One Room Challenge Week Two, The Plan
Hello friends!
Welcome back to another week of the One Room Challenge. Last week, I introduced you to the spaces that we’ll be transforming over the next six weeks. If you are just checking in, and want to see more of the “befores”, you can revisit the previous weeks here: Week One
This week, we’re diving into the specific design plans for the space. But before I get to the plans, let’s talk about where it all starts - the moodboard.
For each and every client project, before we begin any design plans we develop a moodboard to set the overall tone, look and feel for each project. The moodboard contains our design statement for the space along with imagery that elicits the overall emotional “feel” for the room. Occasionally we will use the moodboard to hint at a bit of materiality or even a larger design feature we are considering. But rather than focusing on “this look” or “that look” or specific furnishings selections, we like to approach the design from an emotional standpoint.
The moodboard also contains a design statement. You can think of this like the mission statement for the space. The design statement, combined with the imagery, help us to narrow and focus the direction we want to take while helping us communicate with our clients - ensuring that we are on the same page before proceeding to the design planning stage.
For my dining room project, I developed the following design statement:
Create a soft and textural layered space juxtaposed with modern and traditional elements and a bit of found objects that encourages gathering for friends and family.
Like many of you, I’ve spent years collecting imagery for my “dream house.” As I was sifting through those images, I started to see a theme emerging. Our home is a 1900’s stone house, reminiscent of English Country homes. Much of the design of our house is intentionally weighty and grounded. I designed the dining room to embrace lightness - both in terms of the natural light from the large windows and in the feeling of the lightness of air. The view outside the bay windows floats just above the garden due to the elevation of the first floor and it’s so very special. I mentioned previously that the dining room is centrally located and you can see into and out of the space from almost every other adjacent room. I wanted to create a moment of tension with the other highly saturated rooms on our first floor - encouraging you to meander through the space with curiosity.
Once the moodboard is set, we can move onto the formal design plan and material selections.
Lighting
Obviously, the lighting is such and important part of any room but especially a dining room. We’ll be replacing the current chandelier with a new chandelier is dramatic, yet simple, and I love how the round bulbs add an unexpected touch to the space. It’s ever-so-slightly imperfect in it’s lines while still allowing the eye to pass through and around the room.
Whenever possible, I love to create a layered lighting experience in a space instead of relying only on overhead lighting. We are lucky that we have four already wired sconces in the room and I’m updating those fixtures with these beautiful blue/grey ceramic beauties that I saw during a visit to Highpoint last year. They have a handmade feel to them and the soft color and shape will be the perfect backdrop for what we have planned for the walls.
A peek at the new ceramic wall sconces going in
Architectural Elements
This room is large - it has generous square footage, high ceilings and large windows. For me these features are a bonus to any space (and helped sell me on this home during our home search) and I want to highlight these elements while also adding more structure through architectural details. To achieve that structure I designed new wainscoting with panel molding that will be installed starting this week. I’ve always admired the look of panel molding and the style that I’ve designed will fit in well with the history and age of our home, balancing the other large scale features of the room with a touch of delicacy.
Art
Above the panel molding will be the real show stopper for the space... a custom designed, hand painted mural from one of my favorite Philadelphia artists, Carla Weeks!!
I have admired Carla’s work from the moment I was first met Carla when we did a collaboration for Anthropologie just over four years ago. Since then, I have been following her work and collecting a few of her pieces along the way. We used a wallpaper that she designed in the bathroom in our last house but I have always wanted to incorporate her work on a larger scale and this room is the perfect opportunity!
We’ve provided Carla with several inspiration images and she’s made a site visit to measure and see a few of the other elements that will be in the final space. She’s designing something completely unique for our space so the image that you see in the moodboard is for reference only.
Furnishings
One of the things that we will be keeping in the dining room is the wood storage cabinet. It’s a family piece that we’ve moved around over the last 15+ years and it has a lot of sentimental value to us in addition to providing a lot of needed storage space.
Our pre-exisitng cabinet that we’ll be keeping in the space.
When appropriate, I love incorporating pieces that have a historic reference. The black Windsor chairs are a nod to an historic design while the scale conveys modernity. For the two head chairs, we’ll be adding visual interest by mixing in woven seagrass chairs. I like that they add a soft, textural element to the space, and address some sightline issues I have from the living room while allowing light to pass through them.
The Saga of a Dining Table
Ok, confession time. Right before Thanksgiving of last year I purchased a dining table... on a whim. At that time I hadn’t formalized a design plan for this space, and I hadn’t laid out the room to scale. But I loved this table so I happily brought it home.
I was immediately drawn to this table for its exaggerated oval shape and the narrowness of the table top communicated a level of informality that I wanted to bring to this traditionally formal space. The finish on the table complimented our refinished hardwood floors beautifully and the curving lines encouraged easy flow throughout the room. But...
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this - I’m a professional designer after all - but the table that I love just isn’t working in the space. I want to be able to seat eight comfortably here and while the table is technically long enough to seat 8, the narrow, tapering shape isn’t really practical for that purpose. Once I started honing in on more design details for the space, I also realized that it’s also throwing other elements out of balance - including the chandelier.
Friends, this is where you can learn from my mistakes. In fact, THIS is one of the big reasons that you should hire a designer. Through the design process, we painstakingly develop to-scale design plans. When we put together a scaled plan AND make all of the selections in the same period of time, you can see where you might run into problems like this and make adjustments - BEFORE you purchase expensive pieces that don’t work for your space.
And this is one place where working with a designer can actually SAVE you money by avoiding expensive mistakes.
But never fear, I’ve come up with what I think will be a good solution. I still adore the style of the table and the base is great. It appears that the top can be removed from the base, so I am working to have a new top made that is properly scaled to my now completed design plan. I really want to be able to study the new, larger size, so I created a giant cardboard template so I could really see what it would look like in the space. Cross your fingers for me!
Found Objects
I have something really special to incorporate a “found” element into this space that I’ll be sharing soon! I’ll leave you with this for now - it’s one-of-a-kind, speaks to my love of all things natural and completely embraces that feeling of lightness that I’m working towards!
Ok friends, well that’s it for now, time to get to work! Carla has started her design of the mural, the panel molding will be going up on Friday, and we’ll be getting the windows in better shape and ready to paint. If you want to follow along on the progress between our Thursday Journal posts, be sure to follow along on Instagram.
And please check out what all the other One Room Challenge guest participants are up to, there is so much talent and creative inspiration to be seen!
