The Adored Abode

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, renovation, and all things home. We bought our house two years ago and are slowly renovating it room by room.

It’s week two of the One Room Challenge. If you missed the first week you can catch up on it here, the second week here, and the third week here.

We are overhauling our den for this challenge and we started with a room full of boxes and lots of items that needed to be donated.

This past weekend I painted the room! We chose the color Mount Etna by Sherwin Williams.  It’s a really pretty dark green-y blue, that reads a bit more like navy in our den. It is just the right dose of moodiness that we wanted, but surprisingly the room still feels just as bright as it did when it was painted a really light gray! I did things a bit backwards and realized I had never caulked the trim that we installed over a year ago. Sometimes you need something like the One Room Challenge to kick your booty into gear and tackle things that have been on your list for a while. So I painted 90% of the walls (up to about an inch above the trim, then promptly went to the hardware store to buy caulk so I could caulk the trim and let it dry before finishing painting the walls. It is MUCH easier and cleaner if you caulk before you paint the walls.

In terms of furnishings for the room… the side table I had ordered is not going to be delivered in time for the big reveal! Actually, it may not be delivered at all due to a shipping mix-up. So I am back to square one on a side table.

We also have yet to purchase chairs or a rug!! Eek. We just cannot decide which chair will be right for the space. I prefer these chairs from Ikea (I just love the slope arms and that they are slipcovered!) and Nathan prefers these chairs from World Market (he loves the wood back and arms that give them a more modern feel). We are going to test the chairs again this weekend and will make a decision. If you can’t tell we are pretty indecisive people. Well… I guess that might not be true for this scenario as we both know what we want, we just need to come to an agreement.

The rug is still up in the air because it depends on what chair we go with! Luckily I have a few in mind for each, I just hope if I order one this weekend it will get here in time. I also spotted a few rugs I liked at HomeGoods so if I am lucky I could still snag one of those this weekend. Nothing like waiting until the last minute.

As part of renovating this space we had hoped to be able to have our wood burning fireplace converted to gas logs or a gas insert. When we bought our house two years there were issues noted in the inspection with the fireplace in this room. We were told we could never use the fireplace as wood burning because the interior of the chimney was severely damaged and needed repair. That repair would come it at nearly $5,000! Which for us, is not worth it. Especially since this is not our main living space and we prefer to have gas inside anyway due to the mess and smell that goes along with a wood burning fireplace, even though we both love a nice wood burning fireplace. Well we finally got a company to quote us on a gas fireplace install and it was going to come in at nearly $1,500, which is just not in our budget right now (we were hoping closer to $500). So for now the fireplace mantle will get painted and the tile will be replaced. I think that will be plenty of a visual improvement and we can always convert it to gas down the road.

This weekend we plan to repaint and tile the fireplace and install the new roman shades (they are such a steal and seem like good quality despite that we haven’t used them yet). Plus we are going to decide on chairs and a rug! Then the space should really start coming together.

Here’s everything we have left to get the space completed:

• retile & paint fireplace
• install shoe molding & paint trim
• install window coverings
• buy two chairs
• order rug
• order lamps
• print & frame art
• side/console table
• decorate and style the space!

There’s only two more weeks left! I will be back next week with another progress report, and the following week for the final reveal!! In the meantime be sure to check out the other participants.

I hope you follow along as we make over this space! Follow along on Instagram for more updates along the way!