WEEK 1 || WEEK 2 || WEEK 3 || WEEK 4 || WEEK 5 || WEEK 6

Wow! It is already week 5 of the One Room Challenge and I feel like I am on track to completing the office/sewing room on time!

If you are just joining in on this blog series for the One Room Challenge, be sure to check out the previous weeks (linked above) for a start to (almost) finish play by play.

For those of you that don’t know what the One Room Challenge is, it is a 6 week “challenge” where you start and complete a one room re-design project. There are two challenges a year, one in the spring and one in the fall.

The ORC selects 20 Design Influencers to be their featured designers, where they will post their design journey once a week for 6 weeks. In addition to this, anyone with a blog or Instagram account is welcome to join along and post on their social media platforms about their ORC’s.

So far, I have been really enjoying this challenge, and I encourage all my designer friends to join in on the Fall challenge!

For a quick re-cap, I have been working on re-designing my grandmothers office/sewing room. This room was very dated and cluttered when I began the project. Today – I am happy to say that the clutter is gone and while the room has definitely been updated, it  still tells a story from old to new.

When you are decorating for someone other then yourself, you need to really think about what they like and what they want to see on a daily basis in their home. One of the “musts” was photos of family members. To keep this unique and not looking like your average gallery wall, I decided to keep old picture frames and purchase some older frames from a thrift store. I wanted the wall to not only be a collage of photos, but for the wall to tell a story – and the frames helped me do that.

Before I start a gallery wall, I will always layout the plan on the floor so I can visualize what looks good and what doesn’t. By doing this you can easily play around with the frames and photos and re-arrange them before you start making holes in your walls.

I based the gallery wall off of this frame from William Rae Designs. I love that it says “What a Wonderful Life” on it as that is truly what my Grandmother feels when she looks at these family photos.

My accomplishments this week have been to secure the remaining furniture for the room (which required some D.I.Y work) I am currently in the wood staining process for some of the pieces. I hope to have these furniture pieces completed by tonight so that I can start staging the room this weekend.

As you can see in the above photo, there is clearly some more work to be done in the office/sewing room. I have a few more things that I want to go up on the walls, and the shelves need to be styled.

One of my favourite finds for this room were these lamps from Homesense. All you have to do to turn them on and off is touch the back of the light. They are LED and require no additional bulbs to be purchased. I love them!

Below is my original to do list for the office/sewing room. This list includes added to do tasks that I added in week 3

• Paint the walls
• Replace the blinds
• Buy a new desk with drawers
• Dual desk space
• Buy extra drawers for storage space – MIGHT NOT NEED THIS
• Re-arrange the layout
• Change the closet door handle – NO LONGER CHANGING THIS
• Purchase a rug
• Add some greenery
• Create a proper gallery wall to display her favorite family photos
• Make space for her sewing machine somewhere by the window so she has natural light to work with
• Donate any items in the room she no longer uses
• De-clutter
• Buy and cover the desktop – KEPT THE DESKTOP WHITE
• Buy floating shelves for the wall above the desk
• Layout the rug when it arrives
• Put together the chairs when they arrive
• Decorate the shelving unit and the floating shelves
• Shop for curtains
• Create a layout for the gallery wall
• Purchase a round mirror for the wall directly across from the window so it helps bounce off the natural light

From the above I only have one thing left to do – decorate the shelves. However, I do have more things added to the list below:

• Finish two D.I.Y’s
• Hang prints and round mirrors
• Style shelves
• Hide cable cords

I think that is it! I am probably missing some things but they will come to me later today.

In reality, I only have 3 more days to work on this Office/Sewing Room Makeover. I leave for vacation on Sunday and am not back until Wednesday. The final blog post is due to be up on Thursday!

Thanks for checking in this week and following along on my One Room Challenge. Make sure you check back next week for the FINAL REVEAL!! I hope I can capture the room perfectly with my camera for you all.