One Room Challenge: Week 1!

Hi friends!

If you’re new to our blog, allow me to introduce ourselves! We’re Andy and Candis Meredith. We have 7 kids (6 boys and a girl) and we restore historic homes in Utah. We have a TV show on HGTV and a new book called Old Home Love. I have been renovating homes for 14 years and Andy joined me when we got married 4 years ago! I feel like we work really hard, but we do what we love, so it’s very rewarding!! Check us out on Instagram.

That sounded boring. Was that boring?

Basically…we have a passion for saving old homes and want to share their value with the world!! Aaaaand if any of our kids decide to keep the tradition going, we wouldn’t be mad :)

I have long been an admirer of the One Room Challenge hosted by Linda at Calling it Home. It’s basically like my sweeps time for the internet. I think there is something really special about getting a collective group together to make their spaces beautiful and I really love the motivation that it creates. We have been asked to be featured participants this spring and I cannot tell you how excited we are!

I have to admit that as a reader I was all like…6 weeks is a long time, I could do a room way faster. Duh. Well, now that I am actually doing it FOR ALL OF YOU TO SEE ON THE REAL LIVE INTERNET, I’m officially freaking out. So, if you promise not to judge me…let’s do this! I promise I will do my best!

We are doing our master suite at our beloved “Love House”. We call it that because it was where Andy and I got married and where our blended family came together in love for the very first time. It is a super special home built in 1859 and was literally on its last limbs (here are a few posts about it.) When we bought it, it was slated for demolition and I begged the guy to sell it to me. He looked at me like I was a 12 year old asking to buy a car, but it was cheaper for him to sell it to me than demo it.

Thank goodness.

I still think about this home being replaced with a duplex and feel really good about all of the “questionable” decisions I have made in my life.

The suite itself is fairly large and is comprised of two adjoining rooms-one where we sleep and the other where our closet and office is. You should know that these rooms were bad. Like, so bad that you could smell them when we bought the house. It was vacant for 2 years after squatters had nearly destroyed it and we cleaned up a lot of “stuff.” I’ll spare you the details.

Maybe I’ll just show you pictures……prepare yourself.

Hmmm. Those don’t look that bad, but PROMISE, it was gross. Plus, it was winter and we would literally freeze while working on it. At least all the fluids were solid then. Too much?

We worked really hard to get it to a completely “updated” place, meaning electrical, HVAC, plumbing, plaster repair etc. We spent a long time just getting all of that behind the scenes stuff done…which is not super glamourus but still important.

I actually found some really cool original wallpaper while scraping and would love to incorporate that style it into the design somehow…

After everything was ready to paint, we felt like we were freaking amazing and didn’t want to do much else…so it went from here…

To here….

And it hasn’t really changed much since besides putting placeholder carpet in so that we didn’t loose our minds.

See those lovely floors? They are a total illusion of original beauty. In real life they are suuuuper gappy and mock my very existence as a historic home renovator. I want to love them, but honestly, they suck and it’s going to take a lot to make them livable. You guys will know as soon as I do what the heck I’m going to do.

Here’s how the place looks today, all white and shiny with no character or real interest. Don’t get me wrong…it’s a yuuuge improvement from crack house status, but we can’t wait to add some of our personality to this space.

Secretly I’m hoping it will motivate us to stop putting clean, unfolded clothes on the ground. #smallvictories.

That rug is literally something I bought in college. Why I still have it, let alone in a space I am showing you, is beyond me.

Whew. Do you feel like you’ve already taken a journey with me?? Can you even imagine this place all done up!?

We have been going back and forth for a long time about being true to the period and still feeling modern and authentic to us, so this week we are REALLY going to make some hard decisions on color, style etc. In the meantime, we are going to be working on those floooooors. Send us all the good vibes, K?

Follow along with these amazing bloggers and designers! No pressure placed on us at all…it’s just a total dream team, no biggie.

Centsational Girl | Chris Loves Julia | Christine Dovey | Dwell With Dignity | The English Room

Nesting Place | Old Brand New | Old Home Love | The Pink Pagoda | Rambling Renovators

Erica Reitman | Sketch 42 | Suburban B’s | Erin Williamson Media Partner House Beautiful | TM by CIH

Thank you all for reading!!