One Room Challenge Fall 2019

Did I just write that? I feel like I am still recovering from Spring ORC. Yet, here I am. Again. My dad walked into the “constructions site” yesterday and his only comment was, “So the insanity continues?”

Yup.

But. I digress.

For those of you just starting to follow along with me, the One Room Challenge is a six week challenge to complete a single room renovation top to bottom in – you guessed it – six weeks. It happens twice a year in the Spring and the Fall. Tons of people along with 20 Featured Design Influencers enter the challenge together and it sort of reminds me of a long distance race.

Before the Spring ORC this year Mike and I were talking about what rooms we would like to do. We had decided that the loft would be great to do in the Fall and our outside garden would be great for Spring. (Check out the final reveal here). Fast forward to a week and a half ago when Mike decided that maybe he wanted to gut our motorhome and I decided I would delay the kid’s loft/playroom/study space (I know that one sounds like such a cool one too) to help him remodel our motorhome.

CuzinEd.

Anyone watch National Lampoon’s Vacation? Well, CuzinEd is our mobile “AirBNB”. We rent it out through a couple of different websites and it has traveled all over the United States and even some parts of Canada. In fact, you may have even seen it on the road, or perhaps you’re following us because you’ve actually rented it. CuzinEd is 15 years old and in motorhome years-when you’ve had a hard life being a rental-that’s like dog years.

We were thinking he’d only need some new flooring and furniture…but then one thing led to another..and we may have gone a little extreme.

It’s just. Stock RV’s are ugly. It’s like builder special on steroids. For real. I mean just google rv shower heads and you’ll see what I’m talking about. I know it’s camping. But does that really excuse ugly design? No. I’ve seen tents better looking. And look at Airstreams – they’re retro and gorgeous. But motorhomes? U-G-L-Y.

So we tore out the dirty, stained, worn out carpet, the dated linoleum, the toilet (because for real…15 years of rental), the falling apart captains chairs…and then we started removing other things that were mostly still functional but that I just didn’t like…like the shower, the dinette, the pull out sofa, the loveseat, a few cabinets I felt weren’t necessary, and the ugly valences with attached blinds. (I still need to figure out some options for window coverings).

I removed all of the border wallpaper-painstakingly if you’ve been following me on IG you may have seen me complaining about it in my stories. Then I washed every nook and cranny that needed to be painted with TSP. Sanded every where. Cut in with primer, Mike rolled the primer. Painted the trim and cabinet frames. Cut in the wall paint. Rolled the wall paint. I also reconfigured the overhead cabinets and re-built one. At this point I am exhausted. This ended up being multiple 12-14 hour days for me and it doesn’t look like I will be able to slow down any time soon.

Before I reveal my plans I’d like to give a special shout out to Handy Paint Products for sending me a great collection of products to help me out this week. Seriously, if you haven’t checked out their products you need to. I was lucky enough to get two different sized pails and a roller tray. They also sent me a bunch of liners. The Handy Pails and tray have magnets for brushes. I spent three straight days painting and I honestly could not have done it without them. Clean up was a breeze with the disposable liners and I didn’t have any spills or accidents.

Now for what you all came here for. The plans. Well to be honest, Mike and I just kind of stumbled in to this. So my plans aren’t as organized as my usual ones. This one is sort of plan as I go. There were a few things that I knew I wanted for sure and that was some fresh cabinets, paint and new floors. We painted most of the cabinets and plan to reuse them. But we decided the kitchen needed a different layout. So we gutted all of the kitchen cabinets and rebuilt or bought new ones. We have also teamed up with SemiHandmade and are using the Chris Loves Julia Cove fronts for most of the kitchen cabinets. We also decided to forgo a loveseat (I am anti-loveseats if you didn’t know) and put in a fireplace instead. We also decided to get rid of the dinette (a family of six – such as us – couldn’t even fit in the 4 person dinette anyways) and replace it and the existing pullout sofa with one really long “sectional” sofa that has two queen pullout beds. We will add an ottoman to create a chaise and some extra storage. Then, for eating I’ll build a foldable table that we can put up when we need it in font of the sofa/ottoman to make one longer dinette. The shower is going to get some major changes…I can’t wait for everything to come together. My old dog is going to be transformed into a silver fox ;).

If you’d like to read more about the One Room Challenge and the featured participants, click on over. Thank you again to Handy Paint Products for sponsoring me this week. Good luck to everyone else who has a room they are transforming!