One Room Challenge - Week 7 Spring 2020, Install & Styling
Hi Everyone! Welcome to Week 7 of this year’s Spring One Room Challenge. One more week before the big reveal! Now that construction is complete, we’ve come to what I consider the most exciting part of the project. We are at the fifth and final step of our design process – Installation and Styling. There are a few steps in our install process – Furniture Assembly, Furniture Placement and Décor/Styling – to create the ideal space. From the larger furniture items to the smallest accessory, all the pieces work together to create a harmonious design. And I want to share with you some know-how on how I put mine together.
With all the dust and dirt from construction, we started by bringing in our favorite cleaning service, Shay the Domestic Diva and her team, to help tidy up. This is important to do once construction is done and before placing furniture and styling so that you have a nice, clean slate to work with. It also helps so that your photos come out even better.
Tip: To help maintain cleanliness, try to designate an area specifically for boxes and trash. We’ve run into our formidable foe, styrofoam on countless projects. It literally gets EVERYWHERE! Consider yourself warned.
For this install, I re-enlisted my husband’s help. Typically, on a client project, we complete our install in 1-2 days; however, we live here so we took a bit more time. 😉 All the pieces that we ordered came in during construction, so we had the challenge of finding somewhere to store them. Normally, we’d have our items either shipped directly to our office or to our receiver. But at the time of ordering, we were still pretty deep in the COVID-19 lockdowns, so my only option was drop-ship deliveries. I ended up placing the boxes in the middle of our living room and dining room, which helped with unboxing and not having to move around too much with heavy boxes. After the cleaning was done, we worked on assembling our furniture. As mentioned, I used some of my existing favorite pieces of furniture in our design and just moved them around. Additionally, I ordered some pieces from Uttermost , a wholesale furniture manufacturer, that came pre-assembled. Of course they were huge boxes and hard to move around, but I’m grateful for one less thing to put together! The dining table from Craigslist also came assembled. I ordered a display cabinet for the living room from IKEA that we had to assemble. And boy oh! That was an undertaking. But we got it together and found the perfect spot for it.
During the design planning phase, we come up with a 2D floor plan and design board. However, when construction is involved things may change and you may end up having to revise the placement of some items get the layout more to your liking. With any design, placement is important to focus on to create great flow and functionality to the room(s). When moving things around, be sure to invest in furniture moving pads like these to avoid damaging your furniture and damaging your floors. Above I mentioned the display cabinet that we placed in our living room. Originally, I’d planned to put it next to the fireplace, but it was much deeper than the fireplace and was too tall and wide for that area. The fireplace structure was originally going to be 12”deep, like the cabinet, but after comparing that to the specs for the fireplace, we realized that it would be too recessed in the structure, so we cut it back to 8 inches. Doing that caused the cabinet to protrude, so I ended up relocating and now it’s one of the first things that you see when you walk through our door. I’m going to fill it with our children’s trophies and other sentimental relics that speak to who we are as a family.
Finally, we get into styling! I believe that styling can either make or break your design and photos. The accessories are the details that matter and can elevate a design even more. It’s the “je ne sais quoi” of each room. Oftentimes, if needed, we’ll purchase extra accessories prior to install, for additional styling options for the project. For my home’s décor and styling, I used some of the items that I already owned and ordered others on sites like etsy.com and even amazon.com, since stores had not yet re-opened. For instance, I used a chair from my design studio/home office and a faux olive plant from amazon.com, to create a corner nook in my living room. Last week, I mentioned the amazing drapes that I bought from Target for my dining room. My amazing workroom not only changed the top of the panels, but they also sewed two panels together to make a wider panel and lined them. It feels so not only custom but luxurious. I also added small touches that spoke to our love of entertaining like bar cart in the dining room. There was an art piece in our original family room that I love and knew would work well in our dining room. It’s geometric lines and colors of black, white, gold and gray fit perfectly in the new space. Originally, I had it above the bar cart and a chrome mirror above the credenzas in my dining room, but after mulling it over some, I switched the two and I couldn’t be happier with the results!
Tip: Styling a room can be intense. If you aren’t sure about a styling decision, take a picture. With your iPhone, snap a photo to see the space in it’s truest form. Oftentimes the picture allows you to “step outside” of the space and see it in it’s entirety. The same rule applies to an outfit in fashion. A photo will reveal the full story.
Installing and styling a space, take time. The smallest detail in this phase is what makes a room magical. I am so in love with our new living and dining rooms and I can’t wait to finally share them with you. Thank you for rising along with me on this eight week journey! Be sure to come back next week for our final blog post and the reveal, I promise it will be worth the wait!
XoXo, Rasheeda
