Front Bedroom: One Room Challenge, Week 1

For anyone who is new to this blog, welcome! I’m excited to participate in the One Room Challenge for my first and (in this house) last time. So far, I’ve been more of a tear the whole house apart and live in chaos and filth for years kind of a guy. The front bedroom is different though because there’s a lot left to do with it, it’s all finish carpentry and decorating that I think I can pull together in 6 weeks. After having no idea what to do with this room to make it better than just okay, we have a plan that we like. But first, a short review. You can see more about blowing up this room and putting it back together here.

I started with this Victorian closet that was too shallow for a coat hanger. The other door connected into a tiny, darkish middle bedroom with no closet at all. This is a common quirk in Philadelphia rowhouses. I like quirky, but I sacrificed it for function.

I moved the bathroom into the old middle bedroom and had room left over for an 8-foot wide closet, which in South Philly is HUGE. Also, drawing onto photos in MS Paint (or by hand) was the only way I could actually see my house for years.

And fit out the whole house with antique doors. (Also, if you don’t know if your old floors are salvageable or not, just look at mine.)

Then back to the bookcase niches. I wanted them to line up with the tops of the windows, but I had to replace the windows and reinstall the interior woodwork first to know exactly where the top would be. So I framed out openings and drywalled over them.

So, when it comes to construction I’ve always had a plan. Decorating? Not so much. The rug and bed spread went together better than you’d expect hand-me-downs from 2 different people. That was lucky. I felt lukewarm about the look though, and I had no idea what to do next with it.

Then Tito moved in and brought with him a bed that was, ahem, not gonna work with Victorian furniture and a floral rug. (The pictures over the bed were a sad attempt to liven it up.)

So what next? Well, we needed a bigger dresser. I found this one on Craigslist. We moved my Victorian furniture out and my mid century modern piece in, and suddenly it didn’t look that weird. (The new bookcases will look way better than this one does in the corner.)

So the furniture fits in the room and looks semi-cohesive. It was still dull though and I still didn’t know what to do about that. So we got a rug.

Then Tito said, “It looks weird now. this doesn’t go with anything else. And that brought our new plan into focus. I thought we’d be keeping the off-white woodwork and doing away with the taupe walls, but we don’t want to line 3 white rectangles up in a row.

The new plan? Paint the bed wall and the woodwork navy blue, the trim glossy. Keep the other 3 walls taupe. And enough color in the room from accents to keep it from being dull. I wondered about curtains but Tito thinks wood blinds are all we want. We’ve already gotten more art (which I thought would be super hard but then there was a flea market around the corner and we found lots of stuff) but I’m not gonna show that to you just yet.

So, stay tuned. Lots of mess and DIY is in progress! And if you want to see more One Room Challenge room makeovers, most of them probably from people who are better at decorating and blogging than I am, click here.