Fall 2017 ORC - WEEK 2

It's week 2 of the One Room Challenge and I finally have a plan. You can read all about the ORC and week 1 HERE. Here is a mood board I created so my son could have an idea of what I was thinking. I have his approval so it's time to forge ahead.

 The room is not very large and my son asked for a desk. Between the bed and the desk, there's not room for much else.
I have started buying a few things. The headboard and bedding are on their way. I ordered an engineering print from Parabo.press of my son and his rowing partner winning a silver medal at Youth National Midwest Rowing Championships. This race was the highlight of his high school rowing career, so I wanted to commemorate it on a grand scale.

The prints are $20 each, but I had a coupon for $10 off. I have a code for for you to receive $10 off your print as well if you want to give them a try.

WDZJJN

The plans for the next week are as follows:

#1- I have decided to paint the room. You'll have to come back next week to see the color.

#2- Start the custom window treatment I am making for the 2 windows. I'm thinking cornices, but I haven't finalized the decision.

Please come back next week for WEEK 3. Oh my, that's the half way point and I feel like I'm just beginning. EEK!!

In the meantime go check out all the talent over at Calling It Home. 

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate everyone that takes the time to check in. 

Friday Favorites

Two blog posts in a row? Don't know what to do with myself. Today I'm linking up with Erica for Friday Favorites. 

#1

These Publix Chicken Tenders from the deli

When my husband is out of town and I don't feel like cooking, well let's be honest I never feel like cooking (ha!), I grab these and my kids love them. I like to cut them up in a salad. They are delicious. You need to try them.

#2

In yesterdays post I talked all about the One Room Challenge. You can go read about it HERE. It really is my favorite blogging event. I love following along with people as they design and decorate a room. I enjoy seeing the creative process from other people's point of view. Go check it out. You might get inspired to redo a room in your house.

#3

I recently started drinking coffee. All these years I've been a Diet Pepsi drinker and have finally kicked the diet soda habit! Now I drink a cup of coffee in the morning and I am loving this brew.

#4

So happy this is back on TV! If you don't watch this you are missing out. I laugh and cry in every episode.

#5

My highlight of every week is my Monday night Ladies' Bible Study. I love doing life with these precious ladies. We are doing a study on the book of James right now. Here is our verse for the 12 week study.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 

James 1:22 ESV

Have a great weekend!

Fall 2017 ORC

It's my favorite time of year, otherwise known as the only time I seem to blog, the One Room Challenge. If you don't know what the the One Room Challenge or ORC as it's called is, it's a decorating challenge run by Linda at Calling It Home where 20 designers make over a room in 6 weeks. You can check out the featured designers HERE every Wednesday for the next 5 weeks. Anyone can attempt this crazy challenge and link up on Thursdays like me. Many of the guest participants are very talented designers and I can't wait to follow them for the next six weeks.

Let's get to the room I am going to redo. We recently moved back to Florida from Pittsburgh and are temporarily living in our vacation townhouse while getting settled and starting the process of building a house. I anticipate we will be here for a little less than a year. Many of the areas in this house are set up fine for temporary living, but I want to give the bedrooms some personality since we are living here full time and will eventually sell this place when our new house is finished.

I will be working on my oldest sons bedroom. He has recently graduated high school and will be working full time until next semester when he starts college. For now he is living at home so I want to give him a functional space. He is a typical teen boy! Messy and unorganized. Before I show the appalling pics I snapped this morning, (they are very BAD!) I'll show you his last few bedrooms.

This was my favorite room I ever did for this kid. He was in middle school and loved dogs.

This one we had just bought this house and lived there 2 months before finding out we were moving to Pittsburgh, so this was just a quick staging for real estate photos.

This was the tiniest little room in our 100 year old Tudor in Pittsburgh. there wasn't much room for anything in there because he wanted to keep the queen bed.

I did manage a gallery wall in that little bedroom that I loved.

Now onto today's bedroom. I did not clean up so BEWARE! This is going to be scary.

Well it can't get any worse, so I have no where to go but up. Come back next week for the plan.We have an idea of what we would like this space to be. Trying to decide if we will paint or keep it neutral. Everything in this house is the same color. Since we will be selling in the next year I'm thinking we will be keeping the color and working around it by putting art on the walls. My son has been an avid rower for the past 4 years, so he wants to incorporate that into the design. there will be major cleaning going on this week. Hope to see you here in a week. In the meantime go check out all the other guest participants at Calling It Home.

Friday Favorites 12/16

I'm going to start something new this week. I'm linking up with with these 3 gals, (Andrea, Erika, Narci) and sharing my 5 favorite things from this week. I'm going to try to do this weekly to jump start back to blogging. So here goes...

#1

Better than Sex Chex.

This is my new go to holiday treat. I've made this recipe twice already. It's the perfect thing to take somewhere or give as a gift. It's so easy to make. No cooking, just some melting in the microwave. Perfect for kids to make. You can find the recipe HERE.

#2

I have done almost all of my Christmas shopping here. Even stocking stuffers. I actually just finished all of my shopping this morning with no fear that my items won't make it in time for the big day. Avoiding the crowds at the stores is just another bonus to shopping online. In the new year I'm going to try their pantry service. I'll let you know how I like it.

#3

My oldest son turned 18! I can't believe it!!! Time goes so fast. One day you think they're never going to be potty trained, learn to read or be old enough to not be in the nursery at church, then you blink and they're seniors in high school with a job, preparing to enlist in the Marines after they graduate. Sometimes it's too much for this mom to handle.

#4

I know this is a cheesy sitcom, but I like it. It reminds me of my childhood watching the original. I'm not binge watching, but it's a nice little break when I'm eating lunch or just want to relax for 20-30 minutes.

#5

My tree is finally finished! My prelit tree did not work properly when I took it out of the box this year. More than half of the lights were out. So frustrating. It looked like this last weekend.

See that pile of lights by the fireplace? It took me about 6 hours to cut off all the existing from the tree. Then many more hours to restring it with all new lights in sections so I could take it apart and store for next year. I am leaving the new lights on the tree so I don't have to go through that again. Now if a strand goes out, I can just replace that one strand and all will be good. I even bought a couple of extra strands to stick in the tree box just for that purpose. The tree now looks like this!

See you next week!

k

Gallery Walls

One of the trends I am loving this year is the gallery wall. I love the visual interest and dimension a gallery wall can bring to a room. Here are a few gallery walls I have done this year. Some of these are in my own home, and some have been for others.

 This was in our previous home we rented. In a rental 3M Command strips are your friend!

 My son's bedroom

 My entry. I think this is one of my favorite gallery walls. I like that the items on the shoe cabinet become incorporated into the wall.

 Teenage son's room. I still need to fill the photo frame.

 Wall I did for my parents. They had a large empty wall in their kitchen that needed some love.

 Entry for a friend. 

I normally arrange the walls I do in a square or a rectangle. So I thought I would try a little more freeform for my recent One Room Challenge. It worked great because of the roof line in my master bedroom. I think I'll do a little more freeform in the next gallery wall I do. 

If you haven't tried a gallery wall, here are a few tips:

• Choose a common theme, color scheme or design aesthetic for your wall.
• Arrange the items on a flat surface.
• Add some dimension with a shelf or an item with some depth.
• Choose pieces with different shapes to add visual interest
• Most of all have fun with it. There are no hard fast rules.

I'd love to see if any of you try your own gallery wall.

ORC Week #6- The Final Reveal

Well it is here! My Master Bedroom final reveal. I never knew 6 weeks could fly by so fast. In another 6 weeks it will be Christmas Eve. EEK! Just some food for thought. I am not ready at all for Christmas, are you?

I did not post anything for week 5 because I was having connection issues and couldn't get my computer working. Sorry about that.

Make sure you check out all the other guest participants over at Linda's Calling it Home blog. I have my favorites and I can't wait to see how they did.

Here goes! Let's get to the pictures, because that's what really matters. First we can take a look at where we started.

This was the listing photo. That wallpaper came off easily, but the glue took days to wash off.

Here is the After

I created this this vanity area because my bathroom is smaller than a closet. It is very difficult to get ready in there. I really like sitting down and taking time to do my hair and makeup. That little door on the right you can barely see is my husband's walk in closet. It is surprisingly big on the inside and gives him plenty of room to keep all his things.

I like that I can see most of my jewelry hanging here. It makes picking out what to wear much easier. My favorite thing about hanging the jewelry here is it is hidden from view when you are standing in the doorway.

Here is the other side of the room. I painted all the doors Iron Ore by Sherwin Williams. I can't wait to paint all the doors in the house this color. It really makes a big difference.

The bed is definitely the focal point of this room.  The reason I did the panels over the bed was to hide the small off center window. The valances and bedskirt were custom made by me, but the panels are ready made. I also fabricated the euro shams and large lumbar some time ago. We have moved so many times recently I never got a chance to do anything else. Thankfully we are settled here in the Pittsburgh area for a while now.

I am very pleased with how the room turned out. The only thing I didn't get checked off my list is the planked ceiling. It was the one job I could not do on my own. Since my husband has been traveling or busy with work most evenings lately, he did not have time to help me. I am still planning on doing it, because there is a hole in my ceiling from moving the light fixture to center over the bed. You can see it in one of the pictures above. It cannot easily be patched so it will get covered up. I think it will take about 2 more weeks before that's complete. I hope you will return to my blog to check up on my progress. I have a whole house to complete and will be posting updates here. You can also follow me on Instagram @ Charla_Szweda. Thanks for joining me on this wild and crazy ride! And thanks to Linda for all she does to promote the One Room Challenge.

One Room Challenge Week 4! Master Bedroom

Holy Moly I have 14 days to get this Master Bedroom finished for Linda's @ Calling It Home's One Room Challenge! Can you hear the panic in my voice!!

If you're new here, the One Room Challenge is a twice yearly event where bloggers pick a room in their home or someone else's home to redo in only 6 short weeks. You'd think 6 weeks is a pretty good amount of time until you ONLY HAVE 14 DAYS LEFT!!!!!

This week started off with a big disaster. Painting of the the doors. Silly me I thought I could just clean the doors and then slap that paint right on. Well BIG FAIL! After 2 coats on the closet door the paint was not sticking well at all. Turns out you have to prep shiny surfaces before painting. I've gotten used to chalk paint and have forgotten that regular painting is all about the prep. So the closet door looks like this right now.

 I'm in the process of sanding off all the dark paint to start over. Then I'll use a liquid sander to remove the gloss. Hopefully that will work and next week I'll be able to show you beautiful dark doors.

After the paint debacle I decided to take a break from the painting and do something fun. So the rest of this week was all about fabric and sewing. I love sewing and haven't really done too much lately. When we lived in Atlanta I owned a workroom and sewed almost every day. So sewing is my first love. I haven't had room to set up an official sewing space anywhere else, so when I am sewing my dining room usually looks likes this.

Luckily my husband is out town for business this week so the kids and have been eating at the coffee table most of the week. This is the beginnings of my bedskirt. I can't decide if I want to pleat it or gather it yet. I need to make that decision today.  Anyone have any thoughts on that? My valances are pleated. If you follow me on instagram you saw this photo of one finished valance awaiting installation.

This will actually get installed up into that little window nook. Do you like my makeshift stand? I was trying to see how it will look and no one was around to hold it for me. I also have a second valance that is longer that will be going above my bed with panels behind it. I'm trying to cover up a window that is off center. That's pretty much all the progress I've made this week. I did make a decision on how I was going to plank my ceiling. Lowes has these tongue and groove boards I'm going to use.

 I'll need 15 packages, so at about $10 a package, that's pretty economical. I'll be priming and painting them before installation. Painting on the ceiling is tough on the arms. I'm sure after installing it all, my arms will be plenty tired!!!

On tap for next week is getting all the doors painted, finishing up the bedskirt and my electrician is coming to install new lighting in all the bedrooms and upstairs hallway next week.Yay! Can't wait to get rid of the old light fixtures everywhere. Normally I can do things like that myself, but this house has old and confusing wiring so I'll let the professional do it this time. I'm also moving the master bedroom light a little to center it up over the bed so I definitely do not want to tackle that job.

That's it for me today, gotta finish sewing. Go check out all the other guest participants at Calling It Home. Can't wait to see everyone's progress.