One Room Challenge!

Hi friends!

Winter has come and gone and Spring is trying its hardest to get going here in Chicago. Time is flying! I am popping in here to let you know that today is the official start of the Spring One Room Challenge that Linda, from the blog Calling It Home, hosts twice every year, and Laura Design Co. is jumping in!

You should know that literally every time the ORC rolls around there is a conversation in our house that mainly consists of me begging, pleading, cajoling, scheming, and any other tactic I can think of to get my husband to agree to do it. After two rounds (bedroom & exterior) he knows the blood, sweat, and total insanity these challenges foist upon him, and has no guilt in saying heck no to my pleas.

So it ain't happening at my house. But it IS happening at "The Other Laura's" house! We at LDC are taking an outdated playroom with gorgeous potential and turning it into the show-stopping family room it was meant to be. I'd love for you to come take a peek at what we have planned...

Casual California Family Room- Laura Design Co. One Room Challenge Week 1

You can also follow inspiration & progress as we complete this challenge over the next six weeks, by following our One Room Challenge Pinterest board and our Instagram. Can't wait to see you over there!

One Room Challenge // Exterior Reveal!

Oh you guys. The last week has been the biggest roller coaster in the life of this blog, and probably in my years as a home-owner. I am chuckling to think that we decided to tackle the exterior because it was the "easiest" of the projects on our to-do list. Ahhhhh, how hindsight mocks us.

Welcome to the 6th and final week of the One Room Challenge, hosted by Linda of Calling It Home! In case you need to binge-read to catch up because you have no idea why you're here or what's going on:

Week 1 |  Week 2  |  Week 3  |  Week 4  |  Week 5

I feel like I need to start off with an Academy Awards style thank-you speech, because there are so many key players leading up to this sentence:

I HAVE DOORS.

PAINTED DOORS.

ATTACHED TO MY HOUSE.

Insert ALL the emoji! Seven days ago that dream was dead in the water. I mean, no way, no how. I pouted about it for an entire two days. (I also texted my friend Grace that I needed to watch the news and slap myself for said pouting, ASAP).

Then this happened. My awesome girl Emily from Table and Hearth left one little unassuming blog comment on last week's post: "Can you put a space heater in the garage for a few days and paint the new door in there (if it comes in time)?" DUH!!! All this time I had been proceeding according to the install-it-then-paint-it typical front door protocol, but she was SO right! I should just do that!

One problem left. (OK, well, a lot of problems left, but one step at a time). I am not allowed to paint doors. My husband, rightly so, has banned us both from putting brush to door ever again in this house or any other we should ever own. And at this late hour, how was I going to book someone? I had no painter. I returned to lamenting about this to my friend Holly, the poor soul who happened to be at my house last Friday dealing with the mental break down of mid-ORC Laura. She immediately said, "Too bad you can't call Jeremy." Oh, you mean your cousin who has a painting business? Wait, why can't I call Jeremy? Oh, I am going. to. call. Jeremy.

Fast forward 6 hours and Jeremy, his wife Danielle, and I are KIDNAPPING MY DOOR from Home Depot. (Well, I prefer to think of it as a hostage rescue operation, but whatever). Jeremy and Danielle brought their truck and it took 8 guys and a FORKLIFT to load it in. Unfortunately, where we were taking it, a.k.a. my garage, there were only 4 people who- no offense- were a tad less beefy than the Home Depot guys, and there was certainly no forklift. We definitely almost killed Danielle with a door that night.

Ryan, Jeremy, Danielle, and I somehow wrestled a crated 250 pound door out of a truck without breaking the glass or damaging a human, then took the doors out of the frame, loaded them back into his truck with every couch cushion I own, and sent them back to his heated garage to be painted.

MAN ALIVE. More problems ensued the next morning as all the paints I had picked out were "special order" (darn it Ben Moore, do you not understand this is a CRISIS!) and I ended up saying "just get whatever high gloss they recommend!" which was possibly not the smartest move, or was maybe the best move ever. Check back next Spring for a verdict on that.

In any case, Jeremy sprayed the heck out of these bad boys, and they are GORGEOUS. I mean, glossy and lovely and gorgeous. Be still my heart! His text updates were sending me over the moon.

In the meantime, Home Depot still hadn't arranged to actually install it. It was Saturday. And between the cure time needed of 4-5 days, and the blog deadline of Thursday, the ONLY possible day I could have them do it was Wednesday morning. Finally, after tireless work by my Millwork dept. BFF Archie (Archie! We did it! You are my favorite!!) to get this thing coordinated, I got a call from the installer Kevin, who said there was no possible way he could do it Wednesday. I proceeded to give him my entire sob story, and the rising tide of girl emotions (I was nice, I swear!) moved him to say YES and he rearranged his schedule to be here Wednesday morning. Was this really happening?!

Well, it did. It really happened. As I write this, Kevin (Kevin! I could hug you!) showed up exactly 13 hours ago, and installed a beautiful, glossy, black, and still intact after one kidnapping, one near-death experience, two truck rides, one van ride, and one couch-desecration, FRONT DOOR!

And with all that, I am thrilled to present to you the reveal of our One Room Challenge Exterior Makeover!

Should we start with the doors? Remember what used to greet our guests?!

And now, as of today, our doors look like this!

Before...

And after!

Obviously, I am super excited about the doors. But the whole house got a facelift. The goals of this project were:

Front Door
Garage Door
Shutters
Lights
Doorbell

I am pleased to report we checked them ALL off! And as an added bonus, we also crossed off a couple things on our secondary wish list:

Planter Boxes
Mailbox Makeover

Here is a look back at the house 6 weeks ago:

And here it is now...

Can we just take a moment to say RIP all the pretty plants and trees that were once so alive in this yard? Last week I got a few pictures of the garage side of the house before the last of the lovely yellow leaves fell off our magnolia tree...

Those are the planter boxes that Ryan built. I love how they are an architectural feature next to the new garage!

New lights...

Here's the mailbox's pitiful previous life...

Here's what $50, a sander and a can of paint can do for your curb appeal!

I love the new shutters and how the black pops against the house...

We did matching planter boxes for the porch in a smaller size, and I couldn't help but buy a few lanterns to cozy up the porch...

Speaking of "couldn't help but buy"...I happened upon a rug at Home Goods for the front entry and thought it was just so appropriate to have a new rug with our new doors! 

I wish I could have gotten a good picture of the door interior, but I'm terrible at shooting dark paint in bright light (probably because I still only use an iPhone for all my photos!) - Suffice it to say, they are DREAMY in our entry. The color is Mysterious by Benjamin Moore, and the crystal of the Rejuvenation knobs sparkles like crazy against the dark finish! I could not in good conscience keep our old brown rug in this entry. You understand.

The LED edison bulbs we found for our barn lights cast a lovely glow, and the new windows in the doors make the porch welcoming as night falls...

And that's the tour! Our exterior makeover is (for now) complete. In the Spring we'll do a few things that the weather prevented this time around, like plant shrubs and seal the driveway. But I'm so pleased! I can't wait to figure out how to get some red wreaths on the doors for Christmas...

Here is the list of shout outs and sources:

Painting- Elite Painting & Design

Front Doors- Home Depot (Thank you Archie!)

Front Door Paint- Benjamin Moore Advance High Gloss, Black INT/EXT RM*

Front Door Hardware- Rejuvenation

Doorbell- Rejuvenation (wish I had a good picture- it's so cute!)

Planter Boxes- DIY Tutorial, with Behr Weatherproofing Stain color matched to Ralph Lauren Black Basalt

Shutters

Lanterns

Barn Lights- Lowes, with Rust-Oleum Enamel Spray Paint

Light Bulbs

Garage Door- Mark Litavsky/ CHI (See this post for info)

Mailboxes- Post cap, Mailboxes, Numbers

*Note on the paint: I noticed well after it was on the doors that this stuff has a 60-day cure time and is actually an interior paint. Why the paint store recommended it for a front door, I'll never know. I'm willing to risk it because it's bananas gorgeous (and because, let's face it, I have no choice), but wait until next Spring before you run to the store so I can tell you how it really holds up! 

As for the budget, we came in at $5,100! I am so grateful to my wonderful in-laws for the gift that allowed this project to happen. Thank you thank you thank you! 

And YOU. If you're reading this, you deserve a huge hug load of thanks for putting up with me, cheering me on, and sticking with me until the end. I sooo appreciate you. Can we stay friends now that its over? Talk to me on Instagram, ok? I love that.

Update: It just snowed! Can I show you a few pics of how pretty the house looks covered in snow??

OK, thanks for indulging that. The first snow is always so magical! Back to our regularly scheduled post...

I absolutely have to thank Linda for creating this challenge and so generously opening her blog to the scores of us who were crazy enough to take her up on it. That's definitely two rooms down in my house that wouldn't have been done without you Linda. (Go see what people have been up to- they're all amazing!)

And finally, in the long list of shout-outs, the loudest has to be for my husband, Ryan, the brains and muscle behind this project, the best man I know, and the greatest mortal joy of my heart.

One Room Challenge // Exterior Week 5

Hey guys!

Well, it's Week 5 of the One Room Challenge, and unfortunately, it's bad news bears around here. Not only am I NOT going to have a gorgeous Hollandlac Brilliant painted front door for the challenge end next Thursday, I'm not even going to have a painted front door, and it's probable I won't have a new front door at all!

The Hollandlac turned out to be delusions of grandeur (see last week's post if you have no idea what Hollandlac means). As if the 5+ day life-threatening painting process wasn't obstacle enough, the cost of the labor was almost as much as the door itself. And the darn Chicago weather won't allow it anyway.

Which it turns out is not only the case for the Hollandlac, but as I just learned, for any paint. I just hung up with J.C. Licht where I tried to order the Farrow & Ball Full Gloss as a back up, and the guy told me the exterior painting window closed three weeks ago (duh lady). He said paint has to cure for at least 5 days with above 50 degree temps. Even our highs will be barely above 50 in another day.

I can't paint the door.

On the other hand, I also can't NOT paint it. After learning that I'd missed my weather window, I checked with Home Depot and the manufacturer requires the door be painted within 30 days of installation to protect it. I assume failure to comply will void the warranty / totally ruin the door forever.

I have to paint the door.

Not that I even have a door. Home Depot is apparently holding it hostage. The installers were supposed to call me Monday, and it's Thursday sooooo.....

I have no door.

Ryan thinks we should just wait until Spring to install the door. You know, be all pragmatic and practical. Paint it when the weather is nice, take our time and do it right, etc. etc. Ugh. I think we should set up a heated tent system around the perimeter of our house and turn it into Summer Land. You know, grow tropicals and wear shorts and never go past our driveway again.

Everything else on our to-do list has been annoyingly difficult, yet with mostly happy outcomes. I tried to have the driveway sealed, but again, we missed our weather window. So that money went to the mailbox. I am thrilled to report that we put fifty bucks into it and it now looks like a million. The old wood post was yucky and brown and growing some sort of fungus, and the mailboxes were rusted and generally disgusting.

We replaced the rotted piece of wood that held the boxes, added a decorative post cap, sanded the whole thing down, and gave it a coat of primer and a coat of exterior lacquer. Then we replaced the boxes with classic black. The neighbor across the street rang my bell to tell us how good it looks! It's crazy how those tiny changes can drastically up your curb appeal.

The outside lights I ordered turned out to be too small. I drove over an hour away to purchase a different style I liked online, then hated them when I saw them in person. I then purchased a larger barn light, but it needed to be spray painted dark (it's the Lowes light from my mood board- I didn't end up buying it originally because it looks like bronze or black but it's actually bright galvanized silver IRL). So now I'm waiting for the weather (YOU AGAIN!) to cooperate so we can finish spray painting them. Also after we started spray painting them, I read the can of paint and it said "not for use on galvanized metal." It kinda figures the one and only thing I can't use it on is what I just used it on.

At least our hoarding paid off and the Tuft & Needle box can now serve as our spray-paint sarcophagus.

We did have success with building planter boxes! We ended up buying cedar fence planks and using this tutorial as a jumping off point. They're gorgeous and I love them! I am so excited to get them planted. The only frustration there was my idiot move of not buying the inserts before we built the boxes. It would have been much better to build the boxes to fit the inserts, than to hit six stores trying to find inserts to fit the boxes (and having to drill out the posts of the boxes to shove them in there).

Doh!

The house numbers are gorgeous and I love them. They are also not installed yet because they are the worst kind of impossible to install. They require boring holes, caulking, gluing, taping, and surrender of your sanity.

Time change has been a peach. Ryan has been having a really fun time installing shutters on a ladder in the pitch dark. And wiring lights in the dark. And taking lights back down in the dark. And having no lights at all...in the dark.

I cleaned out our flower beds and got all the yucky dead stuff out and put down some more mulch. Now it looks really empty! And of course, we couldn't get any shrubs in before the weather turned. They wouldn't have made for much of a reveal anyway since they would have been barren sticks.

I'm certainly proud of the progress we have made. We're going to get a ton of stuff crossed off our exterior wish list, and the neighbors have been really impressed! But it bums me out to no end that I won't have a front door next week (and you KNOW I'm still holding out hope for an 11th hour miracle) since that was exactly half of the main objectives I set out to accomplish. I wish I could say I was excited to show the house to you, but without the front door I'm kinda meh to show it to you! Honesty in church. :) In any case, that is the beauty of this challenge. It's a reality show- you never know what's going to happen. We'll keep plugging along and see how this wraps up.

Off to visit the other brave soldiers of the ORC at Linda's!