One Room Challenge - Fall 2019 - Week 4

If you’re new around here, three years ago my husband and I purchased our first house: a 1940’s Colonial located in a very cute coastal Connecticut town. We’ve been tackling remodeling the house room by room, where we’re always looking for ways to add equal parts function and character into our house.

Don’t forget to check out Week One, Week Two, and Week Three.

I can’t believe how fast time has been going by, nor that we’re already at Week Four. This is the week where we always start to panic, and this season is no exception.

We made a ton of progress this week, but we’re still trying to get a few big items scheduled, delivered, and installed. Our biggest hold-ups right now include waiting for our countertops to be installed, waiting for our tile to be delivered, and waiting on a missing custom cabinet unit to arrive. All these items mean we can’t install our crown moulding, our upper cabinets (including the vent hood), lighting, or plumbing. I have a feeling I’m going to be begging all my friends to help us out next weekend with getting through this outstanding list of items in order to hit the Week Six reveal deadline.

But on to the good news:

This was a big week for progress!

Cabinetry

We installed our pantry wall and I’m smitten. This full wall of cabinetry contains a shallow pantry unit, our appliance garage and coffee bar, our built in fridge, and a unit for tray and baking sheet storage.

The appliance garage is going to be my favourite feature, since we’ve added a pot filler on the interior of the cabinet to fill up our espresso machine, plus a slab of marble to make it extra cleanable. The microwave is going down low and we set up the electrical, so we’re in business.

In case you’re wondering, I wasted no time filling up the pantry with our food items.

Island

On the island, we installed our new beverage fridge from Zephyr (with dual zones for optimal red wine AND white wine storage). This French door beverage fridge is making me feel like I’ve reached peak adulthood. We’re thrilled that it means we can maximize our fridge storage needs, by moving beverages out of the main fridge to free up more space.

We’ve been too hard at work to actually consume any wine or beer from the fridge yet, but I can assure you that in two more weeks that fridge is going to be getting a workout!

If you were following along in Instagram this week, you saw that we didn’t set up enough clearance for both doors of the beverage fridge to open and had to take our track saw and cut down our already installed cabinetry to make space. It was nerve-wrecking, but you’d never know now that we had to perform cabinet surgery.

We also installed the finished panel on the underside of the island, which really completes the look, hiding the vertical support required for the marble tabletop. It’s amazing how the small finishing touches can make you feel that much closer to the finish line.

As well, we started building out the panels that will wrap the legs of the island, which is slow going, since every piece needs to be mitered precisely and then glued in place individually, one piece each night. Let’s just say, we’re only halfway through the process.

Mudroom

In the mini mudroom area, it was a transformational week. In addition to starting to build the bench for the nook, we also finally installed our new window. It was incredible to see how much light the addition of a small window brought to this corner. It went from being a dark spot to being light and bright. Our window arrived broken, so we’ve been trying to get the window store out to swap the glass for an unbroken one, but they don’t have availability to come on-site until after the reveal, so we’re thinking we may need to retrieve the replacement and install it ourselves.

This week, I also finalized the fabric for the bench cushion and pillows, which I’m going to be keeping a surprise, so stay tuned for the reveal.

We’re in the process of building the drawer for the bench, which will be home to our currently in rotation shoes, and we’re building it to fit this fabulous metal boot tray from Garnet Hill perfectly. I’m all about hiding the clutter, and this drawer is going to help us get closer to minimizing the visual noise.

Hardware

Our cabinetry hardware also arrived last night and I’m smitten! We ended up going with unlacquered brass pulls from Schaub and unlacquered brass knobs and latches from Emtek. It was our first time seeing the appliance pulls and they were even more gorgeous in real life than we imagined.

What’s next?

We’re crossing our fingers we can get our countertops installed by the end of this week so we can start tiling the backsplash, and tackle all the other components that hinge on the counters being installed.

We’re also going to begin installing our trim, finish the mudroom bench, start installing our cabinetry hardware and appliance panels. We also need to finish up wrapping our island legs. Let’s see how much we can get through in this week ahead!

I also want to give a big thank you to the sponsors mentioned in this post who have provided product for this project: Zephyr, Emtek, Schaub, and Garnet Hill. All opinions are my own.

Check out progress from my fellow One Room Challenge™ featured designers below!

At Charlotte’s House | Design Addict Mom | Erika Ward Interiors | Erin Kestenbaum | Girl & Grey

Nicole White Designs | Old Brand New | Oscar Bravo Home | Place of My Taste | The Rath Project