It’s officially One Room Challenge kickoff time! For all you newbies, the ORC is a semi-annual event where 20 bloggers transform a room from start to finish hosted by Linda of Calling it Home. (Last October I did our happy stripe family room) And on Thursdays is when all the other participating designers and bloggers chime in with their projects. Hooray!
For this round, we’re headed to our Carlton Landing lake cottage that was built in 2014. Located on the pretty shores of Lake Eufaula in southeastern Oklahoma, our little two-bedroom house fronts the boardwalk that runs from the lake up through town. This will be our fourth summer there and after seeing what works and what hasn’t, it’s time to spiff things up in the living room.
But it’s not just a living room — because of its relatively small size at 1200 square feet, this open floor plan room has to function as kitchen, living room, dining room, playroom, mudroom – everything short of a bedroom.
The biggest thing is to improve the overall seating and comfort of the living area so we’re doing a gorgeous Huntington House sectional in Crypton fabric along with a pair of swivel gliders in Crypton’s Thibaut fabric. (SO EXCITED – I can’t wait to see how everything turns out. Crypton was so wonderful to work with for our first ORC last October!)
We love having guests over, but as it’s a smallish house everyone ends up sitting in a straight line on the sofa or awkwardly at the dining table. The pair of blue leather chairs – which are visually fabulous – aren’t really lounge-y and lake house appropriate. They’re more like office chairs, so they’ll be whisked back to OKC to live happier lives in Simon’s office.
The existing rug is maybe our biggest design mistake only for the fact that it’s too small for the space. (Number one rule of rugs: go as big as you can afford!) So, it’ll go upstairs in the master bedroom as I still love it and could use the extra buffer to keep our carpet looking newer for longer. And the custom coffee table I had made a couple of summers ago will also be staying.
The dining space will remain the same overall, but I’ll be zhushing up the artwork, etc. Fear not – the paddles will not go far, but they will probably migrate to another room in the house because #designADD.
It’s funny – open floor plans are such a buzz word thanks to HGTV, etc. and I love that I can be making breakfast while the boys are watching TV in the mornings. But it can provide so many different design challenges. It’s difficult to create boundaries where none exist. It’s where we do the bulk of our entertaining and living. But it’s tricky thanks to the double front doors and odd little kick-out where the TV sits.
I love this little space with these windows but it’s a bit awkward. There’s not much wall space for us to wall-mount a TV, so it has ended up living here. I think a built-in bench would be a great solution but Simon would prefer we use something we already have. I’ve got an Ikea expedit cabinet in the upstairs bedroom that I will probably bring down for better storage. Love that little campaigner, but it’s too small visually underneath the TV. Actually I think the TV is larger than the cabinet! And the Sonos speaker is not living its best life on the yellow pouf.
For reference, here’s a floor plan of what I’m envisioning. I keep switching the arrangement of the sectional and chairs around, but basically the living room will be on the left with the dining room on the right.
Ok, that does it for week 1. Check in next week for the progress! I couldn’t complete this challenge without the gracious help of my fabulous sponsors. I can’t say thank you enough to the following companies who’ve partnered with me to create this makeover!
