Welcome to the Blue Leopard Interiors Blog, and welcome to Week Two of the Fall 2024 One Room Challenge! Thanks so much for stopping by. This week we started making some progress in our Primary Bedroom, and I’m excited to share the updates! In case you missed it last week, I’m once again participating the One Room Challenge – 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.

I’m so excited to share the progress we’ve made this week!

The Romantic Retreat Renovations

This is my fifth ORC, and over the next 7 weeks, I’ll be completely transforming our Primary Bedroom and adjoining Sitting Room into a Romantic Retreat. In last week’s post, I shared lots of before photos, along with the 3-D mood board, and one of the digital mood boards, but just to give you an idea of where we’re starting, I want to take this blah, beige, mismatched, and uninspiring bedroom from THIS:

To something like THIS:

AND this somewhat sad little sitting room from THIS:

To something like THIS:

Re-designing a Fireplace

So now that you have a clear idea of my vision for both rooms, let me tell you where we are now, in Week Two, in the process. Luckily, most of the upgrades to these rooms are fairly cosmetic: no real structural changes or knocking out walls, mostly surface-level projects. But, there are two bigger changes I knew I wanted from the start – updating the fireplace mantel, surround, and hearth, and removing the columns between the bedroom and sitting room – if possible. And this past week, we tackled both! My fantastic contractor, John Fennell, who I’ve worked with on all of my past ORC projects, other home projects, and most of my client projects, arrived last week to start the work.

The first order of business was the fireplace, and since I had been thinking about what I wanted to do with it for a very long time, I already had the plan in place, and all of the materials we would need to get started, apart from the lumber. Here is where the fireplace is situated in the bedroom:

It’s directly across from the bed, and was not terrible before, just a little outdated and uninspiring to look at. Here’s a close up:

So, I immediately knew the TV cabinet had to go from day one. We wanted to mount a tv above the fireplace, but obviously wouldn’t have been able to with the doors and wall moulding there. After living without a tv in our bedroom for the last two years, we don’t miss it, so we’ve decided not to install the tv, and now plan to hang art and sconces there instead, but either way, the TV cabinet had to be removed. I’ve also always felt a little sad looking at the beige tile, and small, outdated mantel, so after much pinning of ideas and visualizing what I wanted there instead, I came up with a plan. I found a terrific tutorial on the Plank and Pillow blog, on how to build a fireplace surround using crown moulding, and other, readily available lumber. Now, I wish I was one of those amazing DIY’ers who grabs her power tools and whips it up herself in no time, but unfortunately, I’m not. I’m sure I could learn, as so many inspiring home bloggers do, but it would be a steep learning curve, and since I already have a tried and trusted contractor to do it, I leave these things to the pros! I sent John the blog post, and we got to work figuring out what the dimensions of my new mantel would be. We decided to make it wider than the existing mantle, and since I had already chosen this gorgeous mother-of-pearl penny tile for the surround, I wanted to make sure the surrounding mosaic was also substantial enough to be the star of the show. But because the mother-of-pearl mosaic is delicate, it can only be used on walls, not floors, so I also had to find either a piece of stone (i.e. marble, granite, or quartz) for the hearth, or a tile. I tried my local stone fabricator first, and although I found a beautiful remnant, it would have been close to $500 to have it cut and polished to fit.

So off I went to Floor and Decor with my samples (WORD to the WISE: when renovating and redecorating, ALWAYS bring samples along to stores while choosing additional elements. It makes decisions so much easier, and prevents costly errors!). I love shopping at Floor and Decor, because not only do they have a vast selection, but their prices are competitive, and they carry stock of everything in the store. This means you can make a selection and go home with it the same day, and if they don’t have enough stock in-store, they’ll ship the remainder. As soon as I saw this Sorrento Marble 4 x12 tile, I knew I had found a winner!

And this week, all of these elements came together in the form of a brand new fireplace surround, hearth and mantel! Here are some progress shots –

All that’s left to do is grout the mosaic tile surround, and marble hearth, but I’ve already chosen my grout color (again, samples to the rescue!) and John will be doing that by the end of this week.

We are so happy with the new fireplace! Even though it hasn’t been painted yet, it’s already elevated our bedroom. Now, onto the dreaded COLUMNS!

Removing the Columns

The other “light” renovation we wanted to do was to remove the columns from the opening into the sitting room. As far as we could tell, they weren’t structural, and served no purpose, other than decorative – but even that’s debatable. I think it was a trend in the early 2000’s , and there are other columns in this house, like these in the Whimsical Parlor (our formal living room):

And there’s another half column between the breakfast nook and family room:

I guess since all of these columns are likely load-bearing, and serving a purpose, they don’t both us much. But the two in the bedroom just seemed superfluous, and kind of silly. John was 99.99% sure they could be taken out, but didn’t know for certain until he started the demo. But luckily, they were indeed just “decorative”, so he pulled them out!

Next, John had to remove the little “stub” walls that were above the columns, and add new crown moulding pieces to finish them off.

Once the stub walls were gone, and the new crown moulding up, there was only one more issue we hadn’t thought of – there was no carpet under the old columns!

Thankfully, there’s a roll of leftover carpet in the garage. I’ll cut new pieces from it, and add some padding underneath, and hopefully they won’t be noticeable. We do plan to re-carpet this room someday, but for now, patched carpet (but no more goofy columns!) will have to do!

So that’s it for this week, but next week, my painters are scheduled to come!! And this Friday is the Luckett’s Fall Market – a huge antique and vintage show – and I’ll be there treasure-hunting for some unique accessories for the Romantic Retreat! Keep an eye on my Instagram for more, and don’t forget to catch up with all of the other ORC participants here.

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