One Room Challenge – Fall 2020- Week#1

Time for the Fall One Room Challenge – The best motivation to finish up projects!

Welcome to our basement. When we moved here over one year ago the only furniture we brought were our beds, couch and coffee table. This room has stayed basically unfurnished for the past year so now is the time to make it cozy to stay home this winter!

I prefer to use secondhand furniture as much as possible – for the environment, the quality is often better as is the price. This console we bought with our kitchen table, the TV used to be my Nana’s and the lamp is from the last house.

Last year I added curtains to the window. I bought new sheets and sewed them into curtains.

These cabinets I bought at Restore with plans to paint them and make them into a storage bench similar to our last home.

Here is the room (and the kids 😉 ) in a space overrun with toys. Despite the full size windows, it is dark so I will be painting the walls lighter and adding mirrors.

For months I have been looking for a secondhand sectional couch – finally I found one!


We bought our leather living room couch used in Montreal 8 years ago and it has withstood the use and abuse from kids and pets and still looks good. I had hoped to find something used again rather than buying new but was having trouble finding one. I started to look for a new one and asking my Aunt and friends when I saw this one used online. We hired a local person – Your Friend with a Truck – to bring it to us.

Here is step one of the Fall One Room Challenge to make the room cozier – what a difference furniture makes!

Photo: Heidi Lau Photography

In our last home adding moulding throughout the house was a priority to add character. I haven’t done any yet in our current home but I brought this mirror from our last dining room which I plan to finally put up.

photo: Heidi Lau Photography

This was our last basement where I added this board and batten. I have some ideas for the wall treatment in our current home to give the space more character…they are quite finalized yet.

Here’s some of the materials I’ve been slowly collecting over the past year – paint mis-tints, some leftover Advance paint from the island cabinets and door architraves. I am also excited to sew some new cushion covers for the sectional couch.

To see what else everyone has planned check out the One Room Challenge page linked below:

https://www.oneroomchallenge.com/blog/orcguestss20wk1-khx3f

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Shiplap Planked Wall

Here’s a look at the shiplap wall that my friend Kate and I installed in my living room. Since we won’t be knocking down this wall that separates the kitchen I decided to make it an accent instead. Originally I had wanted to do a brick veneer but the cost was 10 times more than going the wood plank route. This was the wall before. The wood planks were  cut at the hardware store from a larger sheet of plywood. Around the top edge I wanted crown moulding and since I do not have the tools to cut it I used these pre-fabricated corners. It was tricky for us to install this part.
What I didn’t expect was how the ceilings would appear so much taller with the moulding.
Since I like neat and tidy edges I added corner guards where the panelling edges meet because this wall is exposed from all four sides. 

The tutorial that I followed for this wall was from The House of Smiths. These are my process photos but for lots of information I suggest going to the original post from The House of Smiths.This was an inexpensive project that adds lots of character to the space. It is relatively easy if you have a blank wall without many outlets or vents and requires very few tools to complete.