One Room Challenge Week Four: The Lights & The Window

This week we’ve got two mini-projects to share for the One Room Challenge. We wanted to tackle these before we left on our respective mini vacations – Brett went pheasant hunting and I went out to Utah.

Have you ever noticed that the little things can make a big difference? While the projects we’re sharing today didn’t require as much hard work as the plank wall or entryway table and they aren’t quite as glamorous, they really make a big difference and add to the entire space. Which makes us realize that sometimes the ‘unglamorous’ projects surprise you the most.

The Lights.

Picking out the right light fixtures for our entryway was no small task. I started by scouring through endless feeds on Pinterest, looking inspiration. We wanted something rustic and farmhouse and country and statement-making.

We also needed something that wasn’t too big because the ceilings that high and the space is fairly small. We wanted the lights to draw attention, but not be the main focus. Like the chocolate in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – it’s there to support the peanut butter, but if there is too much then it just ruins the whole thing. And in this situation, the barn wood wall from last week is full-on peanut butter.

Since we got the barn wood for a cool free-99, we had a little bit more money in the budge to spend on lights. But when I say a little, I mean a few dollars. So imagine our surprise when we pulled up a few fixtures online and saw they cost several hundred dollars. Clearly we have expensive taste. Unfortunately, we have a very inexpensive budget.

We put the lights on the back burner for some time while we worked on the window and the table and the barn wood wall.

Several weeks later we were at Home Depot looking for floor vents and decided to pop on over to the light section just to see what they had on hand.

We ended up finding these beautiful lights that were the perfect combination of rustic and farmhouse and country.

The best part? The price tag was exactly what we wanted and under $100 per light.

The Window.

When we bought the house, we knew the windows had to go. Even at our inspection they were flagged for being in poor condition.

After replacing the four windows on the north side of the house, we felt like old pros at window removal and replacement so decided to tackle this one on our own.

We’re planning on sharing a more thorough and detailed to post in the next few weeks, so I’ll skip the how-to and share the after with you.

We didn’t want anything too different in terms of size because of the built-ins and wanted to do crank outs for all the windows. Then Brett realized we couldn’t do a crank out because of the front porch – who wants to get nailed in the head with a window opening while you’re trying to relax on the porch with a cocktail?

We decided on a vertically sliding window and purchased it at the Builder Material Outlet store I mentioned a few posts back. We’re sticking with the same brand, Pella, for all our windows. We’ve been really happy with the ones we’ve already put in and want to have some consistency since we’re not buying them in one go-around.

Best of all? The whole process only took two week nights of work to complete – maybe we are actually starting to get the hang of this whole home remodeling thing?

So what’s left?

– Add trim to the base, door and window

– Build the built-ins around the front window

– Tear up the carpet (This is a new one. We aren’t ready for flooring yet, but the carpet needs to go. It’s pretty repulsive, even for us, who live in a construction zone)

For more One Room Challenge inspiration, check out the other bloggers here.

 

All our best,

Miss a week?

One Room Challenge Week One

One Room Challenge Week Two

One Room Challenge Week Three