Fall One Room Challenge: Week 1!

Hello friends!

We are so excited to be a part of this round of One Room Challenge-and amazing event put on by an amazing person…Linda at Calling it Home. For those of you who are new here, we are Andy and Candis Meredith, we have 7 kids and we restore historic homes. We had a show on HGTV but ultimately decided to start our own digital home and lifestyle network called Home Love Network! Our first show officially launched last week with Facebook and we are giving away a house! All crazy things…

One thing about us is that we always do our own home last…the cobbler and their kids with no shoes, basically. So when Linda asked us to participate we knew we had to say YES! We need a happy place for all of us while we are going crazy with everything else.

We’ve decided to take on our “great room” which is our kitchen/living area. It’s where we spend the most time as a family and it is a blank canvas.

It wasn’t always this way, though…..

When we bought the house (Love House, as we call it) it was ready to be demolished. The owner had a hard time seeing past the leaking roof and cracked plaster and wanted to build a duplex instead. We were lucky to save it! Andy and I actually got married on the front steps. Awwwww.

But, guys. It was SOOOOO bad.

Don’t worry, we totally saved the glamour shot.

The living room area is a nice big space that has great windows, tall ceilings and original moldings. It took a long time to get all the mess out and get to a livable place…and let’s not forget that the whole house was powered by extension cords. No lie.

We spent several months updating everything to modern code and then left it “done enough” since!

How great are these cabinets?! I mean, maybe not in this state, but you can imagine with me, right? These are original 1859 cabinets and we would never dream of getting rid of them. That means we have to make them their best version of themselves now!

Our house got a quick coat of all white paint after the electrical, HVAC, plaster etc was done and thats where we’ve been waiting…until NOW! We’re going to do the whole space over the course of the next 6 weeks along with 19 other INCREDIBLE designers!! We can’t wait!

Here’s what the space looks like more or less now-too dirty to photograph in real time this week…because…7 kids. The only thing we’ve added since is darker stained floors:

It’s not like it’s so bad now…it’s just that I want it to be GREAT. Something that I am so proud of, especially for our cute little home that almost didn’t exist any more. I feel like I owe Love House that, haha!

Okay! So….the plan is to make these spaces work together to create an old house version of a “great room” like so many new houses these days. The design is going to be crucial for tying them together.

I hope I can pull it off!! I learned last time that 6 weeks comes FAAAAAST.

Don’t forget to check out the other amazing designers who are participating this round!!! I can’t WAIT to see what they do!