I can’t remember exactly when I first discovered the One Room Challenge (ORC for short), but it was an exciting revelation, nonetheless. Having stumbled upon this mecca of design and inspiration, I found myself going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole on Instagram and through the ORC blog, following hundreds of new incredible people who had created swoon-worthy spaces in a very short space of time. If you’re new to the One Room Challenge, the premise is you have 6 weeks to pick a room and transform it from beginning to end. The vision, materials, time and money are all yours – but you get support from an awesome community of hundreds and thousands of other designers doing the same thing, at the same time. Pretty cool!

These are some of my favourite transformations from the the last round - Fall 2019:

@aglassofbovino Office

@ipsydiy Bathroom

@jewelmarlowe Kitchen & Living Room

@katepearcevintage Living Room

I decided at some point back in January that this sounded like great fun…. Plus, I figured I had two rooms that HAD to be done before we moved into the Tudor (besides the kitchen), so I may as well use this as a deadline and not-so-gentle kick to the pants that I needed to get going. I work best under pressure, even when it’s self-imposed, but putting this out there for hundred of people to read means I absolutely must complete it! It’s funny though, before all of our house projects started being derailed by re-wiring the whole house electrical, asbestos concerns in the kitchen, and lead dust upstairs, I worried I would need to get the rooms done before the deadline even began. Jokes on me!! Haha! Because here we are on April 10th, and I’m actually very grateful that the challenge has been pushed back to May 7th instead due to the Coronavirus causing delays and lack of supplies. I’m still not sure I’ll be able to get everything I need, but here’s the initial thought process behind the rooms as a start…

THE FLOORPLAN

The two rooms I’m tackling for this challenge are our children’s rooms. They are conjoined on the corner of the house above the garage and kitchen, sharing a Jack and Jill bathroom which is also on the list to renovate at some point this summer. They also both interconnect with a third “sitting” room which will be our office for the moment, but their playspace / homework desk space later on. And additionally, there is a set of stairs puncturing the whole area, which heads up to the currently unfinished attic.

Aemelia’s room, labelled as “Bedroom 4” on the plan here, was the prior owner’s office. It held a great big executive desk in the middle and not a lot else despite it’s vast size at almost 16’ x 14’. It was a great office space with built in bookcases on the right wall, and built-in storage closets on the left wall, but we liked the idea of having a “children’s wing” in the house and will be converting it to a bedroom instead.

Henry’s room is “Bedroom 3” and is much smaller in comparison, at 14’ x 11’ but obviously still plenty of room for a baby!! This was previously a guest room with a Queen size 4-posted bed (that we so nearly got given!).

THE DESIGN AESTHETIC

I’ve had an idea what I wanted to do in each of their rooms for several months now, but my challenge has always been defining their rooms relative to their personalities, but keeping them connected to the general feel of the house and connected to each other through the conjoined spaces. Plus, I would like the rooms to grow with them through the years, not just a be a “nursery” or “kids” room, but rather s space that works as a polished big-kid room too. The concept for our 90 year old Tudor house is to keep with the historical European tone, and go for a luxe English countryside bed & breakfast - the kind that would serve a 7 course tasting menu, offer cooking classes, and a wander around their brewery and farm. Beside the fact that this is a cozy and welcoming design concept, it is also precisely who we are, what we enjoy and where we’ve been. We want to be a residential version of a Relais & Chateaux boutique hotel, in fact this is the only one we’ve stayed at in North Carolina, but it is serious retirement goals to own a similar property one day! I digress.. point being, rooms designed for children are not often (or ever) found in a bed & breakfast or hotel, so it poses an interesting challenge to apply the aesthetic to the rooms of a 3 year old and an 18 month old.

Then you have their personalities… which couldn’t be more different! Aemelia has an unparalled joie de vivre, served up with a wicked cleverness that will be the death of us, just like the great aunt she is named after. She’s fiercely independent, but funny, and loves everything colour, vibrance, loud musical items, dancing and has a Forest Gump ethos when it comes to running, she just never stops. She easily jumps between wearing sweats and her grey football jersey, to getting dressed up to the nines for church with her grandparents. Henry on the other hand is much more reserved, quiet but pensive prefers more muted colours, although he makes a beeline for anything red. He is constantly observing the world around him (even better if he can do it while upside down), but with an ineffable charming grin and a striated infectious laugh. He is a super cuddler of epic proportions with a slow, practiced and detailed manner in how he takes in the world. She’s our monkey, whereas he’s our sloth.

Without knowing exactly how to begin on what is technically a 4-room design (due to all the connecting spaces), I started by feeling out some inspiration that fit each of their personalities. I’d like to make a note here about “inspiration”. It’s a term that gets used in a multitude of ways, and there is a great debate about what is inspiration versus being a copycat. To me, inspiration should be your muse, the bud of your creativity, that then lets the space flower into your own creation - a design unique to your space, your use and embodying the spirit of the people who will live in it, through personalised objects. Inspiration can strike anywhere and in any form – I always think back to a Project Runway designer (sorry can’t remember the name…) who saw inspiration in car light trails and used those streaks of light to create fanciful ripples on a black dress. Inspired! I find myself drawn to an inspiration room design, which I like the aesthetic of, but don’t want to copy in terms of exact colour, papers, etc. Then I find a key object or two like a rug, wallpaper pattern, or artwork that has meaning to us, to layer on top as points of colour reference and design cohesion. Typically in the past it has been artwork that is the driving force behind my designs.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”– Henry David Thoreau

HENRY’S ROOM INSPIRATION

For Henry, I wanted masculine with a sense of whimsy. I was inspired by the incredible design of a curated-art hotel room @thefifearms which felt comforting, but unique and full of character all at the same time. While buying an antique settee for another room, I discovered this little brass mouse, which had the quirkiness and cute factor I attribute to our baby boy. I also found myself continually staring at the tiny traditional teddy bear that sits on Henry’s crib all the time, gifted to him by Stu’s parents when he was born. The checkered scarf of blue and yellow is so quintessentially English. And then by fate, I stumbled across a stunning photograph of Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland by Stu McKay. The warm colours lit a fire in my heart, but the blue instilled an immediate sense of calm at the same time. It is one of my all-time favourite castles, and one I visited with my dad on a whirlwind trip up the western Scottish coast, about 15 years ago. I needed a sense of Dad in Henry’s room given the proximity of his death and Henry’s birth (he died only a week after Henry was born in 2018), so using this artwork as the basis for the room’s design required little extra thought.

AEMELIA’S ROOM INSPIRATION

For Aemelia, I wanted a huge sense of fun and glamour, but with grounded in practical life so that the design will see her through her teenage years (I hope!). I have been eternally drawn to the green striped room which I posted on Instagram about 3 months ago. The boldness of the stripe, the colour, the audacity of the room – I love it all, despite many of our followers disagreeing, telling me it was too much for Aemelia’s standard height room with oodles of natural wood. Nevertheless, I continued down the path with the idea, layering in her current comforter which she loves, from Geneveive Gorder’s kids collection at Crate & Barrel – a collection of modern flowers, stars, in blues, yellows, pinks and greens. I put it back together with the watercolour animal paintings we had in her old nursery. And started to layer in gorgeous fabrics that had rainbow layers of colour. But it all felt forced and utterly wrong. I rendered an entire sketch of this original plan, but my gut was continually screaming at me that it was all too modern and didn’t fit with the house. Add to that, Aemelia is telling us daily what her new favourite colour is…when I started this process, her room had to include blue, and now it is pink, and orange, and purple…. thus I’m having to read the ever-changing mind of an emotional threenager to figure out how to work this space in a way that will grow with her over the next 5-10 years!!

So I started again. Remaining with the green stripe as the base inspiration, I re-jigged my key design object to using a beautiful bee-hive cushion I found on a whim on Etsy from the lovely Growing Greenfields . When I was pregnant, we didn’t find out her gender until she was born, and thus my baby shower had a yellow ‘What will the baby BEE' theme. Combined with the fact we call her “AB” as well, she’s always embraced it. The irony is she hates bugs in real life, but adores bees in books, cartoons, etc. I also fell in love with a bold yet still subtle wallpaper by Farrow and Ball, which I intend to use no where near a wall - but helped me add in the vibrancy of colour that her room still required, while still leaning towards the English cottage vibe. And then somewhat randomly through a Google search for children’s oil paintings, I found this artwork of a young girl inspecting a caterpillar. It stopped me in my tracks because it looks SO MUCH like our daughter. I’ve yet to figure out whether I can actually get this as a print, but I’m sure as heck going to try!

So overall, Aemelia’s room is leaning a bit English cottage or French chateau while Henry’s room is certainly more Scottish highlands. But given that perfectly defines my and Stu’s heritage, I think it works and is meant to be! The plans are finally coming together, especially as I pursue a more neutral aesthetic for the connected playspace / office area and jack & jill bathroom - but we’ll come back to those later in the summer.

NEXT STEPS

The challenge was supposed to begin on April 1st, but has been officially moved back to start on May 7th now due to the Coronavirus and social isolation policies around the world. It’s a decision the founder didn’t take lightly, but I’m grateful as it provides some much-needed time to prepare. Between all of the kitchen and electrical re-wiring chaos (which might just get finished at the same time as these rooms!), and having two kids home full time, we’ve had our hands full. Both rooms need a bit of final TLC before we can start in on the re-design, including finishing stripping windows and floors, as well as sanding and prepping the walls in Aemelia’s room, and priming Henry’s walls ready for both paint and wallpaper. So come May 7th when it all officially kicks off, I’ll share before photos, room layout options, and the general elements we intend to add to each room, along with a breakdown of the enormously big to-do list. Working on all of this during the pandemic is going to prove challenging in terms of getting some lumber, fabrics, wallpapers and furniture – but we will do the best we can and hope for it to all work out as it should!

So until then, thanks for joining in and following along!

Love & Cuddles,

Lex