ORC- Beadboard Powder Room Week 4

Week Four in the One Room Challenge (ORC) hosted by Linda of Calling it Home.

Updates from last week is my husband installed the floor to ceiling sheets of beadboard to our powder room, while my I painted one of my daughter's bedroom because you know we just can't get enough of projects right now.

The real reason for me painting my daughter's room wasn't for the pure joy of another project, it was because one of her walls was damaged during the install of the new ceiling beams in the family room. In case you aren't up to date with why we installed new ceiling beams... you can catch up HERE.
I could've just painted the one damaged wall but the rest of the walls were looking a little banged up so I decided to do the whole thing and do it myself to save us some costs to go to other areas of the home.

Back to the powder room... here is the current look.

I am thinking there will be a lot of painting primer in our near future, don't you think? I am excited to see it all painted bright white though. It'll add so much to this little powder room.

Bad news, I'm 100% sure I will not complete this challenge in time. When I decided to jump on this challenge, I knew there was a chance it might be close but now I have a better grasp of the house timeline.

Our new hardwoods in the kitchen should be installed soon, and perhaps the rest of the house floors will be sanded soon too but they won't be stained until the kitchen cabinets are in and that won't be until the end of May (crossing fingers). After the kitchen cabinets are installed then they will be sprayed and left to cure THEN the floors will be stained and finished, leaving the toilet and sink not to be installed until after the floors are done. Insert sad emoji.

I will continue to post our updates along the way though and hope you'll follow along with this project and the rest of the house projects after the ORC challenge is over.

In the meantime, you can see the Featured bloggers/designers week 4 progress HERE and the other link uppers like myself HERE.  See you next week!

Missed any of my past week's progress?

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3

ORC Week 3 - Powder room

Is it just me or do weeks go by pretty fast when you're on a deadline?

We are at week three of the One Room Challenge hosted by Linda of Calling it Home. For anyone new to the blog, I'm am working on my powder room and you can catch up here on week 1: the before shots and week 2: the plans.

No photos of progress to share with you this week. Last week I was teetering on whether to do a dark paint on the walls or go white. Although I saw many gorgeous dark bathrooms to give me inspiration, in the end I have decided to go white. There are no windows, skylights or any trace of natural light in this small powder room therefore I was a little afraid it would turn into a dark hole.

We did pick up the sheets of beadboard this past weekend and maybe we will get a chance to install it this coming weekend.

Here are some more inspiration photos to get me through this renovation.

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I have made another mood board and switched things up a little.

I will be honest that since this is the third week and we should be half done, I'm not too confident that I will make the 6 week deadline. All of it waits on the hardwoods being installed and stained before the toilet and sink can be installed and when the hardwoods get installed & stained isn't really in my hands. It could be a tight race to the deadline for sure.

To see the 20 Featured Challengers 3rd week update go HERE and to follow along with the other linking up challengers like myself go HERE. Lots and lots of inspirational makeovers happening over there!

Going Dark

Picking paint color is not always an easy job. You really need to consider several things before choosing a color that is right for your home.

Today I will be giving you a run down on how I chose my new paint color for the exterior of our house.

Location

Where is your house located? Is it on a wide open acreage, near the beach/lake, in a housing development, in a wooded area?
You may be wondering why this matters. The color you choose should compliment your surroundings and not stick out awkwardly. I believe your exterior should definitely stand out but in a good way of course.
I live in a wooded neighborhood in the Pacific NW where we get our fair share of dark, rainy days. My love of white houses will have to be a love from afar, as it would be a task to keep it clean and not have the moss show on it after a long wet fall and winter. I could probably get away with a white house here in my town, if I didn't live in such a wooded neighborhood where it can be a bit darker than other neighborhoods.

Neighbors

Look around at the houses around you. Make sure you aren't choosing a color similar to theirs. You want to stand out but again in a good way, and it might be difficult to give directions to a friend saying the light grey house when there are 3 grey houses in a row. 

Research

Not sure what color to choose? Look around on Pinterest, Instagram,Google. See a house in town that you love?  Go ahead and knock on their door and ask what color they used. I am sure they'd be flattered. Pick a color that sings to you. I know that sounds weird, but if you don't really love it than I promise in a couple years you are going to HATE the color. Painting a house is not exactly cheap or easy to do, so make this a good choice.
This leads me to my next point however. No matter how great a photo looks like online or your friends/relatives house, it doesn't mean it'll look the same on your house.

Test, Test, Test

Go to the paint store and pick several paint swatches. Bring them back to your home and see what they look like. They will look a lot different than they do inside the store! Narrow it down to 2-4 different shades of what color you are leaning towards,buy small samples and put them on your house in different areas. The sun hits your house in different angles and it will look a lot different on one side of your house than the other, especially during certain times of the day.

Here's my example

This is the look I am going after. A dark gray with bright white trim.

The colors I tested on the house.

 I thought I was going to love the second from top color but when I got it on, it was way too blue for me. Especially on this side of the house. Don't get me wrong I dig a dark gray/blue house, I really do but it was a little too blue and made me a little nervous.
See how different these 4 colors look from just a different angle I was standing in?

 Here's what those same colors look like on the front of the house. The color I chose is the far right, Benjamin Moore's Wrought Iron. It has the dark look I am going for and maybe a tiny tint of blue. The other colors were leaning either too blue or purple to me. My plan is to paint the brick although the husband is fighting it. We will paint the siding first and see what it all looks like but I am thinking it won't look right unless it's all painted. Since it is brick and there's really no going back, I will wait and see before we dive in. I will be sure to show after photos and let you know if any changes have been made in the meantime because I have been none to change my mind at the last second a time or two.

Looking at this photo is so sad with our poor missing post light, our paint swatches, and dangling shutter... sorry neighbors. It will be beautiful soon! Crossing fingers anyway. Stay tuned.

Cha- Cha Changes

Time for a little house update since there have been some changes and progress.

Think this is about where I left you last.

Here is where we are now.

 Roof is on, walls are fixed, electrical and plumbing done and thumbs up from city, insulation in and also thumbs up from city, drywall complete and texture spray complete. We have some progress people!

Thought I'd make a little list of things that are still needing to be complete in hopefully the next
6 weeks.

Things that I will * next to are things that we are doing as add on's to the work and everything else is because it was damaged by the tree and the shaking it did to the house.

Family Room:
-ceiling/beams
-Fireplace redo with gas insert and install TV above fireplace*

An idea that I'm playing around with....

-install hardwood floors* there was carpet in this room before and we have an allowance to replace carpet but we are upgrading to hardwoods since it was so hard to keep carpets clean in this room for we enter from the garage into this room multiple times a day

Kitchen:
-Ceiling
-skylights* (skylights will be new addition)
-new cabinets
-pantry shelves & barn door*
-install pendant lights*

Dining Room:
-New French doors

 When the tree hit the house there was so much pressure and shaking that it blew these doors and our master bedroom doors wide open! I might add that these doors were locked and dead bolted shut and the master bedroom is on the complete other side of the house and it did the same to those doors as well. Pretty insane! It even popped all of our attic hatches up and out of place.

New doors have now been installed.

Stairway:
-drywall fix and painted. Drywall shifted and you could see nailpops and lines of the drywall

Powder Room:
-install new sink*
-fix hardwoods*
-remove small closet*
-patch drywall*
-paint*
This is a room that needed updating and I am doing this room as part of The One Room Challenge.

Upstairs bedroom 1:
-new windows (these windows are covered under insurance, they were tweaked with the hit)
-repaint room

Upstairs bedroom 2:
-New windows*

Master Bedroom/Bath:
-new french doors
-new windows*

Laundry room:
-patch ceiling
-paint
-remove built in iron board*/patch hole
-install tile floor
- install utility sink

Outside:
-fix siding on damaged side of house
-remove and replace rest of siding of house*
-paint exterior
-fix exterior post lights

siding is currently being installed

hardwood arrived today!

My little list is longer than I thought. Lots of different stuff going on in almost every room in our house, but I feel we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I will follow up soon on some changes that have been made to my previous plans on the kitchen and family room.

One Room Challenge Week 2: Powder Room Plans

Week two and nothing too exciting to share just yet of my One Room Challenge of redoing the powder room in 6 weeks. See the first week here.

The cabinet has been removed and the drywall has been fixed.

I have been wanting to remove this dated cabinet for sometime but knew we'd have issues with the hardwoods, as you can see. Since we are redoing our hardwoods in kitchen and other areas of the house currently this was the perfect time to tackle this too.

In the last photo that rectangle was a little closet. I am not sure what it's purpose was for in a powder room but it was torn out when we removed the bar area in the family room which was right behind it.

Not all my plans for this room are set in concrete sadly, but here are the definite changes..

This Kohler pedestal sink has been purchased.

I purchased these hand towels as my inspiration for the room. Blue and plaid, what's not to love?

These Schoolhouse Electric sconces I already have and they were above my kitchen window. We were no longer able to use them there so I may re-purpose them for this bathroom.

The silver beaded mirror from Pottery Barn is what was in the bathroom already. I have not decided if I will replace it or not.

 Now onto the more non-concrete decisions...
I am either going dark,

  or white...

I am pretty certain I will be adding some sort of planking/beadboard to the space. You'll just have to come back next week and see what's been decided.

If you haven't already checked out the 20 featured Challengers on Linda's blog, Calling it Home, you really should. I love that Linda chooses different bloggers/designers with different styles and taste, since we all have different styles and tastes that we gravitate too. There's something out there for everyone to get inspiration from.
Also, please check out all the other linker uppers, like myself on Linda's blog. There are so many joining in on the fun challenge that  I have not had a chance to look at all of them myself! I am very excited to dig into them this weekend though.

Thanks for following along. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, where I hang out a lot or Facebook to not miss out on any "behind the scenes" info.

ORC Bathroom Remodel

Our house is coming along and we have several projects going on so it makes sense that I should jump aboard the linking up party on Linda's spring edition of the One Room Challenge.

The One Room Challenge consists of redoing a room in 6 weeks and checking in every week during those 6 weeks to update you on the progress. Every Wednesday, Linda of the blog, Calling it Home and the creator of the One Room Challenge hosts her 20 Featured designers/bloggers on their 6 week challenge, and then on Thursdays, any one with a blog can join in on the fun on can link up to her blog.

This challenge is not new to me, I've joined in four times before when redoing our Master Bedroom/Bathroom, one of my daughter's "hidden hangout room", a bar area in our family room and the last one was our laundry room which was not complete because the tile I chose arrived too late before the deadline. Actually the tile is still not installed.

For me picking a project this time around was hard because there's just so much going on at my house right now. To recap for new readers, a tree fell through our roof in November during a high wind storm, and you can read about it here in this post. We have been going through insurance and waiting for good weather, and are FINALLY hitting some good momentum with the rebuilding.  I'm a little nervous about joining in this time around because I have no control on when this room is worked on and when it will be complete. Our whole house should be done in 6 weeks but you know how that goes.

Since we are in this huge remodel of what feels like half of our house, one of the other projects we decided to add to the list was our powder room. You may be familiar with the the children's story, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, well that is ringing true for us and this remodel. One thing is leading to another, but seriously a lot of it just makes sense to get done while in the thick of it all. I will have to do another post on all the added projects we have going on soon.

Back to my One Room Challenge project. The powder room. I'm so embarrassed that I don't have better photos. I had my husband take these real quick for me one day before they started ripping the room apart. The photos don't show much and they don't show all of the room and there was a bad filter on his photos. Basically, what we had going on was a brown oak vanity, brown silestone countertop, and brown walls. Pretty boring. Also, I have to add this is what our bathroom looked like during construction of other areas in our house and was being used by the construction workers. I don't usually have a roll of toilet paper sitting on the counter or the hand towel crumbled there either.

To be honest, I am not 100% sure what I'm doing with this room. I am either going dark or I'm going light. Real nail biter huh? haha  Well, you'll just have to come back next week and see my plan and hopefully I'll come up with a more concrete plan by then. Crossing fingers.