The Adored Abode

It’s that time of year again… I am back to do another One Room Challenge!

For those who are unfamiliar, the One Room Challenge by Calling it Home is a twice-yearly event that challenges design bloggers to transform a room in 6 weeks. I am joining this fall edition of the One Room Challenge as a guest participant. While I am not one of the 20 featured design bloggers participating, I will be participating and accepting the challenge of transforming a room in 6 short weeks! I will be posting updates to the blog on Thursdays every week, with the final reveal of my room the 6^th week.

If you are new to the blog, welcome! I am an accountant by day and started this blog as a way to pursue my passion of design, décor, and all things home.

Last fall we completed our powder room as part of the ORC, which you can catch up on here in case you missed it. While we did not finish the challenge in 6 weeks due to some plumbing issues, we did end up finishing it and we love the end result! This time we hope we can actually get it done in the 6 weeks.

This time around we are going to be tackling our laundry room, which also acts as our pantry, and what we call the dog room (this is where the dog bowls and food are). So this room has multiple functions and we want to design a space that is both pretty and that works much better for our family than the current set up we have.

If you are thinking I have already posted a design board and talked about laundry room plans you would be correct. I originally posted about our laundry room plans in this post here, on August 7th. My goodness, can’t believe it has already been 2 months since we originally started talking about the laundry room! Well life got in the way and we have not done a single thing with the laundry room. Honestly, I think it’s a happy procrastination because the more I thought about it I started changing my mind about the direction we wanted to head with the room. Honestly, what really prompted the non-start of the laundry room was the wallpaper I had originally picked out was just too expensive for our budget. Plus, I measured incorrectly so it was really going to be twice as expensive as I had thought, and that was too for one small wall! So that idea got nixed real quickly. I found an inexpensive buffalo check wallpaper, that I had included in my top 12 temporary wall paper post here, and decided to go with it instead.

We were back to the drawing board in terms of color/wallpaper that we wanted for the room. After we started looking at other wallpaper ideas we decided the original stencil we wanted was just a little too busy, considering it is not just going in the laundry room, but also the adjoining kitchen. So we found a simpler diamond stencil that we both love and feel will flow better in our kitchen. 

Once we had more time to think about the overall color and pattern scheme we also re-thought the shelving. We still want to incorporate a lot of open shelving, but we would like include more counter space, since there is currently none in the room. So we had the idea to use the room as more of a butler’s pantry where we can have both food storage and small appliance storage.

Here are a few before shots shortly after we first moved in (mid ripping off the painted over wallpaper that was peeling off):

On the left side of the room we plan to stack the washer and dryer, add some cabinetry, a counter, and a place to hang clothing.

On the right side of the room we plan to add cabinets and a counter top under the window, with open shelving all along the wall to the left of the window… and a dog feeding station worked in there somewhere, but we still haven’t worked out the details on that.

Below is the inspiration board for the room and a list of items we plan to complete in the next 6 short weeks:

• Paint & stencil floor
• Install wallpaper
• Stack washer/dryer
• Install cabinets (around washer/dryer & on opposite wall for pantry)
• Add backsplash above laundry counter next to washer/dryer
• Install built-in dog feeding station
• Install open shelving above pantry cabinets/counter
• Add window treatment
• Create organized pantry storage
• Hang artwork

There’s a lot to do for this space. We are hoping to start this weekend. I’ll be back with weekly updates for each of the next 5 weeks, but in the meantime be sure to check out the other participants. As always, I would love for you to follow along as we make over this space! Follow along on Instagram for more updates along the way!