One Room Challenge

Hi there! I am so excited to be participating in the One Room Challenge again!

I would like to give a special thanks to Linda Weinstein, the entire ORC team, and their media partner Apartment Therapy for hosting this event. I really appreciate their hard work and diligence to make this challenge happen! In case you are not familiar with the One Room Challenge , it is an eight week challenge in which designers completely makeover a room.

For this challenge I’ll be finishing up our kitchen renovation that we started a few weeks ago. We still have a long way to go but we’ll get there!

This is where we started (This kitchen was very photogenic😂) For real though, it was much better in pics than in person. The cabinets were made in large sections instead of separate pieces so there wasn’t a good way to use them for a different layout.

I couldn’t wait to remove these upper cabinets that were dividing the room. These barstools were just the right height to hold the weight of the cabinets while I removed all the screws anchoring them in place. Here’s a link to an Instagram video to show this process.

Here’s a look at our mood board to give you an idea of where we’re headed.

Since we wanted to change the footprint of the kitchen I started searching for a great deal on cabinets.

I found brand NEW kitchen cabinets on FB Marketplace for $1,200 (plus $300 delivery) They’re awesome soft close shaker style cabinets, just one catch…… they were BLUE! Not light blue or medium blue. No, I mean bright Smurf Blue 🤦🏻‍♀️ 😂 But hey it’s nothing that a little (or a lot 🤣) paint won’t take care of!

I had all of the measurements for the cabinets I was buying. I measured the kitchen and started working on my layout.

First I started with my magic plan app to make sure all the cabinets would fit.

Then I decided to draw everything off so I could really get a feel for how it was going to look.

We installed the cabinets before we started painting them to keep them from getting scratched up during installation.

We decided to go with Natural Cream by Benjamin Moore

And now the fun starts……

First, I used a sanding block the sand the cabinets.

Next, I used this scotch bright scrubbing pad and denatured alcohol to clean all of the cabinets. The denatured alcohol was some serious stuff! It smells so strong 🥴 I think it made me a little dizzy even though I had on a mask. 😂