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.

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK 2

Welcome to the second week of my personal One Room Challenge, where I attempt to renovate one room in six weeks. See Week 1 here.

Some affiliate links may be used. I very much appreciate your support of this blog. 

It was a big week in the bathroom progress and, not surprisingly, we ran into more than a few hurdles in the process. This is no surprise: This old house is anything but square and level. This caused a rather significant issue when the contractor was setting the shower pan because they had to futz around with it for quite some time. We went with a low-profile plain shower pan. There is only about an inch difference in height between it and the finished floor so it's very unobtrusive and I didn't feel like fussing with a custom mudded and tiled shower pan.

Then it came time to level the floor, which was out a full two inches from one end of the bathroom to the other, just 9 feet away. Our poor tile guy (the husband of one of my best friends, who has done all of the tile work in our house) spent seven hours just leveling the floor and incorporating the heated floor cables (an add-on that I couldn't have cared less about but Mr. Much More Patient really wanted). He was here until 11:30 one night!

To accommodate the amount we had to bring the floor up to level it, we fashioned a ramp to meet up with the hallway.

Leveling the floor meant we had a decision to make about how to make the transition to the hallway, because of course the "high" side of the floor was the end by the hallway. We decided to create a mini ramp with two pieces of tile.

The floor in progress. It took much longer to level it than it did to tile it.

And then the floor tile went in. Bestill my heart. I was very selective about how the pieces should be laid out (although a couple snuck in places I wouldn't have chosen, but it's fine). Originally I was planning a herring bone layout in this room, but I was afraid that the striped marble tiles in the small room would be way too busy in a traditional herringbone layout. So I decided to have them set in the same pattern but perpendicular and parallel to the walls, rather than angled to the walls. Somehow it calmed the design to me.

I sealed all the tiles ahead of time with the sealer our tile guy recommends and I'll give the entire floor another coat after the grout is completely dry.

I can't tell you how much I love this floor. When I found the tile I knew right away that I'd do whatever it took to have it and although I've had a little pushback on it from some people, I think it's fabulous.

Yes, I love it. 

What is most amazing thus far in this renovation is the difference that pulling out the shower insert made. I thought this was a small bathroom. Suddenly with a full height ceiling in the shower and the additional 6 inches we gained width wise (enough to accommodate a 66-inch by 36-inch shower base), the room looks huge. Even without anything on the walls in the shower, it looks so much bigger. I never expected that.

The room looks so much bigger with the shower insert removed.

We'll see what surprises the coming week brings.

Check out the official One Room Challenge featured designers here and all of my fellow guest participants here.

ONE ROOM CHALLENGE: WEEK ONE

Are you familiar with the One Room Challenge? Every spring and fall, a group of bloggers each choose one room in their house to renovate in six weeks and once a week post an update of what's happening. The selected bloggers work with brands who provide some support. I'm not doing that.

But I am going to play along as a guest participant and do my own private One Room Challenge and link up other bloggers doing it on their own. If you know me and my habit of not really finishing projects, you know this is possibly insane. On the other hand, maybe having a real deadline will make this happen.

And the project I'm choosing is one I've already mentioned: the downstairs bathroom. To refresh your memory about this room, let me sum up its history. When we looked at the house before we bought it, both Mr. Much More Patient and I said that renovating the bathroom was at the top of the list. Fourteen years and a massive renovation later, the bathroom is the only room in the house that remains untouched. I did paint the pickled pink vanity a couple years ago, but I had no desire to put any other effort into fixing up this room because I knew that no amount of lipstick could pretty up this pig.

Here's the kind of ugly we're talking about. Pickled pink paneled wainscoting and ceiling, more of that horrific wall texture (and if you thought it was bad in the rest of the house, you have no idea how gross it is in a bathroom from a dust/mildew perspective), vinyl floor, pink laminate counter, rope sink, fake gold shower door, plastic shower insert, boob light, ugly lights and more.

One benefit of waiting to redo the bathroom is that we now have a second bathroom upstairs, so the pressure is off as far as showers and running water goes.

Since this is our downstairs bathroom, it serves as our main guest bathroom and of course we use it occasionally as well. Because of that I wanted it to be a little exciting and I wanted to do a few of the things I didn't do in the upstairs bathroom. For instance, I want marble. No, it's not particularly practical, but I've done practical everywhere else in the house and now I just want some pretty, even if it's at the expensive of practical.

So here's the plan.

Go to this post for more details on each element, but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. Bright, light, and everything that the current bathroom is not is pretty much what I'm going for.

So off we go. And why waste time, because this has already happened.

Come back next week for an update on this space, and in the meantime, check out the bloggers officially participating in the One Room Challenge and all of the other folks playing along as guest participants.