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One Room Challenge – Week 5 – The Beauty Of White Walls

November 2, 2016/9 Comments/in Interior Design /by Mila

(Note to future self: Do NOT participate in the Fall One Room Challenge ever again, unless you have a clear plan and timeline. If you happen to make this mistake, Halloween and other Holiday events will be extremely stressful because, how could you possibly: hang spooky decorations, figure out the custome situation, host carving pumpkin parties, attend parades and carnivals, buy enough candy, AND be emotionally available, while having your attention diluted in the pressure of re-decorating a room of your house? Not possible, future Mila, not possible.)

On that note, we made a LOT of progress this week on the One Room Challenge– while my kids suffered major sugar crush breakdowns. Here is what we have been up to during the last couple of weeks:

Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 – Week 4

This week (Wk 5) our main push was to paint the walls of the living room. We used Decorator’s White from Benjamin Moore and it made such a difference.

Our living room is small – 240 sq ft – but gets a decent amount of light during the afternoon.

As a way of opening and brightening it up, I decided to paint the walls true white. Off-white wasn’t working for this space because it gave it a dull and dirty look, plus, walls and molding needed to be freshen up.

The result is beautiful because of its simplicity. I like it so much I am considering not adding art or anything else to the walls… -Whaaat?! I almost believed that for a second! -Who am I kidding??? If you follow this blog or my Instagram account, you know color is my thing and minimalism is NOT my thing, but I am so tempted to leave the white walls as is.

My house is small and any extra space and openness is addictive. Now, four days after painting, I still haven’t added much decor yet. When you see the photos below, you will know why.

I did go on a photo frenzy though. I took many pictures of my vintage pieces in front of the white background because they all looked gorgeous.

Take a look at how the room has improved already:

As a reminder, here is a before picture of the same space:Here are other photos of art in front of the white walls because, why not??

At the other side of the living room we built a bookshelf. We bought all the same materials that we used for the shelves for the One Room Challenge on April. I sprayed the metallic parts with gold paint and it looks really cute. I was very happy with the result, but, something in me wants to leave the shelves empty and clean, as they are right now, don’t you think? Here is a photo:

OK, that is all I have for you today. Next week is the big reveal. Hopefully you will like what you see! Thanks for stopping by.

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One Room Challenge – Week 4 – Living Room Update

October 27, 2016/5 Comments/in Interior Design /by Mila

I am late with this post about our living room, I know, but if you knew what I have been up to this week, you would congratulate me just about posting something.

Let’s start with the main reason you are here: an update on the One Room tChallenge. Here is Week 1 – Week 2 – Week 3 of the challenge, in case you missed those posts. (Also, a post about the challenge I participated in last Spring, if you care to see.)

The good news is that I have a much better idea of what I am doing (see photos above and below). The bad news is that I wasn’t able to implement any of these ideas this last week because: 1) I have a job, 2) I have two children, and, 3) my husband decided to launch an Indiegogo campaign for one of his BBQ products on Monday.

The problem being? Well, last Friday the girl from Indiegogo emailed him to say that his photos and graphics were not great. She recommended delaying the launch of the campaign a week. After all the hard work he had put into it that was NOT and option, so we had to reshoot all his photos and d his graphics all over again… two days before going live… it was crazy, but guess who had to do most of it… You guessed right: ME!

(If you have friends and family that like to BBQ and you need a Xmas present for them, you might want to get what he is offering. Here is his Indiegogo campaign – The Chimney of Insanity-. Also, I want to give thanks to my friend Miguel, who is an art director and sat down 5 hours in front of a computer on Saturday to create some of the graphics.)

Now you can understand why the One Room Challenge was not a priority this last week, but I am not giving up, and this weekend we are working on major updates to the living room. First of all, we are painting all walls Decorator’s White from Benjamin Moore, to bring light and create that white canvas I need for the mural.

By we, I mean my friend Daniela and I. Dani is an artist and graphic designer. She has offered to help me in this adventure and I am truly grateful. The only worry I have is that she is very detailed oriented and won’t allow for any cheats or half a** jobs, which sets the bar very high for my next two weeks.

Why is this a worry? Because winter is coming (yes, GOT fan here) and I just want to lay under my covers and eat cookies all day while watching romantic movies. Daniela won’t let this happen, I know.

See below the final colors I am using. Among them is the Benjamin Moore color of the year 2017: Shadow 2117-30.