One Room Challenge Week 5: Delays, Priming, and Gilding

One of the most important, but perhaps under acknowledged skills an interior designer has to master is the art of improvisation. Designers are by definition communicators of concept to final form but the path to completing a project is rarely a straight line. We order pieces and materials and they get delayed. We schedule tradesfolk and line up contractors and life and human nature cause delays and we go back to the pool of skilled labor to find alternatives. When these things happen we have to pivot, use our creative brainpower to find alternatives or reorganize our design phases to keep the work rolling along and prevent things from grinding to a halt.

This is the phase your designers find themselves in this week in the One Room Challenge. We ordered a bolt of fabric from Morocco with a pattern we thought would be beautiful for reupholstering the dining chairs. This is always a risk because we don’t have the fabric samples in-hand, but there were so many images it seemed like a safe bet. A few weeks later the fabric arrives and… well the colors are more electric and neon than traditional Moroccan. So back across the ocean with that package and back to the fabric shop with us. But this is part of the design process- it goes hand-in-hand with a contractor ghosting our project for being too small (repairing a plaster ceiling) and going through 3 different electricians before we found one that will show up on the scheduled date to do the work. Thus we are just getting the Moroccan pendant lights installed today (fingers crossed!).

These colors aren’t even on the same planet, much less fabric.

But what do you do when your people don’t show or the order is wrong? Besides improvising it’s time to pivot the schedule! We had been planning to leave painting until the last week or two of the challenge- the dusty house work would be finished and we could paint in the quiet serenity of a flawless dining room almost finished. Now we’ve moved the china cabinet out back and are painting that with black enamel. We’re gilding antique cabinet hardware and wrapping mid century chairs in soft hempen rope to make them something new. We’ve ditched wallpapering the back of our china cabinet because the samples didn’t pass muster and decided to paint it a stunning terracotta instead- something to set off dishes in an elegant way.

Work was delayed but like any good designer it didn’t stop- we pivoted, upended the schedule, and got a move on to fulfill our design vision for the space. What could have been a dead and unfulfilling week turned out to be one full of little but important steps. It’s a reminder to trust the process and believe in your instincts, the path might be indirect but the destination remains the same.

Another fun little fast motion in-process video of us starting to prime the china cabinet!

To check out the rest of the fabulous designers taking part in the Fall 2022 One Room Design Challenge click here: http://oneroomchallenge.com/blog/

Also check out challenge sponsor Apartment Therapy here: http://apartmenttherapy.com

Until next week!

Cheers,

James