Flippin Upstate NY | ORC | Week 1

Welcome to my spring One Room Challenge space - our whole AirBnB apartment where we'll be trying to source as many pre-loved items as possible!

We will be doing FOUR rooms....KITCHEN, LIVING ROOM, BATHROOM AND BEDROOM! I am so excited but honestly intimidated!

Here is a slide show of the rooms we will be tackling:

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing the process of sourcing and designing the renovation using mostly reclaimed/ recycled pieces! I have been hoarding pieces for this project for years but these last few months I have been really stepping my game up and finding things like a soapstone kitchen sink from the 1890's which also happens to be the year our house was built but more on that later. I will be using some new items too, things like faucets and floor tiles.

A bit of back story about the apartment...

We rent the barn we live in (it has been in our family for 100 years so we'll never move) and a few years ago we decided to buy a house in our favorite town to visit, Cold Spring NY. The house has two apartments, one for us and the other to rent out to AirBnB guests. The catch is that one apartment was in total disrepair (luckily all cosmetic) but I am talking about cigarette burns in the carpet, 70's wood wall panelling, and kitchen cabinets that were falling apart. For the last 4 years no one has lived in the main floor apartment because we had to save up to renovate. But it is finally time and I am so excited!!

We've had a head start on this space - the renovation began in January and has progressed along nicely and is almost ready for me to swoop in and get to the fun details like furniture and easy DIY's.

I have made a few blog posts along the way which I think I will share with you in diary form now since they were written in the past about the future....I hope it's not too confusing but I like that you will get a view into my headspace at the time of writing them, so here we go!

January 20th 2022 Are you ready for a tiny bathroom renovation? Before I show you pictures you need to know that this bathroom is silence of the lambs scary atm... complete with a shattered mirror and chipped yellow toilet - which I will not be showing you. The warped marbled yellow wall panels are peeling off and the floorplan is really tight. However I see the potential! I will not be moving any of the plumbing or making the space bigger so I am going to try to work some magic. There are a few opportunities for cute moments, one being the sink nook. It is right when you walk in straight ahead. I will make this corner as fabulous as possible since it is the first spot you see when you walk in. Are you ready for the first pictures, don't be too horrified, it is very dreary at the moment:

Okay okay, don't run away just yet, I promise it will be cute! At this moment I want to start off by saying this was the first room I designed for a few reasons. 1-Our contractors will want all materials ready when they start - I don't want to hold them back because something is back ordered (which is a common issue right now due to the pandemic) and this room needs the most materials. 2- I want to try to source as many things second hand for this renovation so I need the time to allow for that. In this bathroom's case I wanted to find a vanity and possibly the tile and lighting. 3- It was the room making me stay up at night trying to figure things out so I wanted to get it out of the way. Tip: If you want to include thrifted pieces in your new space, start your design there. They will drive the design for the rest of the space. So on to facebook marketplace I went! For months I saw hundreds of sink vanities and also a few in person before finding the one. These are a few I saw... with the pluses and minuses associated...can you guess which one I chose? Visual Elegance

I love these sinks! My friend has one in their bathroom and I always feel so luxurious using the sink. They are wide and dee[p so splashing is minimal. The con is that since this is a small bathroom there isn't much storage so I am not sure about sacrificing the space under the vanity- though it would look really good.

High End Functional

This one is the priciest but it is from a high end bathroom store and was never used before...the sticker is still on it! I love the storage and am a sucker for the open shelf bottom look. Again, I am all about the large sink, so luxurious in the bathroom.

Budget WorkHorse

This one is a great price and has a cute painted detail along with a marble top. It does not include the sink or faucet though so that is a negative. But it would still come in less than the other two to find a sink/faucet.

Thrift Tip: Try to get the pricier pieces second hand- in this case the sink vanity would be my biggest ticket item in the room. A new "cheap" vanity would start at $350 and all the ones I saw in that price range didn't suit the vibe I was going for in this space. So I chose one and I love it! Which one do you think is the winner? I will reveal the sink choice soon but first let's talk about floor tile. I really wanted to find and use remnant tile but I was having very little luck finding the amount I needed in a style I wanted. I started looking for tile months and months ago but nothing has turned up. Complete side note: three years ago I found my dream tile on FBMP but it was in DC which is a 3.5 hour drive from me. So I had a choice, send my husband alone OR make a mini trip out of it and spend the night... can you guess what we chose to do? We had such a blast and packed so much into the short 24 hours we were there and loved every minute of it. And we came home with beautiful Cle Zellige square tiles! We will be using this as a backsplash for both the kitchen sink and the bathroom sink.

What do you think about using the same tile in the kitchen and bathroom? I know it is a very touchy subject for some and I see the points on both sides. Some people want their bathroom to look different from the kitchen simply because of the business you do in the bathroom should stay in the bathroom and if the kitchen has the same tile it makes them feel icky. It is also a design opportunity to do different tiles in each space, I mean the more spaces to decorate the merrier! However I will be using the same floor tile and backsplash tile in the kitchen and bathroom and here is why: 1- I want the floors of the apartment to flow from one space to the next and I am accomplishing this by painting the existing wood floors black and using black floor tile in the kitchen/ bathroom. By the way the walls of the apartment will all be white, I just want to give you a bit more of the vision as we chat through the design. The reason is simply that it is a small space and I want to make it feel larger by not having visual breaks from one flooring to the next. The only exception might be the bedroom where we might be putting in carpeting. I know that painting wood floors is also a heated topic but I will get into the reasoning behind that in a future post about the living room. 2- I have the backsplash tile already (the FBMP Cle Zellige) and I have enough to do both spaces. It is a high quality gorgeous tile that I got for a great price and I can't wait to use it. For the floor tile I turned to the Home Depot where I looked for the prettiest/ cheapest/ best reviewed tile I could find, and this is what I came up with:

It was a pretty easy decision because I knew I wanted black floors throughout the whole apartment so these will go in the kitchen, bathroom and on a patch in the living area where a faux fireplace will be. These have a matte finish and are slip resistant too. I will be doing black grout because I love the look with the rest of the vintage elements going into the apartment. The tile cost $423 and I hope it looks as good as the pictures/ as nice as the reviewers say it is!

January 24th 2022 When we ripped up the disgusting wall to wall carpet in the living room we were delighted by the hardwood floors peeking out however as we ripped more up we discovered a large section that had been cut out and replaced with a subfloor. I think it might have been where an old trap door to the basement used to be - which I wish was still there since now you have to go outside to get to the basement.

My wheels immediately started turning and I decided that the cut out will be tiled and I'll find an electric fireplace to put on top, it will be a feature! If you remember from my bathroom intro post I have decided to use the same tile throughout the house. It is black matte 12" x 24" and I will be laying them in a herringbone pattern with black grout. This brings me to the floors. I will be painting them black! I know, I know, painted floors...but these floors are full of stains and I have always LOVED painted wood floors. They remind me of antique stores I used to visit in Maine, on childhood vacations. The floors would be all scuffed up with layers of patina and character.

April 2022

And here we are lol! I planned on doing a lot more but there was a lot to do and I didn't make time to stop and write blog posts. However I did choose a sink! In fact the whole bathroom moodboard is ready to go, are you ready to see?

I think I will stop here, that is a lot of information for week one! Check out my Instagram page for progress throughout the week! Thank you for stopping by and be sure to check out the other participants over on the One Room Challenge blog page. Thank you to Apartment Therapy and One Room Challenge for hosting this event!

I hope you have a great week! Ginny

PS: This was my Spring 2021 ORC, my kids Cozy Glam Cabin bedroom.