ORC WEEK 5: MORE TIME, PLEASE!

This is the part of this six-week challenge where I've come to the full realization that there will be no major reveal in a week. Not a complete one anyway. This has been a frustrating project in that regard because nothing is seeming to come easily. I would guess this is more typical of most projects people do than when we redid our bathroom last spring. In that case, the decisions just flowed.

Part of the problem is that my brain is taking me to the garden, not to the Internet to look, seemingly endlessly, for the right area rug (now rugs). Never before have I wished more for an interior design friend who I could hand the reins over to.

In fact, there's been basically no progress on the room since last week. I'm still in shopping/decision-making mode, which I suppose should have been doing somewhere around Week One. Choosing items that work is much harder when you're trying (not very successfully, I might add) to stick to pretty tight budget.

This is what we'll use for the desk light. Unfortunately it came with a broken switch so we're waiting for a replacement to arrive.

There have been some missteps. Cushions that I ordered for the existing wicker chairs came and they were far too small. I decided the existing curtains are not going to work. A light came with a broken switch.

The good news is that we've been able to move Mr. Much More Patient's desk back into the space so he can get back to working properly.

The biggest decision I've been struggling with is that of rugs. Although I like the sort of muted-but-warm color palette that the fixed elements have in that room, I feel like a basement needs to go to great lengths to feel warm, so I'm looking at very vibrant area rugs. You gotta love a little rudimentary Photoshop work for such things.

This rug, a vintage one I found on ebay, is my favorite. Unfortunately it was a bit more than I wanted to spend and had not been cleaned. I figured by the time I had it cleaned it would be way out of my price range.

I've been playing around with other "faux vintage" rugs that are much more affordable, but I can't decide if I should go more towards pink or orange.

I did make one rug-related decision that I'm really happy about. I got this rug for the stairs to use as a runner. So good news: I love it. Bad news, that's a big project because I'll have to pull off the existing carpet (ew) and patch and paint the stairs before that can happen. See, this is why these projects are supposed to happen in winter!

The stairs to the basement are narrow so a typical runner wouldn't work. Instead I ordered several 2x3 rugs that I'll use for the stairs. 

This room will be finished and look great at some point, but I'm just giving you the head's up, next week's big reveal may be less than revealing. Such is life in the land of real DIY.

For better or worse, I'm redoing this room as part of the one room challenge. Make sure you check out the other guest participants (who, presumably, have made better progress than I have.)

And check out previous weeks in this project in case you've missed them:

• Week 1: The plan
• Week 2: Flooring options
• Week 3: Paint for days
• Week 4: Installing the cork floor

ORC WEEK 4: EASY + BEAUTIFUL DIY FLOOR

I knew the floor would be the single biggest change in our basement renovation. The old floor was just so terrible that it absolutely could not stay, not to mention we needed a floor to not just change the look of the space, but add warmth, sound dampening and be durable.

I can't tell you how happy I am with the change our new cork floor made. But that is jumping ahead in the story because we installed this baby ourselves!

Globus Cork provided the materials for this floor so that I can share the process of selecting it and installing it with you.

Before we finalized the design, we laid out one row of tiles and took a panoramic photo to see the whole room at once. You can see we make a few changes to the planned design.

So in Week 2 (back when I was an optimistic person who wasn't completely freaking out about finishing this project on time), I walked you through the process of selecting the floor, which was no easy feat when the options are pretty much only limited by your imagination. We decided on a random stripe pattern in using Bleached and Alabaster colors, both in the nugget texture.

We installed click and lock bamboo floors in the bedrooms several years ago when we did our big renovation and I remember there was an issue with the delivery truck actually getting the flooring to our house. It came in several boxes and technically we should have had a forklift to move it. So it was a lovely surprise when the cork flooring showed up delivered by a regular carrier, possible only because it's so light.

I made a list of the order in which the stripes went that we checked off as we went so we didn't lose our place!

Globus Cork has a really thorough installation tutorial on its website which was hugely helpful but honestly, we were overthinking it. We opened the boxes and let the cork acclimate for a few days while we prepped the floor. The key thing is that the cork, which is laid used a contact adhesive (the back of the cork tiles are pre-coated and then you apply glue to the floor) needs to go on top of clean plywood or uncoated concrete. We had our tile installer friend (a good friend to have!) do a self-leveling skim coat on top of the concrete to make everything smooth and give us a nice surface to work on.

As with any floor, the hard work is in the prep, and it's important to make sure that everything is square. Using a chalkline, we mapped out the center, perpendicular lines and a starting line for our first row that was based off the centerline, not the wall (there isn't a straight wall in this house).

From there it's just a matter of rolling on the adhesive, letting it dry clear (it took about an hour with a fan blowing on it in our cool basement), and then sticking on the cork. In order to avoid stepping on the adhesive, the first few sections, each about 3 feet wide, took a bit of time. The first row is the most important, so we took a lot of time lining it up with chalkline and a square, making sure to not allow it to touch the floor until we were ready for it to stick.

Line up the inside corner of the tile first, then the long edge, followed by the short edge and lastly the freestanding corner. I applied firm pressure for a nice tight seam.

It's important to line up one corner at a time and just lightly let it touch (if you have to pull it up you still can, albeit very carefully, so long as you don't press down) and then gradually get the other corners set. Set the next tile by butting it up right next to the first tile, again one corner at a time. The nice thing about the cork tiles is that they have some give, so you can really get nice tight joints by firmly butting up to the previous tile.

Pound the tiles with a rubber mallet to seal the adhesive. We paid special attention to edges and corners.

With the first row set, we made our way across the room, checking off each row on my cheat sheet, because it would have been easy to lose our place with the random stripe pattern. When a section was done, we pounded it down with a rubber mallet. I'm not going to lie: This was the only onerous party of the process. You have to pound the cork (not roll it) to seal the adhesive, and that's a lot of pounding. Bonus: You can skip your regular arm workout.

Use a drywall T-square, a solid cutting surface (NOT your floor!) and sharp utility blades to trim the cork tiles. We cut them upside down, but I don't think it matters. Way easier than the saw you'll need with just about any other kind of floor!

There's a few other tips and tricks we learned to installing cork flooring:

• Unless your pattern requires them to be lined up, offset your seams.
• Use a drywall T-square and a sharp utility knife (change the blade often) to cut cork. 
• Take your time with the first few rows and then you can fly pretty quickly.
• A scissors or utility knife also works for cutting around odd-shaped corners or obstructions.
• Pull tiles from several boxes to account for any color variation.

If you look closely you'll see a bump where we failed to make sure the self leveler was completely smooth. 

There's one don't to share with you as well. Globus Cork is clear that the floor needs to be perfectly smooth before you lay the cork and in almost every spot it was. But there was one place where the self leveler didn't level very well and there was a bit of ridge. I meant to sand that area down, but I completely forgot about it, and now there is a raised spot visible through the cork. It's not a big deal and I doubt that anyone else will really see it, but it could have easily been avoided. So learn from me: Make sure you don't skip that step! Cork is a forgiving floor because it can handle a floor that slopes (don't try that with tile), but its flexibility also allow bumps under the tile to show.

After the floor is installed, a final coat of sealer goes over the top (the cork is already sealed, but this final coat helps seal the joints and make the cork even more durable). It was easy to apply with a foam roller but took a little longer to dry than we expected. The only problem with that was that we had to wait a little longer to show off our new floor!

I can't begin to explain the difference this floor makes in this space. But maybe I don't need to. I think the pictures speak for themselves. What you can't tell from the pictures is how much nicer it is down there. It's hard to explain, but it goes beyond just looks. It's warmer, quieter and cozier. And I really do think the stripes combined with the off-white paint on the walls and ceiling have made the room feel far more in proportion than before. Almost like it's magic. Yeah, let's go with that. It's magic. 

I'm (crazy enough to be) redoing the basement as part of the One Room Challenge. Check out the progress week by week here:

• Week 1: The plan
• Week 2: Flooring options
• Week 3: Paint for days

And make sure to check in on the hundreds of other guest participants and featured bloggers. Things are gonna get hairy from here on out!

ORC WEEK 3: CHA CHA CHANGES

Ah yes, Week 3 of the One Room Challenge. I remember this week from when I did this last year. It is when the panicking properly starts. Because right now it does not feel like I'm even remotely halfway through this basement project.

You can catch up on Week 1 and 2, but most of the work is happening on the computer. I've made a list of the items I need to purchase for this renovation and I've been working hard to check things off. That's ironic since I've mentioned on more than one occasion that this is a low-budget affair. But when you're doing a space for the first time—and that's really what this is as we just sort of stacked stuff down there before—there are a lot of things that you need to collect.

This is a pretty terrible photo, but it illustrates how we basically painted everything the same color, from the ceiling to the walls to the trim.

The biggest change in the space is also the simplest: paint. I'll never know what I was thinking when I decided to paint the walls down there raspberry and baby blue, but I'm far more in my comfort zone going with a cream color. We chose Benjamin Moore Mascarpone, which I've used for the trim and some of the walls in most of the rest of the house, for two reasons: 1. We had a lot of it left over from other projects so I didn't need to buy much, and 2. I just didn't have it in me to go through the whole "Which shade of off white should I pick?" thing. Honestly, it's a little warmer than I might have liked, and interestingly, the less expensive paint we went with for the walls, which we did have to buy, is far more yellow than the trim paint that we already had, even though they are all Benjamin Moore formulations, but it's OK.

I also changed out the door hardware from the bright, cheap gold to a more classic black. I originally decided on black accents in that space for the same reason I chose the paint color—ease—but I'm very happy with the decision. It's not just simple, not to mention black is often a less expensive finish than some others, it also works well with the space.

I chose these simple door knobs with a square rosette for the closet door and the louvered doors to the other half of the basement. (Here's an affiliate link for them.) Sidenote: Painting louvered doors is like visiting the seventh circle of hell and I don't recommend it.

And of course, my favorite bit so far is the industrial lights I made for less than half of what I could have purchased them for. It was a much easier project than I anticipated and I detailed the whole how-to here.

Next week is a big one: Floor time! I'm certain that more than anything a new floor is going to transform this space.

Make sure to check out the featured One Room Challenge participants as well as the hundreds of guest participants making huge changes to one room in their house in this crazy challenge.

ORC WEEK 2: FLOOR OPTIONS GALORE

Welcome to Week 2 of the One Room Challenge. I'm "playing along" as a guest participant in the blogging event that has people making over a room in six weeks and linking up via Calling it Home.

In Week 1 (which I just published a couple days ago) I laid out the room, the issues, the challenges and a very rough design concept. But any renovation of that room would fail if I didn't deal with the main issue in the room: the floor.

A variety of the colors available from Globus Cork that we considered for the project. Top row: Alabaster, Ocean Fog, Pisello; Second row: Slate Gray, Bleached, Sage; Third row: Cement Gray, Ocean Blue, Natural; Bottom row: Graphite, Whitewashed, Sable.

The existing floor—pink and blue sheet sheet vinyl—could be described as hideous at best. This was not something that I could just design around. And honestly it wasn't really the best kind of flooring for this space. In fact, flooring in this space has a long list of qualities it needs to have:

• Durable. This is a hard working space because we are constantly walking back and forth through that space to get to the utility side of the basement.
• Able to deal with water issues. We have two sump pumps in the basement—one on each side—that manage the rare water issues we have down there. That side of the basement has never had a real water problem other than the one time the sump pump failed, but it's a basement, so water can happen. 
• Add warmth. The basement isn't well insulated and although there is heat down there, the space is naturally cooler than the rest of the house.
• Dampen sound. Even with low ceilings, the acoustics are not the best. Couple that with the likelihood that the washer or dryer could be running in the next room, or the furnace may kick on and it's not exactly super quiet. Anything that can help dampen the sound would be good.

Vinyl (doesn't solve any other than the water issue), wood (warm but nothing else), carpeting (no way, never near a potential water issue) and tile (durable, but misses the mark on the rest of the requirements) were out. In fact there was only one kind of flooring I could come up with that actually fulfilled all the requirements: cork.

I love cork floors. Our family cottage used to have them when we were growing up and they survived soaking wet kids full of sand from the beach, wet towels left for days, several months with no heat and more. Back then cork floors were the color of cork, not unlike a bulletin board. Which is not bad, but doesn't work in every space.

But now, cork can be found in just about every color under the rainbow. I reached out to Globus Cork to work with on this project in part because they offer hundreds of color and texture combinations. The fact that their cork tiles are easy to install, meaning we could do it ourselves, was a bonus. 

Globus Cork is providing flooring for this project so that I can tell you about the process of choosing it, installing it and living with it. Of course all opinions are my own.

Globus Cork offers more than 40 colors of cork in three textures, all of which can be cut in custom patterns. You know how they say that sometimes having more options is worse than fewer? Honestly there is so much to choose from that it can be a little overwhelming, although a project gallery on the website helps spark the imagination.

The neutral options we considered (clockwise): Cement Gray, Alabaster, Bleached, Whitewashed and Natural in the middle. 

I knew I didn't want a basic solid-color floor for the basement. I felt like it would be a missed opportunity to not do something a little out of the ordinary for a space like this, so I ordered several color options to get a feel for just how bold we wanted to go. And although we played around with some of the blues and greens, I'll admit, I'm just not a good enough designer to know how to make something like that work for the long term. I think plenty of people could make a floor to die for that is very bold and exciting and even timeless, but I don't trust changing tastes enough for that.

So we quickly narrowed down the options to a more neutral palette, and one that was light in color because we need to do everything we can to make that space feel brighter and larger. Although I liked Cement Gray, it seemed like the oddball out among the neutral options we pulled, so we nixed that. And I loved Natural, but there was a warmth to it that didn't work well with the stone in the fireplace, so I pulled that out of the running as well. Then it was a decision of whether we wanted two or three colors.

I think we could have made any pattern look really nice with a combination of Alabaster, Whitewashed and Bleached, but my concern was that the floor might get too busy. So we narrowed it down to two: Alabaster, a cream color, and Bleached, which is basically bleached natural cork (the two end tiles shown above).

Here's the diagram we made showing what we plan to do with the random stripe design. Nothing like making things complicated.

As for the pattern, I thought a stripe going across the room might help the space appear a little wider than it was and, for no reason other than to do something a little different, I opted for a random stripe. The design will be about two-thirds Bleached and one-third Alabaster, with stripes of random width and placement. 

On paper is one thing, but we'll see how it looks in the space. It's liberating to be doing something a little out of the ordinary and I think it will help turn a very basic space into something a little special. 

There are so many amazing renovations happening as part of the One Room Challenge. Check out the featured participants and the guest participants (more than 200!). 

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: A DO-IT-ALL SPACE DESIGN

I've mentioned the basement project here before, but only in an introductory fashion. Frankly, not much has happened with it, but there's one sure way to make sure it gets done: Put it on a ridiculous schedule for the world to see. Enter the One Room Challenge, which technically began last week but I got a little behind on so you're first being introduced to it today.

Last year we redid the first-floor bathroom as part of the One Room Challenge and two things came of it: I swore I'd never try to get a room finished in six weeks again, but I got a room finished. 

We are asking this room—the finished half of our full basement—to be a bit of everything. Its main function will be to serve as an office for Mr. Much More Patient, who started his own business at the beginning of the year. There will also be a sitting area that may some day become a small workout area and room for storage. It needs to be bright (did I mention it's a basement with teeny windows?) and durable because we'll be in it and walking through it to get to the business end of the basement. And it needs to be done on a budget.

The budget, actually, has budged a bit since I introduced this project. Pennies, which was the original budget, was not exactly realistic, so we've found a bit more to dedicate to it. But the plan is still to DIY everything, reuse furniture and materials wherever possible and call upon a few main features to carry the design. 

Speaking of design, the mood board above gives an idea of where the space may be headed. The overall palette is cream with black accents. The floor will be warm and cozy and still very functional and with the exception of the office furniture, will use pieces we have on hand to fill the space.

And frankly, it can only get better. Remember this before picture? Ouch. It's so painful.

To review, here's what we're dealing with: A long, skinny room  with three small glass block windows, a cold floor and a low ceiling that also houses essentially like the electrical panel and a sump pump. But it does have a beautiful fireplace so it's not devoid of character.

Can we make something of it? Stayed tuned over the next five weeks to see it come together and find out what we can do on a tight budget entirely done DIY.

And don't forget to check out all the amazing projects linked up and participating with the One Room Challenge hosted by Calling it Home. Since I got a late start on this, I'll be back with more in a couple days!

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK SIX (AKA THE END)

Thanks for your patience on this. I got behind on all the last minute details and just couldn't finish this up in time to join the first wave of "big reveals" Thursday morning.

If you're wondering what all this is about, I joined the One Room Challenge, hosted semi-annually by Linda at Calling it Home and attempted to renovate our downstairs bathroom in just six weeks. It was the first room we planned to renovate when we bought the house and it turned out to be pretty much the last room we touched, mostly because it was just daunting.

And here's where it ended up.

To fully appreciate how far it has come, you have to remember what it looked like before. Highlights, or rather lowlights, include highly textured walls, pickled pink wood, a pink counter, weird shower insert, rope sink, shiny gold (not in a good way) hardware and, of course, a boob light.

By taking out the shower insert and tiling the shower up the ceiling and using a very low threshold shower pan, the room feels twice as big. 

Unfortunately the vanity top is not finished. If you recall, it was cut incorrectly and is too small for the vanity and the sink hole wasn't cut correctly. We've been waiting for another carrara marble remnant to become available but no luck so far.

The fabric for the roman blind was not what I intended to use originally but that didn't seem quite right. I ended up looking for something with a hand-printed look and in the middle of a mad internet search I found just that in Australia and just a few days later, freshly printed fabric from halfway around the world was on my doorstep. Like I do about once a year, I pulled out the sewing machine, tried to remember how to work it and sewed that baby up, saving somewhere in the neighborhood of $130, which was the going price I found to have someone make a custom roman blind. I was fairly impressed with myself, particularly given that I literally sewed THROUGH my finger when I took a machine sewing class in summer school in 7th grade.

To find out more specifics about how this project all went, check out previous weeks here:

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

SOURCES 
(Some affiliate links may be used)

Floor tile: Fluid marmara marble 6x18 honed

Wall tile: Daltile Rittenhouse Square 3x6 in Kohler White (K101)

Wall accent tile: Bardiglio marble piano tile (discontinued but this is similar)

Shower base: Kohler Ballast

Heated floor

Marble sealer

Trim and ceiling paint: BM White Heron

Wall paint: BM Pebble Beach

Vanity: My design, semi-DIY constructed

Vanity paint: BM Hale Navy

Drawer pulls

Mirror

Vanity light: Fiona Big Sconce custom painted

Spray paint : Montana Gold in navy (for vanity sconce)

Ceiling light

Shower light/fan combo

Towel bar, robe hook, toilet paper holder

Door knobs

Faucet

Toilet

Shower faucets

Handshower

Showerhead

Art

Roman shade: DIY with this fabric

Vanity tray

Guest towels

Please take a moment to check out all of the other guest participants in the One Room Challenge as well as the featured bloggers.

Thanks for following along!

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 5

When I thought about joining the One Room Challenge I thought six weeks was a tight timeline, but not so bad. Yet here we are in Week 5 and I think it's safe to say five weeks have never flown by so quickly. Catch up on Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4 if you missed any of the scintillating action.

I get obsessed with details when it comes to renovation projects. For me, the devil really is in the details. They are the little things that make me really love a room. So I thought I'd share a few of the details going into our bathroom renovation today. Links to sources are at the bottom. Some of them may be affiliate links; thanks for your support!

I knew I wanted the light over the mirror to match somewhat closely the navy of the vanity (Benjamin Moore Hale Navy). It was available in blue or black and I figured I'd give the blue a try, because I'd have to paint the black one for sure. As you can see below, it came a beautiful blue, but not one that would work with the Hale Navy (kindly ignore my painting sweatshirt), so I spray painted it with my new favorite spray paint (available in so many great colors): Montana Gold in the navy color.

For the ceiling light I opted for another mother of pearl fixture. With mother of pearl lights in the hallway outside the bathroom, the nearby office and the mother of pearl backsplash in the kitchen, I figured I might as well extend what seems to have become a theme.

When we did the big renovation several years ago we started switching all the doorknobs in the house to glass. Some of them are knobs I salvaged from my grandmother's house, which was built around the same time as ours and was torn down several years ago (it was on the verge of falling over a bluff into the lake). I was able to find new versions in the same style as the original knobs, so they are mixed throughout the house. This is a modern day one, but I do love them.

I got a little splurge happy when I bought lucent and chrome accessories for the bathroom to complement the glass doorknobs. I got a robe hook, towel bar and toilet paper holder all for a price I regret, especially since I've since learned you can find them elsewhere for much less.

We had the electrician move the outlet down to tuck around the corner of the vanity, and it was money well spent.

Mr. Much More Patient picked out the faucet and requested the heated floor. Who am I to argue with two small requests?

 Instead of a big handle, we had a fixed knob put on the shower door to avoid encroaching on the small amount of room. It works great and I like the clean look.

The shower fixtures are pretty simple. I love the cross handles so whether they go with anything else or not, I got them.

And lastly, how good is that shower seat? It's either a very small seat or a little bit larger shaving ledge, but either way, I love how the floor tile looks on it and I think it does a great job tying it all in together.

The big reveal is next week, ready or not!

SOURCES

Vanity light
Mirror
Spray paint
Ceiling light
Glass doorknobs
Lucite bathroom accessories
Faucet
Showerhead
Handshower
Shower valve trims

Don't forget to check out the progress at all of the guest participants in the One Room Challenge and the featured bloggers as well.