Farmhouse Master // A Wild Goose Chase (ORC, Week 5)
THE FARMHOUSE Week 5 of the One Room Challenge was one wild goose chase - actually a wild fireplace chase - around Washington State! I spent most of the week scouring Craigslist, vintage stores, and architectural salvage shops looking for an antique fireplace surround. A fireplace has been in the long term renovation plan for our master bedroom since we moved in (we had hoped it would happen concurrently with the master closet and bathroom renovation in a few years), but last week, I thought why not just add it to our ORC master bedroom redesign?! I've had such a difficult time choosing what to do with the large white wall in our bedroom anyway, I figured we might as well go with what we want most.
I had total confidence that we could turn this big white wall...
...into this:
faux fireplace via Manhattan Nest
Luckily, the kids and Garrett were good sports about accompanying me on "family outings" around the state while looking for the perfect fireplace surround. We scoured every salvage shop between Yakima and Seattle and plenty of antique shops too, but even after all that searching, we came up empty handed. Ugh.
My last hope was an antique shop in Ellensburg. If you caught my Instagram Story, you already know that I thought I had found *it* (i.e. the vintage fireplace surround) while trick-or-treating with the boys downtown on Monday night. But when I went back to buy the fireplace in the light of day, I wasn't sure it really was 'the one', or at least it wasn't priced like "the one" should be (because obviously 'the one' would have a good bargain story attached to it), so I walked away empty handed. Again. Consider my dreams of a fireplace dashed. Or at least postponed until next year. On the plus side, all that antiquating wasn't half bad. I found a nice solution for the problem wall, which I'll show you next week!
Despite all the time we spent driving around, Garrett and I did actually accomplish a few things during week 5. We got the bedroom cleaned up (after refinishing hardwood floors there is dust everywhere!), laid the rug, assembled the bed frame, set the theater seats in place, started on the lighting, and moved our hanging chair in here (it turned out to be a bad fit for the nursery since our wobbly 12-month-old is obsessed with climbing).
We also retrofitted a nightstand for my side of the bed using a vintage table base and leftover marble from the Ravenna House kitchen countertops. Of course by we, I mean Garrett, but don't get too bogged down in the details. We have hauled that marble around from house to house, saving it for the perfect project, and I am so thrilled that we finally found it. I mentioned this on Instagram, but I can be a bit of a hoarder when it comes to leftover building materials, and seeing this marble reused, gives me all sorts of happy hoarder feelings ;)
Okay, that's it for this week. I promise tons of reveal photos next week when this room is finally done and check out Instagram for updates in between. Thanks for following along!
You can catch up on my One Room Challenge posts here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4.
xoxo
-Cathy