I am joining in on the One Room Challenge as a guest participant and I am stoked! If you aren’t familiar with the One Room Challenge, or ORC, it’s a biannual event where 20 featured designers and many guest participants do up a room over 6 weeks and share weekly progress. It provides accountability and encouragement to get that room done, along with so much inspiration! I have been a fan of ORC reveal day for years and have always wanted to join in, but the timing was never right. BUT. BUT. BUT. For some reason I had a major dose of motivation last week and, on a whim, I started a room overhaul. A day later I found out that ORC was starting in less than a week and spontaneously I AM IN. Eeeek!!!
Now, let me introduce you to my One Room: our DEN! It’s that blue room peeking through the dining room in the photo above and I’m ready for a change.
The den is a second living space, actually designed as the family room, in our 1961 home. We use and refer to our massive living room as our family room (TV and all!), leaving this space without much purpose, or a name…”den” just stuck! Honestly, this room is exactly where our house is too big but it’s a beautiful space that opens to the backyard and I’m sure we’ll be happy for the extra square footage when our kids are teenagers. And fine, I love having another space to design ha!
Here’s some befores of this room in various stages….
Listing photos:
First go at this room saw new maple wood floors, baby blue walls, a bookshelf and a rad vintage fireplace:
Subsequent rounds brought the addition of a home workspace, that has proved very funcional.
More recently, I’ve been experimenting with a couch swap. These photos from Christmas give an accurate picture of the room’s current state. 
It isn’t in bad shape at all and I really like a lot of things going on already, so this won’t be a full renovation by any means. I only want to tweak a few annoyances that mainly involve the walls.
First issue is the blue color, which I actually really like from inside the room but looks super choppy from other rooms (as seen below). I’m over it and want more cohesion with the rest of the house so white paint it is! This room already gets great natural light from a wall of slider doors and I’m excited to amp that up with fresh white walls!
To keep the white walls from feeling sterile and boring, I’m hoping to bring some dimension with mid-century leaning architectural detail on the walls. Something that can carry a room in place of clutter. I’m going for a minimal but warm space and that means TEXTURE on those walls!
I’m a color lover for sure, so expect some bold color elsewhere in the room. Orange is a given and I’m thinking maybe some hot pink too?!I have a tiny budget, so not sure how this is gonna go. I’m saving up for some bigger projects in other rooms (wood walls galore in the family room), so I would like to do this whole space for under $300.
AND I really don’t want to buy a lot more stuff. I’m leaning very minimal these days and I already have a solid collection of furniture/accessories (and am actually in the process, along with the rest of the world, of tidying haha!). So the budget seems very doable if I mostly shop my house. I’m hoping to edit and LOSE some stuff in this process. Realistic? Who knows!
If you caught my Instagram stories last week, you know that I already got a head start on this room! And that is good because I am writing this from lovely Palm Springs, where we are spending a week in the desert, very far away from our den. I usually come back super inspired, so lets hope the timing is right on and I can dive back into this room come Monday!
In the meantime, check out all the other rooms being transformed! Everybody will be posting progress each Thursday and linking up on the One Room Challenge blog right here! See you next week!
SUBURBAN * POP 