One Room Challenge Week 1: The Plans

It’s backkkkk… The fall 2015 One Room Challenge kicks off right now!

What’s the One Room Challenge? It’s an amazing project hosted by Linda at Calling it Home where bloggers makeover a room of their choice in just six short weeks and share updates along the way. Every week you can follow along with 20 designers and a huge group of linking participants (us!) to see all of the details that lead up to the big reveal on week 6 on her blog. This will be our third time participating, and we absolutely love how it’s really challenged us to take on projects – check out our bathroom and guest bedroom reveals to see what we mean!

This time we are so excited to announce our upcoming project – our garage! It’s a little less traditional than usual, and will require some creativity to get the look that I want, but after all this is a challenge, right?

When M and I were discussing which room would be our next victim, I was totally shocked when he brought up that his vote goes towards the garage- which was not even close to one of my suggestions, but after you take a look at the before pictures below, I think you will see why it needs to be done… I warned him that the end result would be “pretty” but he kept his vote regardless.

It’s become a huge hoarder-ville room in our house that I enjoy shutting the door on. Obviously our bad habits need to be broken, and I’m thinking this will be our 12 step program! Or 6, because we only have 6 weeks to get it done, but we’ll take what we can get.

Okay enough talking, here’s the space! Also- don’t judge us too badly, I’m sure our neighbors have already done that for you : )

If you’re still here after those pictures then you are amazing and I promise it can only get better from here. Clearly. Plus, is it bad to say that these pictures don’t even do the space justice? As in in-person it’s much worse. But not for long!

Despite the clutter, I’m still so in love with the fact that it’s an attached garage and would love to treat the space as so. Designing it as more of an extension of our house and a creative workspace than a dirty old garage will do wonders for our productivity, and more productivity means more blog fun!

Now for the fun part- here’s what were thinking in terms of design, layout and our massive to-do list. Think she-garage with a crazy amount of storage that we obviously need.

For the color scheme I want to continue the navy and wood tones that are scattered throughout the house, and add some softer mint and olive accents throughout. The walls will get a medium neutral tone (garages deserve paint too!) and the lovely oil stains on the floor will get all fixed up with some darker floor paint.  We will also add new lighting fixtures (as sexy as the single bulb hanging from the ceiling is, I know we can find something more fun) and TONS of storage. Speaking of that, here’s what were thinking layout-wise.

As you can see, our main goals are to declutter and put things where they belong, while making the space an inspiring and colorful place to take on projects. Right now we are working with two workbenches, and one just may be original to the house. That’s the project that I’m most excited about, and I just might leave as a cliff hanger til the end of the project. She’s going to look SO much better with a little love!

Now for the really scary part… the to-do list:

• Declutter aka take everything out and re-evalutate
• Paint walls, ceiling (repairs from a previous water leak) and doors
• Clean & paint floors
• Add trim around exterior door
• Finish installing garage door opener (currently just hanging there since we originally put it up last year. oops)
• Add shelving along right wall
• Add hanging storage/hooks along right wall
• Create scrap wood storage
• Add a peg board organizing system
• Revamp work bench as mystery project
• Create mudroom area
• Build bench
• Build gardening and potting area
• Add art and fun signage
• Be able to park my truck inside before Pure Michigan’s winter strikes… maybe : )

A lot of these projects will be DIY’d using the large pile of scrap wood we already have, and we can’t wait to get started! Which, we should probably do right now- time is ticking : )

Thanks so much for stopping by and we’ll see you next week! We’ll also be sharing sneak peeks on Instagram if you’d like to follow along outside of the blog. Xo!