Once Upon a Time…. we entered the One Room Challenge for the first time in Spring 2020, and then COVID hit, life got turned upside down and the 3 rooms we took on ended up taking over a year to fully finish. Ha! We tried again in the fall last year with our parlour, but my own indecision with fabrics got in my way and, well, you can guess how that one (hasn’t) ended. Double ha!! So third time’s the charm to finishing right??! And this time, we’re tackling a really unique 10’ x 12’ (ish) entryway room in our fairy-tale 1929 Tudor Revival home that will be transformed into a functional but classically stylish British boot room. I’ve been preparing for months and am hopeful we’ll get ‘er done this time.

ORC Spring 2020 - Kitchen

ORC Spring 2020 - Son's Room

ORC Spring 2020 - Daughter's Room

ORC Fall 2020 - Parlour

New here? Ello! Welcome! Lovely to have you. Haven’t met Ginny yet? (the house) Learn about her here. About me? I’m a Jane of all trades - full time marketing consultant, part time architectural illustrator / designer, interior design hobbyist, power tool enthusiast who will always advocate for women who build their own stuff. I’m English (though now living in Philly), sarcastic as F, love a well-timed swear word, and am also mum to two rambunctious little ones (aged 4 and 2), with another one on the way (due in Sept). The hubs, Stu, gets involved too and we tackle most projects together as we balance out each other’s momentary stupidity as we go. We believe in sharing the good, the bad and the ugly about every project, but especially like to take on big challenges and things we’ve never done before. And for those projects where we had to learn A LOT… I often write big meaty blog posts about the process and results, like renovating our kitchen, rewiring our house, painting cabinets, etc. If we do something sponsored, it’s rare, it’s honest, and you better believe we’ve spent months or years researching it first. We share quite a bit on Instagram too @brooksandstone if you’d like to follow along with more day to day fun times.

No clue what the One Room Challenge is? Fair. Read on here to learn all about it. Essentially it’s a friendly community of DIYers, designers and everyday Instagram sharing people that get together to transform a single room in an 8 week time period. It used to be 6, but now we get 8 due to all the crazy production lead times that COVID has caused. A few people are entering to become a coveted “featured designer” where the owner of the event Linda Weinstein in partnership with Better Homes & Gardens picks 20 designers and doers to become the faces of the next seasonal event. Held twice a year, it’s a pretty fun two months to follow along with, you get to meet a lot of cool people along the way and see some incredible designs come to life (or life-ish in my case).

So to the Boot Room!!

Why do I call it a boot room and not a mud room you might ask? Well, first of all, I’m English and can be a bit poncy that way about lexical terms. Secondly, a mud room just sounds dirty from the get-go and that doesn’t ever seem like a good place to start or finish a room. So, boot room it is! For those curious, or pedantic, there is a slight technical difference in that most boot rooms in the UK usually involve a utility function as well, in the sense of including a sink, small bathroom, area for gardening, or washing machines, etc. While in the US, most mud rooms are just hooks, racks and functional storage for the most part and are typically a hallway or entry-point, not a full enclosed room. Both feature hard wearing floors, and I think ubiquitously, in any country, become general dumping grounds for stuff, especially when you have children.

And that’s just where we start this journey… our dumping ground. Because…

1) we cover it in crap since it’s not organized for us or the kids and there’s usually at least one box of donations to go out the door and another box of things to sell on Facebook

2) the old furniture I’ve plopped in there doesn’t work for what we really need functionally

3) I’m in constant project mode so the windowsill always gets filled with DIY project stuff that should really be organized in the garage (#life)

4) we haven’t space to put the kid’s outdoor toys yet, so they come and go from here (that’s also part of the project creep to create a space for that outside)

So currently it’s beautiful lipstick, covered in pig. Here are the unfiltered, unedited photos I took this rainy Wednesday morning. And you can see why we need to properly design this and do it some justice!

Under all that pig… let’s show you the true awesome little enclosed room we have to play with! There are many incredible and all original 1920s features including a keystone fireplace made out of local Pennsylvania stone, an oak telephone box pass through to the parlour, a iron pendant light fixture, an oak bookcase, thick 4” oak front door (one of two), and Tudor style internal doors, not to mention a lovely original hardwood floor. We also have a big set of casement windows that look out onto a little built-in stone fountain/pond. It’s all RATHER pretty already.

The Challenges

As far as challenging rooms go, this really isn’t bad, except for the awkward shape and angles, how dark it is, and the expense of fixing normal old house things (primarily fireplace and radiators). And I suppose also doing the whole renovation while 5 months pregnant... but that’s not really new to us as this is baby no 3! Our biggest hurdle is usually our lack of and the amount of tiny to-dos that we pile onto the list every time.

The awkward shape has posed a few challenges as I’ve come up with the design, but mainly how to start and finish things like paneling, how to keep the original light fixture but not hit it all the time, and how to protect our gorgeous hardwood floors from further damage in front of the four doors we use most - entry door, stairwell door, cupboard door and kitchen door.
The room is seriously dark even with the lights on. As a North facing room in the corner of the house that gets minimal natural light, even the big window doesn’t do much to help. So we’re embracing it and going darker still with the paint to create a library-esque space that feels warm, enveloping hug. Its our main entry point for us, and guests, so we want it to be a grand “you’re home” feeling while still being super functional for our needs.
The fireplace is our biggest hurdle, really from a financial standpoint. We don’t need it functioning for heat purposes, but the chimney actually contains two flues - one for this keystone fireplace, and one for our boiler, and the boiler one is deteriorating to the point where it could be leaking carbon monoxide into the house. Not good! So we have to get that fixed sharpish, and we may as well make the fireplace function while we’re at it.
And finally, there is a healthy potential for project creep in this room. The porch / foundation that leads into the room is cracking with very heavy stones falling out of their mastic, the door threshold is rotting away, and the timberwork on the side of the house could really do with some attention too. Likewise, we’ve neglected the pretty little pond outside that you view from the room, and in order to not create a colony of mosquitos that can intimidate the entire neighbourhood, we should probably get it sorted soon as well. Eeeks!

But this is our main daily entry point into the house, as this back front door called “Jeeves” comes in from the driveway side of the house. (We have two front doors in case you didn’t know, the other door is called “Wooster” - reference this) So we come into this room with our muddy shoes (as the path is also unlevel and doesn’t keep any feet dry), backpacks and all the paraphernalia and then it gets dumped. So it needs to be re-designed and re-formatted to be functional to our needs, and of course, per typical Lex style, will include some fun & funky family heirlooms, dramatic colour changes, and a whole lot of woodworking DIY projects!

The Inspo

So let’s get some visuals… the inspiration! Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is all drawn from traditional English boot rooms. From the welly rack to the shoe storage shelves, to the settee/bench that I intend to build, to the artwork and the things we’ll be storing. Plus of course, DRAMA. In the form of colour. There’s a lot of options in this little bundle of images, so I’ll leave you guessing for another week on what fun we’re going to bring in.

The Floorplan & Intended Updates

The previous owner used this room as a small office space, so it contained a small modern desk with his computer and a basic chair. I’m assuming the bookcase was filled will his medical books, but as a lot had been cleared prior to selling, I can only use my imagination. But overall, not a lot has changed about the space since its conception in 1929.

We intend to make it more functional for our family of (almost) 5, with storage that is more appropriate for our needs. Almost all of the changes to this space will be DIY projects in our true fashion.

Creating a tongue & groove panelled space with plenty of hooks at both adult and child heights, because no one puts their coats away in a cupboard anymore. Above this panelling, will be a small shelf for hat / glove / sunscreen baskets on one side, and a small picture ledge that runs around the rest of the room for cohesion in design. Two sconces are being added above the picture ledge as the room is so incredibly dark.
We’ll then add a long bench underneath, built with some beautiful French “Green-man” oak legs I found, and some fabulous, patterned fabric on top. This will provide a much-needed seating space for the kids and our in-laws to take shoes off and put slippers on (a requirement in our house).
The very deep coat cupboard that currently acts as a dumping ground will then become a useable shoe storage, with 5 sliding racks (one per person of the family), with storage areas above for our canvas grocery bags and below for tall boots.
The fireplace will become functional with a gas-ignited, ventless basket insert that means we can close off one of the two flues. While we don’t need it for heat due to the large radiator in the room, its crucial to ambiance in this room and will be extra helpful to dry wet boots in the winter, and wet water shoes in the summer since the room doesn’t get that sunlight and stays pretty cool.
The floor space isn’t ideal being hardwood with huge gaps in an entry space, so we intend to cover most of it in a hard-wearing rug that is fit for all the awkward angles. The question is whether we go custom natural texture like sisal, or DIY a vintage-looking Loloi rug into the right shape.
A custom boot rack (that I’ll design and build) will then be added in, along with lots of fun English accessories.

So with all that, I leave you with a black & white moodboard that I’ll fill in colour-wise next week for you. Along with all of the proper design goodies and thoughts. Stay tuned, this is going to be fun!!