The Dappled Willow

Hey-o! If you’re new here, my name is Lydia; I’m a freckled, ginger, mum of 3, finally making my house a home by doing as many DIYs as I can manage. While working full time. During a global pandemic. So, WHAT THE HEY, why not take it a step further by being a Guest Participant for the One Room Challenge™! I like to keep busy and since there have been so many lockdowns where I live I’m getting tired of looking at these walls and am in need of a change. This challenge is the perfect distraction!

What is the One Room Challenge™?

If you’re not familiar with the One Room Challenge™, it’s an online interior design event that happens biannually (Spring and Fall). There are Featured Designers, as well as countless Guest Participants, who will each transform one room over the next 8 weeks. Every Thursday I’ll share an update on the progress of my room here on the blog, but I’ll also be posting video updates on Instagram and Facebook stories too. If you want to watch it all unfold more closely you can follow along there and please help me make some of my design choices! I’m an amateur and need all the help I can get.

I’ve been going room by room, slowly but surely, trying to create beautiful spaces for my family on a tight budget. I call it a Budget Room Refresh and I try to spend as little as possible with a maximum spend of $500 per room.

THE ROOM:

Our house is a humble backsplit with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Our main floor has a small entryway front and center between our living room and dining room. It used to have a small closet that stored an old dresser full of arts and crafts supplies, but about a month ago we decided to take that closet out and open things up a bit more.

That got me thinking about tackling the living room for this ORC.

Before we moved in we had the parquet floor refinished in a darker stain and we painted the room a light peanut butter colour that matched our secondhand couches at the time. I was not as into interior design at the time as I am now.

The living room has seen many reconfigurations over the years. Many secondhand pieces have come and gone. This room has been our main play area, party space, dance floor, wrestling ring, nap room, and on a few occasions we’ve even swapped all the furniture out to accommodate a large enough dining table to host our families and friends for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s dinners.

We painted the brick fireplace – which really started my desire to make our house our own.

Later Daniel (my husband and partner in DIYs) removed the awkward offset marble shelves and I have a whole lot more planned for the space!

THE VISION:

Thankfully I have discovered that less is more and have decluttered this space significantly over the last couple of years. Now that we’ve dedicated another space in the basement to all the kids’ toys, I want something more sophisticated, yet still functional and durable in here for our family full of little ones.

I want to add more character and allow for more flow to the rest of the main floor. With the front entrance closet out of the way, I’d also like to widen the other doorway into this room.

Better storage for our records, tapes and cds and better storage for our firewood is also needed. And I’ve always wanted a beautiful wood mantel to hang stockings from for Christmas!

Thankfully this room gets a lot of light during the day but in the evening this room gets really dark since there’s no overhead lighting. I need to figure out better lighting for this room.

As much as I love bold and moody colour palettes, I want to keep this room bright, airy and fresh so I plan on keeping the colour palette simple with white, blue, black and brass/gold.

I don’t think I can quite put my finger on the exact style I have in mind. Some elements could be considered modern while others are more farmhouse. I don’t know if it will all come together but I’m excited to find out!

THE PLAN:

I’m always budget conscious when working on my refresh projects. Last year I updated our primary bedroom, our boys’ room, our bathroom, and our nursery all for a maximum of $500 CDN per room. I’m going to do my best to keep the spending down, but things like chairs and rugs are pretty pricey and I’ve been wanting to invest in quality items that suit my style for a long while since we’ve always had hand-me-downs.

To keep costs low, I’ll be using items I already have, upcycling materials and buying secondhand as much as possible. I plan on doing as much as I can myself (and roping Daniel into helping) too. I’ll be trying things I’ve never done before so here’s hoping I (we) can pull it off.

THE PROJECT LIST:

• Declutter
• Widen entryways
• Drywall
• Prime
• Paint walls
• Paint brick fireplace
• Paint window frames
• Build fireplace mantel
• Music storage/station
• Firewood storage
• Replace rug
• Figure out lighting
• DIY Art
• Stage with art and accessories

This is a long list and I still have a few ideas I’m keeping to myself for now to surprise you down the road. I don’t know what the future holds, I may not get to all of these projects. But I’m looking forward to giving it a try! 

I’ll be back next week with an update for ya! Until then remember you can follow along on Instagram and Facebook and watch me succeed or fail AS IT HAPPENS! Every Budget Room Refresh I’ve done so far has had ups and downs so I figure I just need to get started to see how it all plays out. Are you with me?

Let’s do this thing!

Cheers,

Lydia

Visit each week of my One Room Challenge™ Here:

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 |

Thanks for being here! See what everyone else in this challenge is up to at One Room Challenge™.