It’s the final week of the One Room Challenge™! You know what that means...it’s reveal time! The One Room Challenge is a decorating event created by Linda of Calling it Home, where participants have six weeks to makeover a room in their home (or in their client's home). The room I chose to work on for the Spring 2015 challenge was my front porch. Here is a reminder of the shape it was in merely six short weeks ago:
It was a dark, uninspiring space – brown was everywhere: on the floor, the stairs, the railings, the ceiling, the columns, window & door trim, mailbox and wicker sofa. It was time to brighten and liven this space up! If you're just tuning in, or would like a reminder of my inspiration and design plan, get caught up on my post from Week 1 before reading on. And for more before pics, check back on Week 2. Otherwise, if you're ready to dive right in to the reveal photos, here we go! This is how my porch looks now:
Here is another before pic from the front:
And the after:
I may have had to sacrifice my plans for black and white stripes on the ceiling...
...but I found a way to work them in with this throw :)
I think I may have mentioned before that I live on a major street with lots of traffic and buses going by, so I couldn't resist including this next picture. The high traffic and constant stream of buses creates a lot of dust so I'm hoping that the curtains, in addition to making the space look and feel more relaxed and serene, will also act as a shield from the dust. I expect I'll be doing a lot of laundry this summer. Totally worth it, though. :)
And now for some evening pics. The glow from the string lights at night is just beautiful, isn't it?
Most of the work that I did during this challenge was painting – the ceiling took four coats of white, the window & door trim two coats of black, and two coats of blue on the floor, railings, stairs and pillars. I bought the black and white paints off the shelf, un-tinted, but I want to call special attention to the blue because it’s a custom colour that I created. It’s based on Benjamin Moore’s Indie Go-Go but that colour can’t be colour-matched in an exterior paint so with the help of my new best friend (i.e. the paint guy at the hardware store down the street) I now have this gorgeous, rich colour that I’ve named “Summer on the Porch.” If you love it as much as I do and want to use it, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to share the formula. :)
It took relatively few things to create such a big impact in this space so my source list is very short. The only thing I didn't get around to doing was making a coffee table (the one you see in the pictures was pulled from the TV room temporarily for the photos only).
Sources:
Sofa, rugs, curtains, lantern – IKEA
Palm leaf pillows – Tonic Living
String lights – CANVAS by Canadian Tire
Ginger jar/vase - Black Rooster Decor
Faux marble tray - DIY
I'm so very happy with how everything turned out and I'm completely in love with my new outdoor space! I owe a huge thank you to Linda from Calling it Home - she created the One Room Challenge and works really hard to run this event twice a year; without her I don't know if I would have the motivation to complete a space in my house in under 6 weeks. I also want to thank you, my readers, for following my progress and for the supportive and encouraging words you left in the comments. I'm so happy to have been introduced to so many new bloggers and have made new friends throughout this round of the ORC. I hope we stay in touch! You can find me on Twitter here and on Instagram here.
Just in case you missed any of my progress updates, you can link to them directly from here:
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5
I'm off now to check out the other ORC participants who are sharing their reveals on Linda's blog today. And did you check out the 20 sponsored design bloggers' reveals yesterday?! So. much. eye. candy. to. behold.
