It’s that time again! One Room Challenge time! I’m so excited to be participating as a guest blog participant in this Spring’s ORC. If you were here for the Fall ORC last year, you might remember that we redid our laundry/mud room. I loved how it came out, and I love a good project, so we decided to do it again this Spring. Due to COVID-19, the Spring ORC this year was pushed back by a month, and has been extended from 6 weeks to 8 weeks to allow all participants more time to complete their projects.

A little bit about the One Room Challenge:

The One Room Challenge™, currently in its seventeenth season, is a widely anticipated biannual event every April and October. Each round, twenty design influencers are selected to take the challenge, as Featured Designers, and transform a space. Every Wednesday, the designers document their process while sharing their sources and professional advice over six weekly posts.

It’s so much fun to be a part of a large community who are also getting creative with their spaces, and since last time was my first, I feel much more prepared this go around. So, without further ado, here’s the space we’ll be making over:

Our front porch spans the width of our 1926 bungalow in East Nashville, TN. There are so many elements I love about it, but I’ve always felt that it needed a facelift. Here’s what we’re going to tackle:

First and foremost, when we bought our house it had these huge, hideous overgrown purple bushes out front. It made the house so dark and uninviting, and I’ve wanted to tear them out from the minute we signed the closing documents. Our flowerbeds are actually pretty large because they run the width of the front of our house and all along the side to our fence, in addition to a secondary flowerbed with two enormous trees closer to the road. We knew that would be an undertaking, but we also knew it would be worth it, and would help the curb appeal of our house immensely.

Second, the porch floor and walkway. Before we moved in, we had our painter repaint the entire porch floor since the red paint was peeking through the gray. Unfortunately, there are so many layers of paint on this 94 year old porch that it started chipping off in just a few months. Since I don’t want this to be a yearly project, we need to get all those layers of paint off and repaint. I also didn’t love the bluish gray color anyway, so this is a perfect excuse to change it.

While we’re on the subject of paint, I’ve wanted a haint blue porch ceiling for years, and now is my chance! If you’re unfamiliar with this southern, slightly superstitious home decor tradition, click here to find the history. It’s not necessarily a Tennessee tradition, but I love the pretty blue ceilings of wide front porches that make you want to sit and sip lemonade on a sweltering summer afternoon.

In order to sip that lemonade, we need somewhere to sit, so we’re going to build a daybed swing to replace our wicker one. And since Hank (our Golden Retriever mix) is involved in everything, keep an eye out for a doggie daybed to match.

So you can try to picture what I’ve got in mind for this southern front porch retreat, here’s the mood board I’ve made (don’t hate, not a graphic designer over here) so I can stay focused and keep the vision in mind while I’m making this happen.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I hope this gets you interested enough to come back next week for more! We’ve already started working on it, and I think it’s going to be a really beautiful place to enjoy with friends and family this summer once we can all spend time together again. Tune in every Thursday for new posts and progress over the next 8 weeks, and check out the other participants on the One Room Challenge website here.

Thanks for reading! (one last photo of the day we bought our house <3)