If there’s one place in our house we’re ashamed of, it’s our 3 season porch. At first, It started off innocent… we were moving, renovating two houses, AND getting married so naturally, a lot of stuff lived in boxes piled to the ceiling on our front porch for the first few months. As we’ve lived here, we’ve moved most of our belongings in, but moving from a house with lots of built in bookcases to one with none has left us with little places to put things like books. Chris has been building us custom floating shelves out of walnut for our living room, but we have this massive cabinet that we love, but it’s too big for the room and blocks where we’d like to put the bookcases. Because of the layout of our house there is not a lot of wall space and the only other place in the house it fits is on the exact opposite side of the wall in the 3 season porch we would like to use as a mudroom.
So when we found out literally 2 days ago that you don’t have to be one of the chosen 20 to do the one room challenge – anyone – can participate as a guest, we decided this was the perfect chance to check another room in our house off the list. With taking on this project & choosing this space, we are hoping it will be a good first step in getting our lives a little more organized, have the space to make progress on our living room as well, finally unpack the last of our stuff, and make a good impression when someone comes to the front door. I can’t wait to prove to the UPS guy that we aren’t hoarders because all he’s ever seen is this mess and honestly anything else is a bonus – haha!
HOW WE’RE GOING TO USE THE SPACE: Primarily, we want to use the space as a mudroom. But the space is genuinely so wonderful & sunny, I want to make sure we have a spot to cozy up and read a book or enjoy a cup of coffee. And since the sun is so great in here, I’d like to make sure there is plenty of room for my plants to get fresh air & sunshine while the weather’s nice.
THE WALLS: So while most people probably aren’t about the basic pine paneling in here, I actually have a nostalgic fondness for it. And honestly, painting windows is too much work. SO we are finding a way to add some color and tone down the wood without touching the upper section of the walls – a Color Dipped room! I have loved color dipped anything since the trend first started years ago, and lately I keep seeing color dipped rooms. We’ll paint the entire bottom third of the room, and the floor to match to create a fun modern take on classic wainscoting effect that feels at home in our federal style house. We are going to use a super traditional and sophisticated shade of dark green so it doesn’t feel too trendy and is so classic Vermont. My inspiration for this idea was actually the columns on Power’s Market in North Bennington, I drove by on the way to a clients house and just fell in love with that look on the columns, I thought why not use it on an entire room!
THE FLOORS: Since we don’t want to spend a ton on these we’re going to have to get creative. I may keep the currently horrendous stone paver vinyl and just paint over it, I actually don’t know what’s under it, so it’s possible that’s better and I’ll paint that. But painting is definitely not where I’m going to stop…. I want texture! I wanted something that was going to be durable, easy, and help knock dirt off boots but still look sophisticated and be comfortable to walk on in bare feet. I was inspired by the seagrass matting they had in the beach house we stayed in when I was a kid. But of course, I couldn’t find one with an open weave to let the color of the painted floors peek through at an affordable price point, never mind one that could be here within the time constraints. But then, we had a moment of genius, a la Hildi Santos Tomas and saw something that would work just perfectly, a seagrass placemat. Yes, you heard that right, I’ve decided to glue and/or staple placemats to my floor. Have I lost my mind? Maybe. But I’ve got a gut feeling it’s gonna look awesome so I’m going for it. I haven’t picked the exact placemat yet, it’s hard to find good bulk sources with quick availability. I’ll most likely end up with round placemats put together into a tight grid, but my dream would be these leaf shaped ones (unfortunately it would also cost $1,500 so they are out unless I can find them at the price point of round). I wouldn’t do this if this was a floor I cared about and it will be extra easy to remove if we keep the layer of vinyl – so here goes nothing! This has not been approved by Chris and I can literally feel the eyebrow raise as he proofs this blog post but I promise it’s going to be beautiful and stunning and you just have to trust me – love you!
THE CEILING: a.k.a. the fifth wall! I’ve been dying to make a statement with a ceiling on a project and haven’t quite made the leap… this may be the perfect chance to try something new. I don’t have any brilliant ideas here yet and honestly, time, and/or the the fact that the space has A LOT going might mean it stays exactly as it is, white. Seeing as I just barely negotiated glueing placemats to the floor I’m thinking it’s gonna stay white. We might replace the fan? Who knows!
THE COLOR SCHEME: So we know the base is going to be warm woods, natural textures & dark green. The question is – how do we accent? Do we stay true to the rest of the house and accent with navy, grey, & mustard? Do we go full Northshire Living and stick to black and white with pops of orange? Or do we finally play with the dark green / blush combo thats so popular lately we’ve been obsessing over? THE DECISIONS! Honestly I could do all 3! Fortunately, that’s something we don’t need to figure out until we check the walls & floors off our list. Comment below with your vote color scheme but we’re giving Chris final veto power because it’s his house too.
So we hope you enjoy the ride for the next 6 weeks of the One Room Challenge! Be sure to check back every Thursday for a new post on progress and be sure to visit the One Room Challenge blog to check out the amazing work being done by both the challenge & guest participants
