Welcome to the Blue Leopard Interiors Blog! I’m so glad you’re here! My name is Justine Dennen, and I’m the owner of Blue Leopard Interiors, a boutique residential interior design firm in Great Falls, VA. Although I’ve been in business as a designer for five years, this blog is brand new! For my journey into interior design and a little more about my current and former homes, check out my very first blog post here.
I’m thrilled to be participating for the first time in the Fall 2022 One Room Challenge!! In case you haven’t heard of the One Room Challenge, it’s an eight week online event which happens every spring and fall, where interior decorators, and home bloggers, undertake redesigning or designing from scratch a room of their choosing, while sharing the progress along the way. It’s not a competition, as there is no winner, just a supportive group of like-minded design enthusiasts challenging themselves to complete a room in eight weeks. Huge thanks to Linda Weinstein, the creator and director of the One Room Challenge.
For my first foray into this event, I’ve decided to undertake both my Dining Room and Butler’s Pantry. For before photos, and the story of why I’ve finally decided to participate in the One Room Challenge, (after following it for years!), check out this blog post, where I talk more about it. Here’s the progress I’ve made the past week:
Console Table Conundrum
Choosing the right console table for my dining room has been one of the hardest decisions of the whole project! Our dining room in our old home which we sold earlier this year, didn’t have a lot of wall space, as it had three cased openings, and a big bay window. We only had space for a small metal and glass console, as well as the hand painted Tibetan cabinet, which you can see at the far end of the table. We always loved our dining room at Innsbruck, but we were ready for a change when we moved, so I sold all of this furniture, other than the Tibetan cabinet, and Turkish rug. The rug is one of my favorite items I’ve ever owned, plus, my husband and I picked it out when we were visiting Turkey for a wedding several years ago, so it has sentimental value :). Even though the Tibetan cabinet was a bit small for all of my dinnerware and serving pieces in our old dining room, I’ve always loved the beautiful hand painting, and knew I could find a place for it at our new house. 
The Innsbruck Ave Dining RoomThe rug is still in a starring role in our new dining room, but I also brought this beloved, red lacquer, Chinese Wedding cabinet, (an anniversary gift we bought for each other many years ago), to reuse to repurpose as a china cabinet for the dining room at the new house.
The niche in our new dining room is the perfect size for the wedding cabinet, and I knew it would hold so much more of my dinnerware than the Tibetan cabinet would, so here it is now in it’s cozy little niche 🙂
So although I now have plenty of storage for all of my dinnerware, I still needed a surface for serving and display, and in this dining room, I have a long wall just perfect for a long console table. Originally I had planned to buy this faux marble waterfall style console
Here it is in my first ORC mood board, which I shared in Week Two!
It’s funny, because when I ‘m working with clients, I tend to be much more decisive than when I’m my own client! I started having doubts about the Kylie, mainly because of the size. I have a very long wall to fill (about 9 1/2 feet), so I figured I should try to find a longer console to maximize the space. I found this pretty glass and acrylic console table also from Safavieh
Here is the Charleston Acrylic Console Table in my ORC Dining Room mood board – version 2.0!
But as much as I liked the idea of a glam, acrylic console, I’m also mad about all of the gorgeous burl wood furniture that’s classic, yet completely on trend right now, and have been wanting to use it in a project for awhile now. It does tend to be pricey, but I found this one from CB2 which is a good price, and has a nice, modern silhouette
So, to get an idea of how it would look, I tried it into the mood board too!
I kept going back and forth between these two so much, that I even did a poll on my instagram asking people to vote for their favorite, and the Niche was the overwhelming winner! That really helped confirm my gut feeling that the chic yet warm woody tones of a burl wood console would be the right thing for the dining room. But I just kept thinking maybe the perfect console would magically appear on my facebook marketplace feed – and one day – it did!!
I contacted the seller, made an offer, and picked it up a few days later! It is gorgeous, and what I love most is the burl finish is much richer than the one from CB2, which works better in my dining room. It’s made by Oliver Home Furnishings in North Carolina, and retails for $1800. The funniest thing was getting into the back of my Mini Cooper (it’s 64″ long – perfect for my dining room – not so easy to squeeze into the back of my Countryman!), and driving home from DC with my seat as close to the steering wheel as it could possibly go so my trunk would close!! Here’s a sneak peek of it :
Moral of the story: ALWAYS check on facebook marketplace before buying new – you never know what you might find!!
There was a lot more than just console table conundrums happening this past week. In fact, I’m happy to report that pretty much everything else fell into place for the final reveal – next week!!!! – paint, light fixtures, and the most gorgeous bisgtro shelves I”ve ever laid eyes on, but you’ll just have to wait until next week for all of that fun stuff!
Cheers to Fab Interiors!
Justine
Here is my ORC progress
Week 1 || Week 2 || Week 3 || Week 4 || Week 5 || Week 6 || Week 7 || Week 8