoman,
2. Continue to work on details of overall design plan,
3. Contact seamstress,
4. Secure tabletop partnership and start making selections,
5. Secure furniture partnership and arrange shipping,
6. Continue to reach out to fabric and rug brands to partner,
7. Look at tons of gorgeous wallpaper till 2 a.m. every night and order samples,
8. Discuss wallpaper with designer,
9. Start to narrow down wallpaper decision; check on availability,
10. Come up with back up plans.

 

Week 2 | Oct 14  | Select drapery fabric, wallpaper, rug
Week 3 | Oct 21  | Make drapery panels and pillows
Week 4 | Oct 28 | Install wallpaper + drapery
Week 5 | Nov 4   | Style Living Room Salon + photograph
Week 6 | Nov 11 | The Big Reveal with before/after photos

 

 

 

 

Now, for a huge shoutout to our current partners!

I’m so excited to announce five luxury brand partners for the Living Room Salon Makeover:

• Kravet,
• Nathan Anthony,
• York Wallcoverings,
• Replacements, Ltd.,
• Couture Lamps,

 

Off and running so please follow along!

It has been a little more challenging to partner up with brands this go around, as many have been severely affected by the Pandemic with loss of employees and profits, as well as manufacturing and shipping delays. That’s why I’m especially pleased to add these fantastic brands to our wonderful list of sponsors (please see prior ORCs). I’m honored to partner with them and immensely grateful they’ll be sponsoring home decor pieces for the Living Room Salon Makeover. (Note: I’m still working on a fabric partner for drapery and will continue to reach out to fabric, rug, and home furnishings brands.)

I know this was rather long, but there’s always so much to share in the first blog post to introduce the exciting One Room Challenge to new readers.  As a result, I really wanted to give you a broader look at how these three rooms fit together and have evolved.  I’m off and running now, so stay tuned for a progress report every Thursday on the Living Room Salon Makeover.

Please pin for easy reference

Follow my blog HERE so you’ll get it directly in your in-box. You can also find it on the ORC national blog HERE.  One thing to know about my weekly progress is that you can see a lot of it on my Instagram Stories HERE  and I don’t always show you everything until the Big Reveal as I like it to be a surprise at the end.

Oh, I almost forgot! There’s usually around 300+ of us Guest Participants and such a variety of rooms and styles. Please be sure to read weekly the 20 Featured Designers and Guest Participants HERE.  We will be uploading our blogs to the national ORC site every week.  Browse through them and follow along, as you’ll find tons of inspiration for your own home. Till next week, when I start sharing wallpaper choices (and get you to help me decide!), the makeover progress and feature one of the five partners, please enjoy this pretty fall weather and GET OUT THE VOTE!  XO PG

Note: This blog post is sponsored by partner brands: Kravet, Inc., Nathan Anthony, York Wallcoverings, Couture Lamps, and Replacements, Ltd.  All images and opinions are my own, except where noted.