One Room Challenge Reveal!!!

Swatts & Co Living and Dining Room: ORC Reveal!!

Finally. Wow. Not gonna lie, I didn’t really think finishing one (or two) rooms in 6-8 weeks was going to be a challenge. And I suppose it wouldn’t be if I didn’t have a job, or kids, or hadn’t just moved into a new house, etc. But therein lies the challenge.

Thank you to Linda Weinstein and Better Homes and Garden for Hosting sponsoring this event every year!!

Because of Covid and not being able to have any trades in the house, I learned a lot during this time period: how to tile, how to wallpaper over surfaces that shouldn’t be wallpapered, and that sometimes you don’t know what you want until you get it.

Remember the ‘before’ pictures? Do you remember the ‘before’ story? How this was our Plan E house, and we ended up here because of the pandemic and we weren’t going to stay very long because it was a bit smaller than we wanted(and I have to share a bathroom with my 3 children)?

It’s amazing how finishing just two rooms of your house makes you rethink all of that. I’m now in love with the house, the size, and the neighborhood and don’t plan to leave anytime soon.

When I started this I didn’t really have a plan except I knew I wanted to be able to re-use as much of our furniture and décor as possible, use red & blue as the main colors, and I wanted it to be the opposite of minimalism.

Those arched bookshelves were my starting point.  I found that pink/red palm wallpaper and immediately knew were I was going to put it.  Pretty much everything else was judged by the ‘will it work with the wallpaper?’ question because there was no way I wasn’t using it.

I painted the bookshelves and cabinet doors the same color/sheen as the walls (Regatta by SW) to make it blend in better. I contemplated painting the wood trim blue as well, but didn’t because:

1. I am very very lazy and I hate painting trim.

2. Painting original wood trim in a hundred year old house is a very serious polarizing issue somewhat akin to discussing politics and religion and I just didn’t want to go there.

3. See number 1

My absolute favorite part of this room is everything to do with the fireplace and these wall sconces.

I knew I was going to paint the fireplace, but I wanted to do something different, and no ‘normal’ colors seemed like a good choice. I remembered that I had a can of silver metallic paint left over from a project 6 years ago, which brought me back to the “use what I already” have goal. I painted that fireplace silver and never looked back.

If I’m honest, I’ll say that I was a little nervous about this fireplace. When you can’t find any inspo pics online there’s 1 of 2 reasons for that.

1. No one else has done it and taken pictures

2. It’s not a good idea and it hasn’t been done and photographed because it’s gonna look awful

But the biggest rewards come from the risks and that little nervous feeling in your stomach.

The tile was my very first tile job ever and I should admit I’ve been patting myself on the back ever since(humbleness is not a fault of mine…). My husband, the perfectionist, couldn’t even find many things to critique, so we know we’ve got a winner.

We did pretty well using what we had for this room.

• Couch: prior LR

• Eames Chair: prior reading area

• White chair: from master bedroom

• Rug: from prior master bedroom

• Bar Cart: From prior dining room

• Lucite shelving: from girls bedroom

• Black/White end table: from prior reading area.

So all we needed was some paint, light fixtures, curtains, end tables, art and a fireplace makeover.

No big deal, right? So much of a “no big deal” I decided I also needed to do the dining room at the same time. So much of a “no big deal” I almost didn’t finish either room in time, and was literally finishing finishing and hanging the art an hour before the photographer came.

Our table from the old house was too big to fit into this space, so we put it in the basement and I found this table on FB marketplace for $40 and spent about 17 hours sanding it and 17 minutes painting it.(I exaggerate, but you get the point.)

The large blue art is a cyanotype (a process using a photo negative, chemicals, and the sun to create the print) and I picked up the blue and red lady from a street artist in Greece last year. The artist told me she is a “Greek Mary Poppins”.

The tiled buffet is something I designed for our last house and is an Ikea hack that used to house my kids toys, and now houses our bar glasses and booze(I do believe the buffet is happier now, if not a little more tipsy).

I repainted the legs BM Snow Cone Green, for a fun pop of non-traditional color. This color was our old front door color and I’ve committed to using it in some way or another in every home we live in.

And the curtains…..ahhh, the curtains. They’re from Pierre Frey and I made them myself (once again, covid). Probably the only Pierre Frey curtains to be put together with hemming tape.

Because art is the frosting of design, I left that for last. So yummy and so very necessary.

If you follow my Ig stories, you’ll know I painted the black & white modern piece myself. George and his horse was inspired by an amazing piece of art I came across earlier this year that had Napoleon on a red horse with some other graffiti.

Despite how important I think art is, $6k for one piece wasn’t really in our budget, so I found an $88 portrait of GW online and went to town with paint and and my kids crayons(and maybe a little Snow Cone Green on the paintings edges because I couldn’t stop myself).

Also, you can never go wrong with flamingos, so I added some, because, why not? Can you find them?

Thank you so much for following along on this journey with me. There were times when I was really tired and I totally wanted to quit and just finish it later. But I am SO happy I kept on going and finished it, because when we get home from our 6 week road trip, I’m going to be returning to a somewhat finished house.

If you want to learn more about me and Swatts & Co, click here.

Thank you to Linda Weinstein and Better Homes and Gardens for sponsoring this event. It was really fun to be able to participate for the first (and hopefully the amnesia will kick in, so it won’t be the last) time.

Also, thank you to Dionel Fisher of The Mittentog for taking all of these great pictures!

If you guys are looking for more design inspiration, head to the One Room Challenge Blog and prepare to get lost in Design Wonderland.

To see the progress on this room click below:

Week One I Week Two I Week Three I Week Four I Week Five & Six I Week Seven

The Fireplace Tile Challenge: One Room Challenge Week 7.

The Fireplace Tile Challenge: One Room Challenge Week 7.

Wow, here we are and the one room challenge is almost done.

(To see where we started, click here: Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Six)

I saved the best and hardest project for last…not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous to do this one on my own. Per my husband, he didn’t doubt my abilities at designing the fireplace tile, but he severely doubted my abilities at executing said design with my own two hands.

Husbands are so optimistic and encouraging.

But it’s really nice to be able to prove them wrong.

So we started off with this fireplace- you’ve seen the progression to silver.

I played around with the tile pattern for a day or two, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. As you can see the picture below, I played around A LOT. I wanted a modern pattern, since penny tile is pretty traditional, but I was constricted in the way the pattern could go because of the tile layout. So that knocked out squares and left me with straight lines, diagonal lines, and triangles, and diamonds.

I was getting pretty frustrated, and thought that maybe I should have a glass of wine and see if I got more creative the more inebriated I was, but I ran out of time for wine so had to do the whole thing sober. Since wine couldn’t move me, I kept going and let the spirit move me, and this is what the end result was.

It was a good 5 days of working on this every day and I finally got everything grouted. I also got myself grouted, and am still scrubbing grout off my legs 2 weeks later.

Below is a picture just after I grouted it, but I haven’t fully cleaned the grout off the tile yet, so it looks pretty murky.

Not gonna lie, I think I am more proud of this tile job than I am of most things in my life that I’ve accomplished. I now think I can tile the whole world…which I might try.

The husband got a light fixture up! And the house hasn’t burnt down because of it, so we are calling that a HUGE win. Some of our wiring is old knob and tube, so we were sort of crossing our fingers that he did it all correctly.

We started to accomplish some other small projects that I was leaving till the end in case I didn’t have time to finish. They’re sort of frosting on the cake…not completely necessary, but actually the best part. (because really, who wants cake without frosting???)

I wanted to do something in this arch to transition the blue wall into the lighter room, and decided to do a very simple modern pattern. I was sort of inspired by this tile that I love and had thought about using in the fireplace, but couldn’t seriously consider it since it was out of stock due to Covid.

So I got out some tape and paint and went to town. It took a ton of rounds of tape to finish all the lines I wanted, and then realized I could use a black paint pen and a ruler to get the look I wanted, so that saved me some time in the end.

You see those curtains up over there? It’s starting to get exciting over here.

I also saved George for last, but I don’t want George’s ghost reading this and feeling like he’s not as important as curtains and archways.

So…a while back I came across this painting above in one of my art catalogs and I fell in love with the colors and weirdness. My husband also loved it (so you know we are on to something). Cue the big disappointment when I saw the painting was like $6k….oddly enough, that wasn’t in our budget.

So I got creative. I looked for old men on a horse paintings and found good ol’ george. I then shamelessly re-created parts of the painting with my own $88 George Washington painting from Walmart.com.

In the pic below, he’s not completely done, but he’s getting close to being done. I added some tiny flamingos, because every old man on a horse portrait needs flamingos. I also went around the edges of the portrait with our old Lime Green front door paint, because….well, because why not??

(if you look close, you’ll see this color in one other spot in the rooms…I’ve decided I am going to incorporate this color into every house we own (BM Snow Cone Green if you’re curious)

George just hanging out in our basement

Stay tuned for the big reveal next week.

Oh I can hardly wait to see the pictures. And also- don’t forget to go and check out all the other crazy amazing transformations happening at the One Room Challenge site.

One Room Challenge: Week One...Living & Dining Room Makeover by Swatts & Co

One Room Challenge: Week One…Living & Dining Room Makeover by Swatts & Co

A little more than two months ago I was in San Francisco at the Design Influencers Conference sitting less than 6 feet away (those were the days) from some awesome designer friends chatting about the One Room Challenge. 

The One Room Challenge is a bi-annual interior design event where designers/bloggers/home renovation enthusiasts transform a room in 6 weeks.  It’s a super fun event that I’ve watched from afar for years. 

Some of my friends were participating this year, and I was lamenting that I didn’t have any rooms in my house to re-do as I had literally just finished my whole house. (I know…poor poor pitiful me).

So I did what any rational human being would do, and I sold our house and we bought a really old house that needs a little loving. (that may not be exactly how things went down, but you can read about the whole selling your house right before a pandemic story here). 

So now I have a room to re-do.  Because of all the stay at home orders and this whole deadly pandemic thing, the theme is sort of a DIY and use what you have type theme depending on location and what’s going on due to Covid…also due to Covid, the ORC has been extended to 8 weeks.  Which is nice since we just moved into our house two days ago, and it’s still filled with boxes.

I am going to be transforming our living room and dining room and maybe the entry way…depending on how much time I have and how long I can lock the three children outside. 

Before

The house was built in 1928 and is a Folk Victorian house.  (fancy talk for a poor persons Victorian because it ain’t got no  frou frou stuff going on).

It might not have frou frou stuff going on, but it has arched built in bookcases and a tiny fireplace, so I was sold. 

Few rules for designing this house: Needs to be semi-budget friendly, since it will eventually be a rental.  Since it’s going to be a rental, I’m trying to go with colors a large majority of people don’t hate, because I don’t want to repaint 14 times.  I’m going to try to re-purpose and re-use as many items as I can for these spaces. 

Dining Room Before

Our last house was very modern, so it’s going to be a fun challenge to take items out of modern and put it into an old space. 

I’ve been super into blue and red as a color combo  for the past few months, so I decided to run with it.

Below is a mood board for the living room. 

It’s a crap shoot if any of it actually turns out like the picture, because a lot of samples I need for the project are delayed because of Covid (how dare these people delay production for their safety) so I don’t know if I’ll be able to order what I need.

A lowdown on the pic: We own the couch and the two chairs, the brown chair will be reupholstered. The rug was in our master bedroom in our old house, and is gonna make a primetime appearance. The rest is all up in the air.

The dining room is connected to the living room via a 5’ wide arched doorway (yay for arches!) and will sort of go with the theme, because can you have too many themes?

I found a table on FB marketplace for $40 that I’m going to sand down and paint a high gloss blue (table in pic just for inspiration). Some potential fabric for curtains, and we’re going to re-use our media console from our TV room as our new bar. (somehow the liquor got unpacked prior to the kids toothbrushes). We are going to re-use our cesca chairs and pair modern with old.

If you want to follow along as we go on this journey, click below to sign up and get on our email list.

You can also go to the One Room Challenge website and follow along with the 20 featured designers or hundreds of guest participants like me!

To see following weeks, click on the links: (To see where we started, click here: Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Six, Week Seven,