Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a tiny commission if you click through and make a purchase. I will likely blow said commish on Spicy Margaritas.
Hey babes! Welcome! If you’re new here, my name is Meg Lowery; Raging extrovert, devout maximalist, seasoned thrifter and DIY enthusiast. I made my big blogging debut as a Guest Participant during the 2019 Fall One Room Challenge™ and it’s been mostly crickets over here since wrapping up the last of my famously lengthy tutorials. Seems I need to make large and emboldened commitments in order to produce blog content so here we are. Right back in the exhilarating madness I have come to love that is the ORC!
If you missed it, the whole 2019 Fall One Room Challenge™ can be previewed here: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6
OMG, IT’S THE ORC™!
If you’re not familiar with the spirit of the One Room Challenge™, it’s an online event that happens biannually (Spring and Fall) where 20 Featured Designers, as well as Guest Participants, transform a room over the course of six weeks. After pushing back the original start date and adding an extra two weeks due to the outbreak of Covid-19 The final reveal is scheduled for Thursday, June 11th! I hope you’ll follow along each week as I document the process of renovating a room under the gun and on a dime! I’ll post updates to this blog every Thursday, and if you’d like to follow the day to day progress as well, I’d love to invite you to meet me in my Instagram stories. We have a lot of fun in there.
Full disclosure: This year I got a jump start on the space I’m renovating because I had a BUNCH of travel planned this spring. Add the delayed start to the mix and I’ve had this room completely ripped up and destroyed for weeks now. But don’t worry. I am the queen of procrastination so I’ve still got plenty of work left to do!
the client
I dropped a little teaser early in Instagram stories that I’m designing this One Room Challenge space for a client this time around. In terms of partnership, I would describe her as ‘super easy to work with.’ Though she has V. strong opinions, and a plethora of ideas! What can I say, she’s a chip off the old block! The ‘client’ is my youngest daughter, Emerson (we call her Emmy Lou) and this room is her 14th birthday present. So we’re pulling out all the stops to make her Danish inspired, teen-soaked dreams come true!
THE SPACE:
I am super excited to dig into this project because this room has got such GREAT bones. It’s a spacious 14×14 basement bedroom boasting 10-ft ceilings, decent natural light, built in shelving, and is already pre-wired for up to 3 overhead fixtures. It also has wall-to-wall shag carpeting, a jet black ceiling that’ll take me half a century to repaint, and a spooky window well brimming with spiders, but these are only minor offenses. Honestly, it always feels so dang good to tear it all up and rip it all out!
Before:
And here is the room now. Our oldest daughter lived here for two years before going to college and Emmy took over as soon as she moved out!
Admittedly, I had already ripped up all the carpeting when I remembered to take decent before photos so if it looks really weird…that’s why. I’m learning y’all. I’m learning.
THE VISION:
Emerson has been pinning images to her ‘Dream Room’ board since she was 10. There are literally hundreds of ideas to draw inspiration from and we’ve talked at length and broken down the parts of each space in an effort to help her identify what she really loves. Fortunately there is a strong common theme in all that plays with minimal, bohemian & Scandinavian design. My goal is to give this room a bright, airy, textural feel with layered neutrals, wood tones, and lots of usable hidden storage.
My goal is to give this room a bright, airy, textural feel with layered neutrals, wood tones, and lots of usable hidden storage.
These are some of her favorite images.
THE PLAN:
In true Roost & Ramble fashion, (read: overeager and can’t leave well enough alone) every square inch of this space will be transformed. I’m giving the whole room a fresh coat of my go to warm white, Benjamin Moore White Dove in flat. We’re ripping out the carpeting and playing around with a Limewash technique on the cement subfloor as a temporary solution until we’re ready to replace the flooring in our entire basement. I’ll beef up her built in shelves to give them a more custom look, add additional storage and some killer DIY bypass barn doors to her closet, install wood beams to draw the eye up and add warm architectural detail to the space, and I’ve completely dismantled and rebuilt a perfectly good Pottery Barn Bed. (You can catch that project here.)
The PLOT TWIST
To keep within the confines of my tiny budget I’ll be meticulously tracking and sharing the cost breakdown of every project as well as a running total for the entire space at the bottom of each post. I feel strongly that transparency in this area brings so much added value to you, the reader, and also helps to keep me, the spender, accountable.
Then the fun starts! I’m planning to pull primarily textured neutral tones into the room with a pop of rust by way of DIY art, bedding and accessories. I’ve also been pinning away ideas on a Pinterest board of my own. It’s my go to when I’m stuck or need to rethink a project that’s not working out. Here’s a peek into what I’m envisioning thus far.
the MOOD BOARD:
What do you think? Of course this is all subject to change assuming things look grossly different in person vs. online or they simply just don’t work in the space as well as I thought they would. As with any project I take on, it’s a total crap shoot until I can see it come together with my own eyes. That’s what makes it so fun!
THE PROJECT LIST:
- Repaint the entire room in ‘Benjamin Moore White Dove’
- Trim out built-in shelves
- Closet build out (extra shelves, shoe storage)
- Remove and replace all trim & baseboards
- Remove carpet, pad, and tacks
- Fill tack holes with cement patch
- DIY Limewash cement floors
- DIY faux ceiling beams
- Refinish rustic bench
- Clean out and wash window well
- DIY Artifact Uprising Acrylic frame Dup & Parabola’s Press photo grid sponsored by Parabo Press
- DIY Barn Door and installation
- DIY Art Project
- Bed deconstruction and reconstruction
- Replace light fixture & install conversion kits
- Sew and install curtains
- Dye Headboard Canvas
- DIY Desk/Vanity
the Budget Breakdown
Here’s what’s been purchased thus far:
- Trim (Includes Built-ins, Closet shelving & header, door trim and baseboards): $121.58
- Window Sill Wood & Spray Paint: $13.72
- Cement Floors (includes patch, Limewash, acrylic binder & brush): $82
- Ceiling Beams – $0 (We ended up using 12 ft rough sawn aspen boards we had left over from another project.)
Partners
I am tickled pink to be partnering with some seriously amazing companies during this year’s One Room Challenge including:
Lovies, I’ll see y’all right here next week with an update, and don’t forget to meet me in Instagram stories to follow the day to day progress, help me make design decisions and keep me from filling this minimalist room with my maximalist tendencies!
See what everyone else in this challenge is up to at One Room Challenge™.
XOXO,
Visit each week of the One Room Challenge™ Here: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 CANCELLED #BLM | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 |
Roost & Ramble 
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