One Room Challenge (“ORC”):

Verb:  To take a room in one’s home, fully transform it in 6 weeks, and timely write, photograph and post about it in one-week increments.

Alternatives: To join in with 200+ bloggers and Instagrammers in simultaneously driving yourself and family members nuts while making new friends and cheering one another on, feeling occasionally worthless (“wow – they are sooo inspirational – I could never make that/imagine that/do that”) to SUPER empowered (“wow – I can’t believe we solved those problems/found that last minute item/created a room we love that we would have lived in in mediocrity for years but now actually feels FINISHED”).

I mean, it’s not really a question, as I type this up. We’ve gotta do it! IT IS SO WORTH IT!! And you should do it too (I legit believe that, I’m not getting anything out of this plug).

We’ve done it before with The Big Boy Room in Spring 2016 that was mildly interrupted with an early birth. We did it last Fall with The Budget Baller Movie Theater which, guys, we freakin’ love and have family movie nights almost every Friday (with extended family and friends asking to join us almost weekly! It’s kind of a cool place to be, ya dig). We also majorly solved some wet-basement issues that we might not have found for months or even years if we hadn’t gone all out in designing this space to be “pinterest-worthy”. (See all the posts here, if you’d like).

But my tax season is longer with my new job. Like straight through to 4/15 (3/31 used to be my big deadline so this is new for me). And we’ve got a few parties planned (more on that next week) that will happen simultaneously so I’m not so sure how much we want to rip up a room with so many planned social gatherings at our home. So I leave it to the internet – should I drive myself crazy with an ORC this Spring? Or sit it out and go big for Fall 2019?

I present to you the various options:

The Eat-In Kitchen:

This is a photo from when we first moved in last summer. This room is honestly pretty great with our craiglist find table and we’ve already added in our old dining room chandelier. But it could be better with a few tweaks. I’ve got some small DIY projects in mind, we need to paint and patch and move some stuff around, and even though it’s not a complete overhaul that’s going to win me major awards, it would be nice to call this area DONE 6 weeks from now. It’s definitely the easy submission route (I will have to talk Tom into replacing the vertical blinds which will be $$$).

The First Floor Bath:

We’ve talked about a ‘phase 1’ renovation of this room for months. We actually have a lot of the pieces already, but we are feeling unsure of some of our knee-jerk purchases and might go a different route. It’s the most offensive room in the house to me (hello creepy tile smile?). But I’m also not sure I’m ready to tackle even ‘phase 1’ renovations this time of year given other things going on in our life. Do we save this for Fall 2019 or do it now?

The Craft Room:

This is a bonus room above our garage that is accessed through our walk in closet. Basically, it can’t get any worse in here. But I have no idea what I want to do, so I’ll have to think about a lot of this on the fly, which, of course, does wonders for my stress levels. No one will really ever enjoy this room but me, which gives me carte blanche to do whatever I want. But also, no one will ever really enjoy this room but me, so should I focus on the major living areas first?

Of course we can sit it out and just get to these things with no real time line. I tend to hop around the house with my focus anyway, so it’ll all happen in time, there’s just no telling when.  So what would you do? What should we do? And are you joining in this session?  You can sign up here under Guests (you don’t even need a blog if you have Instagram!) and of course you can follow along here. First posts go up next week, April 3/4!