Week 3 of the One Room Challenge is under our belts, read on for some major design choices have been made and my first snafu of the process…
Welcome! If you’re new to my One Room Challenge primary suite makeover journey, you can catch up here:
Week 1: Primary Suite Intro | Week 2: Walk-In Closet Progress
Week 3 (AH we’re almost halfway done?!?) is over and things have taken a European and unexpectedly glamorous turn. This week has been more fun than week 2 of the challenge because pieces for the suite are actually arriving and it’s motivating to see the fruits of my online shopping working out. I still have quite a bit more shopping to do, but things are coming together and every piece that falls into place makes shopping for the next a bit easier. The closet is 98% purged, and things are well underway.
I still need to finish rearranging the closet shelves now that it’s finally cleaned out, and get planks to top the different shelving units.
Other happenings and complications in our life this past week: no response from our contractor as to whether we can get our shower re-done (awesome), my husband opened opened our pool up to pond levels of algae (great!), we got the house treated for soo many carpenter bees (love it!). And a silicone wine stopper fused onto our dishwasher heating element (SO GREAT), and perhaps it was the combined fumes of burnt silicone and acetone, but my ORC obsessed brain noticed the sludge matched one of my paint samples for the bedroom: Farrow & Ball French Gray. They should annotate that in their color card, don’t you think? Add in general pandemic anxiety and #canyousayinsomnia
But the challenge must go on! and it’s a welcome distraction.
This room design is happening in real time and very socially distanced. I’m only half-vaccinated – getting my second shot today actually!! – and have a dicey health history so ALL of my shopping for this room and, well, our life for the past year has been done online. As in, I haven’t set foot in a retail establishment of any kind in over 14 months. Which makes shopping for major components of a room extremely stressful until everything has arrived and is actually up to par.
I’m debating letting loose and doing a curbside pick-up this weekend if I’m not too wiped from the shot side effects. The prospect of waiting a few seconds for the air to clear to pick up some roman shade tape off the curb after a Joann’s employee backs away (on the same day I order it!) feels EXHILARATING…though also more than a bit reminiscent of robbery, considering I’ll be masked. The online payment beforehand is really the only difference when you think about it.
So, what are the major piece purchases I made in the past week that had me on tenterhooks? (wow autocorrect just taught me that’s spelled with a T and has an origin based in textiles and furniture making) AREA RUGS. Specifically, affordable, beautiful, synthetic area rugs that were dirt cheap because of a sale so good that I forked over my free time on Sunday. After the ORC is done I’ll have to make a post with what to look for in good synthetic rugs.
I can’t do wool as it irritates my asthma and allergies, and so with young kids and the inability to evaluate patterns, allergy triggers and secondhand smells in person, I’m not splurging on silk anything any time soon. The rug I picked for our closet arrived Tuesday, and our rug for under the bed arrives today. Here’s hoping my arm’s not too sore to roll it out!! Thank God my husband isn’t getting his shot til tomorrow so I have some help for 24 hours HA.
You can see them and my test swatches in my updated moodboard:
As an aside, I have to say, an unexpected benefit to this One Room Challenge thing is it’s really speeding up my decision-making process. Picking a rug online for our library last summer took several weeks.
The peachy beige rug in the top left is going under the bed, and the sage oriental in the lower right is going in the closet (I think). Buying rugs online is such a gamble, and one I continually find myself making because when rug sales are good you have to jump on them. I’ve had the green rug on my mind for the better part of a year after considering it for our library, but it’s always out of stock in 8×10. I decided to grab it for the closet since I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. The verdict? It’s a keeper, it’s really pretty and soft and the faux distressing (which can be really bad on synthetic rugs is pretty subtle in person due to the sheen of the rug. BUT, I’m not sure it’s staying in the closet. It makes me want to take the closet in an almost maximalist direction that I wasn’t expecting myself to take, so I’m considering if I want to really take it there or show more restraint and swap out either the rug or the wallpaper to tone it down a bit.
Speaking of, I have new wallpaper swatches to check out today. And the other big arrival this week was my first ever real life encounter with Farrow & Ball paints, in the form of 7 adorable tiny little sample paint cans that pleasantly surprised me by arriving within 1.5 business days of ordering! Canada can really pull things off, eh?
My husband looked at me with bewildered fascination as I ran the box from the front door back through the house to unpack and immediately start painting test swatches. It was a moment preceded by nearly a month of daydreaming about what colors to sample.
I have been very torn since the major furnishings and textiles in place are practically a completely neutral starting point. With olive green curtains with blue undertones and hints of terracotta, our beige-gray cane bed, and our coromandel chinoiserie screen I could go in any direction really. Our orangey pine floors in the bedroom and golden travertine bathroom floor led me to decide I’d either have to lean into the orange with a peach or terra cotta brown, or tone it down with greens and blues. I kept an eye out around the house for items in wall colors I was considering and placed them against walls in the suite to figure out what worked and what resonated with me.
Shirts in assorted shades made great large swatches for a quick read on different colors (“Daddy, why is Mommy hanging shirts from the curtains?”). I came across my old Color-Aid papers – highly pigmented swatches in specific related colors to learn how colors affect one another – from Color Theory 101 in college and pulled them out for the first time since class for in the hope of eliciting gut reactions to the wide range I was considering.
As much as that terra cotta works, it just didn’t make my heart sing. Especially not in consideration of my plans for the bathroom.
I have this notion of a cheery green closet door greeting us in the morning, and our Hearth and Hand dollhouse made a perfect sample for inspiration – and made me realize I need a green with some blue in it.
Still on the fence, two factors helped me narrow down the color scheme: the immediate sense of calm I felt in perusing French Gray rooms on the Farrow & Ball website, and the harmonious color scheme of varying greens in most sets in the decidedly not-calming Blacklist, which we are currently streaming through. I knew which way to go.
Clockwise, from top left: “French Gray” (read for details), Calke Green, Card Room Green, Vert de Terre
Enter my decision of what colors to sample: a range of blue-greens from Farrow & Ball, including: Vert de Terre, French Gray, Calke Green, Card Room Green, Green Smoke, and Breakfast Room Green.
I took a lot of shots of the swatches around the room in different light. I thought through my commentary of what I could remark on in a helpful post about the colors in a room with both North/Northeastern and Southern exposure. I was troubled by the unexpected discovery that French Gray and Vert de Terre appeared nearly identical, and thought myself clever as I added a vertical strip of tape to my Vert de Terre swatch to help differentiate easily in my reference photos for all of you. Until I realized by subtle, tell-tale edges of my supposed “French Gray” swatch that the first coat of paint was darker than the top and I must have applied its second coat in Vert de Terre accidentally – so I painted a new swatch.
Clockwise, from top left: Vert de Terre, Calke Green, French Gray, “French Gray” (French Gray over Vert de Terre), Card Room Green) in Northeastern exposure
So, I had this whole helpful post planned for your reference, but it’s going to have to wait because I have to reshoot everything. And now I have a problem because I think my favorite is my accidental “French Gray” UGH.
I ordered some poster board to paint bigger swatches of my favorites and hopefully make a decision this weekend – in photos of other rooms Card Room Green and Green Smoke read a lot more teal than the dark gray they’re appearing to be in most lighting in our room. Like I said, more pics for reference will come in their own post once they are re-shot. I’m hoping a bigger sample will give me a truer read. But the Vert de Terre, a last minute addition to my cart of samples, is a surprising contender at this point.
Meanwhile, I’m wanting to bring some brass or other metallics into the bathroom and closet, which currently have all the brushed nickel fixtures and hardware selected by our home’s previous owners. I can tell the brass will really play off the French Gray or Vert de Terre well in the bathroom, so I’m considering spray painting our existing vanity sconces and swapping out their frosted, marbled shades for a dupe of Rejuvenation’s sconces – ours have a very similar shape.
Left: Rejuvenation Rose City Double Sconce, Right: Our current vanity sconces in jeopardy of a coat of spray paint
Also, I’m thinking of bringing in Tole sconces of some variety for sculptural accents, and definitely leaning in the bronze and aged brass direction with crystal mixed in the hardware. And probably some Frenchy ring pulls on the bathroom drawers.
I’ve got a rug to unroll and a million things to buy and plan, so I’m gonna leave it here today.
Here are a peek of some inspiration shots I referenced as I planned where I am so far, with color options I could’ve gone with to go with a bright green door. I just didn’t have time to link them all up properly this week so it’ll wait til next week!
C’est tout!
Maura
It’s looking great, Maura! Although, I will say that while the room is coming along beautifully, what really got me was your exploration of word origins (i.e. tenterhooks)! We can *totally* be friends now! Haha! Lots of luck and love from a sister-ORCer! xo, Kristi
Thank you, Kristi! And I’m so sorry for the delayed reply, I did at your blog after your comment though – I’ve barely had time to do this thing, write the posts AND parent, let alone engage. I’m trying to catch up on others’ work before the storm of installing and actually decorating with all the elements for the room now that they’re mostly here!! It’s so fun to hear we share a curiosity for words – def down for a new ORC friend haha! Can’t wait to follow up on your progress since the fabulous shiplap!