one room challenge: go with the flow (week 3 fall 2020)

Welcome to week 3 – aka the halfway point – of the Fall 2020 One Room Challenge. If you are just joining me, you can catch up with the A-frame plans here and here.

Last week, we talked about mood, color, and style. The way your space feels is comprised of both its visual feel (mood, color, style) and its functionality. Functionality looks at how we live in our homes. Who lives in this room? What do they do there? How can furniture/storage/art placement make it easier to be in the space?

The A-frame has one long, narrow living space that is 10’ wide at one end, and 9’2” wide just past the circular stair to the loft. Ten feet seems like enough space until you start thinking about the size of most furniture and the need to create a walking path through the space so that you can access the kitchen, two bedroom doors, and the loft stairs.

Listing photo.

When we purchased the house, the dining table was in the narrower section of the room, pushed close to the windows. For those who don’t think decorating is inherently a math problem, let me change your mind. A 3’ wide table with 18” chairs on either was placed 2’ from the wall, leaving 6” on one side of the table to slide in and out of chairs and roughly 4’ on the other side to both use the chairs at the table and access the bedroom door. Are you still following me? Maybe having flashbacks to those story problems from grade school? The table was also pushed 2’ from the wall (or rather window) at its head because the entry door to the house was at other end (is it two heads at a table? a head and a tail?), opening right into the dining chair. Make sense? Not to me either. Here’s a picture…

Listing photo. See how close the chairs are to the walls and the entry?

On the other side of the room, a 7’ (super retro) sofa swung out across the 10’ width of the room, allowing 3’ to access the second bedroom. That’s tight but it works in a pinch. Forced to keep this layout, I might have chosen a smaller sofa, but my husband was pretty attached to the idea that we have a sofa long enough for napping. So we needed to find a place for at least a 7’ sofa plus a dining table that could seat 4-6.

I mean, who wouldn’t love to curl up on this sofa. And note the narrow passage way on the right out of the kitchen.

You know how we solved these two issues already if you read last week’s post. We removed the fireplace from the living room, making space for a sofa to sit against the back wall. We also found a table that was narrow enough to fit in the (somewhat dead) space between the living room and the original dining area.

The table is now right off the kitchen. There is still only 2’ between the table’s widest point and the window, but because it is an oval rather than a rectangle, it is easy to move around on all sides. I did have to sacrifice the counter stools I really wanted for some (very plain, very boring but also in budget) smaller counter stools so that there would still be ample space to walk between the kitchen and the dining area. Compromise: the key to life and decorating.

The layout of the A-frame living/dining space.

We now have a third living area in our “great room”. Time to go back to the initial questions around functionality. With windows on two sides, this is one of the best places to sit in the entire house. You can see a small sliver of the water out of the south window and the sunset out of the west window. Given how small the “master” bedroom is (roughly 10’ x 10’ on a generous day with four doors and two windows so very few places to put furniture), this little area serves as an extension of our bedroom. It’s great for morning coffee or afternoon reading. The kids even did their schoolwork there earlier this week (one of the few plusses of virtual learning – you really can be anywhere).

Because the space is narrow (9’2”) and because it is leads to the bedroom, we are able to be somewhat non-traditional in our furniture layout. Rather than creating a traditional seating area with chairs near a wall or floating symmetrically, we can put the chairs directly in front of the window to maximize the view and simultaneously allow for an ample walkway. 

These chairs are temporary. I love them, but they do not meet the must be able to sit down in a wet swimsuit test. They will be returning to my living room in Houston just as soon as a pair of these cheery lounge chairs arrive.

Ha! Look at that. My beloved counter stools may not have worked, but I can still get the look somewhere else in the house. (Also completely unsolicited and unsponsored PSA, BluDot’s annual sale runs until Sunday, October 25. Get on that sale, folks. Their stuff is very cool and very well made.)

In the meantime, while we wait for those amazing watermelon chairs, we were able to fix the floor where the fireplace was taken out and found a neutral rug to ground the space. I went with a round rug so that no one would trip over it as they enter the bedroom door to the left. I also found an excellent rattan chair on Facebook Marketplace (truly, the only thing I use Facebook for these days). My husband gave it a little sandpaper treatment and then painted it with Rust-Oleum French Blue spray paint. I’m currently looking for replacement cushions. Honestly, though, I love how the chair came out.

We already own this acrylic coffee table, and will move it into the living room once the construction situation settles down. We actually own two of these tables. I love the size of the table, how easy it is to move around, and that it takes up zero visual weight in a room. This is particularly useful when your living room space is approximately 8’ x 10’.

Oh! And did you notice that blue trim sticking out of the edges of the sofa? We decided to go bold in getting rid of the existing brown trim. It’s possible this decision had more to do with the fact that we spent the weekend trying to prep a wall to install a sink in the kids’ side of the bathroom. This was “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” IRL. (Also, word to the wise, don’t go down the rabbit-hole of articles analyzing what this kids’ classic *really* means. Honestly, can’t it just be a kids’ book? Ok, I digress.)

Anyway, the trim color is Seaworthy by Sherwin-Williams. If you ask, my ten year old daughter will tell you she picked it out. And I’m happy to give her credit. Here’s how it looks in the not-quite-finished (and don’t look too closely) bathroom…

We still need to plumb the sink, replace the medicine cabinet (or just paint it and put it back), find mirror, and rehang the lights. Also do not believe fancy Instagrammers when they say installation of temporary wallpaper is a breeze, especially if you have wood paneled walls. We actually covered these two teeny-tiny walls twice and it looked worse the second time. And this was supposed to be the easy button to cover the nasty glue remnants from the previous vanity.

This is what we were attempting to cover. Next time, we prep and paint the walls. Even tiling might have been easier than the wallpaper.

But back to the main challenge for this period: the living area. We still have to fix the roof and the ceiling above the sofa, find art, and nail down the sitting area outside of the bedroom a bit. It looks like we will not be able to get the solid door replaced with a window in time for the end of this One Room Challenge, but that can wait for the longer term. Lighting would be super helpful in the dining area (call electrician), and I’d like to add bookshelves somewhere because we do want to read while we are at the beach. We may even still tackle the yellow-orange shag covered stairs before this trip is over. Don’t hold your breath, though.

Also, thought you should get a look at more real life during self renovation. All the tools, piles of stuff, living with the shop vac and ladder. And, yes, we need to call a shutter guy because those shutters won’t budge since Delta. Add it to the list…

Until next week, check out the progress of some other amazing rooms by guest participants of this fall’s One Room Challenge!