It's officially week one of the Spring 2021 One Room Challenge and I am jumping up and down with excitement! The ORC is normally a 6-week design challenge that includes 20 featured designers and hundreds of guest participants that contribute via their blogs & instagram. This year the challenge has been extended to 8 weeks (final spaces revealed the week of June 24th), which means that the transformations are probably going to be mind blowing! I have joined the ORC I *think* three times at this point, but then chickened out and never actually participated beyond cheering on & supporting everyone else. And that has always been my favorite part about the ORC, it is ALL about community and camaraderie. I personally believe that the support system is the secret ingredient to the magic that happens! And without further ado, I present our Spring 2021 One Room Challenge "room" & design...
Giant undertaking, I know. But the timing for the project worked out perfectly (after multiple delays) to align with the Spring ORC, so here we are. I am also going to put it out there right now that the backyard will for sure not be 100% complete by reveal week. We just received a notification that the outdoor kitchen island that we ordered two months ago and was due to arrive in mid-June, is now backordered until mid-July. The dining furniture isn't scheduled to arrive until the last week of June at the earliest. We won't even have a sectional for this summer (earliest delivery date is November), but we will figure out something nice and functional to go around the fire pit (pictured as a coffee table) for this first season. It will still be a massive transformation and will be probably 80% of the way there, but that is okay because that is real life! The fence will actually be brown ipe wood & not black like these designs, but these awesome renderings were developed from this Picmonkey mock-up that I made. Not too shabby if I do say so myself ;)
BEFORE
This is what the backyard looked like after purchasing the house. We knew that we would be putting in a pool and doing a complete renovation, so we haven't done much to it since 2018. We took down the outdoor shower (it will be replaced), dug up/cut down all of the overgrown bushes & vines, and recently demo'd the garage and the back stairs.
CURRENT
Next steps will be breaking up all of the concrete and having it hauled away to prep for the actual dig. We are going with a vinyl pool because it works best with our budget and that part will actually be very quick, it is just all of the other steps that have to happen before, during and after it that will be a fun little dance to try and coordinate haha. My guess is that you all should be prepared for a fair amount of complaining and maybe even some tears. I will say that Joe and I have both wanted a pool since we were kids, so all of this hassle will be worth it and we absolutely cannot wait!
Don't forget to follow along every week to check-in on the progress of each of the featured designers and guest participants! It is going to be an awesome 8 weeks!
