One Room Challenge Week Three: Building the plane as I fly it

One Room Challenge week three. We are now at the half way mark and I am nowhere near half done. Between traveling to LA as a DesignHound to attend Dwell on Design and then attending High Point Furniture Market, I am feeling very behind. Now that I have returned from all my travels, I have to seriously kick into high gear. I still need to secure more furniture from the show rooms, have the draperies made and installed, have pillows made, source and hang art work, move in all the furniture and style!! YIKES!! I’m giving myself an anxiety attack just typing this.

To quickly catch you up, I am sponsored by the Boston Design Center for this Spring’s One Room Challenge. I was given a space on the fifth floor of the building that I am turning into my imaginary pied-a-terre.

Different showrooms are lending me furniture and I am working with what they give me. Unlike the other One Room Challenge participants who created their design plan first, I am creating mine as I go. Have you heard the expression “building the plane as you fly”? That’s what I am doing.

My reveal will either be a great victory or a crash and burn, hot mess. Let’s hope for the former!

Designing my pied-a-terre is similar to putting together a giant puzzle. I am loaned items one at a time, then I figure out how to incorporate them and (hopefully) make everything work together. My design plan is a constant moving target.

Pieces of my puzzle: These are the items I have as of week three.

I showed you the rug last week but to refresh your memory, it is this stunner loaned from JD Staron.

Drapery fabric from Stroheim

Since the rug is so intense, I plan to mix in plenty of neutrals. I fell in love with this black and white embroidered linen called Chintsa from ORC sponsor Stroheim. This will be my drapery fabric. It will not only compliment the huge window but will add some softness to the mostly concrete space.

The Carter sofa from Boston showroom Duralee.

Gary Fisher, the Boston Duralee showroom manager, has been so incredibly helpful and I can’t say enough good things about him. He not only offered up this new Carter sofa but allowed me to upholster it in any fabric of my choice.

I chose a rich golden yellow Duralee fabric called Saffron. I think it will be gorgeous against the bright blue rug. The coordinating pillows will be a deep plum colored velvet and a Beacon Hill watery print from Robert Allen. I haven’t seen it yet but supposedly it shipped out this week.

A large dining table from Dan Parish, LTD at Ailanthus Boston showroom.

I was loaned this beautiful long table from the showroom Ailanthus. I am so excited about having this in my pied-a-terre because it has the casual, organic look I want. Many of the Design Center showrooms have beautiful dining tables but they are too traditional or formal for my loft. This one was a lucky score.

Dining Chairs from StoriModern

I honestly hadn’t heard of ORC sponsor StoriModern before the challenge. Browsing their website was a wonderful discovery of a new source for outdoor furniture for my clients. I jumped at the chance to use these black metal chairs for around my dining table. They are from the Journal collection and arrived at the Design Center while I was at High Point. Although these are technically outdoor chairs, I chose them because I want a casual dining area and these work beautifully for my pied-a-terre.

 

This beautiful framed art print from One Room Chairish.

My pied-a-terre would not be complete without lot’s of art work. I plan to use some of my own photography, borrow work from a couple artist friends and also take advantage of two different ORC art sponsors..This colorful print from One Room Challenge sponsor Charish was one of the first things I chose as an inspiration piece. It is called Madame Paridis by Melvin G. I was drawn in by the colors and being a former head shot photographer, I have this thing for faces.

A black and white pillow from Arianna Belle made to order custom pillows.

I chose the Channels pillow in Ebony and Ivory.

This pillow is hand made in California and will relate beautifully to the black and white drapery fabric. Arianna Belle has a beautiful selection of custom pillows and offers swatches so that you can see and touch the fabric before ordering.

Here is my current design board of all my “puzzle pieces” for my pied-a-terre as of today, One Room Challenge Week Three. There is a black and white art print that is a “maybe” from a local artist as well as two of my photographs that I am having framed.

Hopefully within the next few days I will have secured all the pieces of my puzzle so I can schedule a move in date and get to work styling. Lighting and more art work from other generous ORC sponsors should be arriving any day now.

If you accidentally stumbled upon week three you can catch up by reading week one and week two below.

One Week Challenge Week One

One week Challenge Week Two

Be sure to follow the progress of the nineteen other designers as well as the link up participants on Thursday.

Apartment 34 | Beginning in the Middle | Coco & Jack | The English Room | The Gold Hive

Gray Malin | Jenna Sue Design | Jojotastic | Kelly Rogers Int. | Linda Holt | Marcus Design

Michelle Gage | Natasha Habermann | The Painted House | Rambling Renovators

Sacramento Street | Shannon Claire | Sketch 42 | Stephanie Kraus | Bisou Style

Media Partner House Beautiful | TM by ORC

 

In case you are new to The One Room Challenge, I will quickly get you up to speed. Now in it’s thirteenth season, the One Room Challenge was started by Linda of the blog Calling it Home.  The One Room Challenge is an online event in which participants have a short six weeks to completely transform a room. Twenty featured bloggers (of which I am one) update their progress each Wednesday until the week six reveal. Hundreds of other bloggers “link up” to the event and blog about their progress the following Thursday.