After four weeks of 'before,' design inspiration, mechanical updates, and woodwork progress, this week's French Country laundry update reveals how to add beautiful French style to a laundry. 

Welcome to Week 5 of the French Country laundry renovation as part of the One Room Challenge™, hosted by Linda of Calling It Home and sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens. 

French Country Laundry | ORC™ Woodwork Week 4

Choosing the perfect shade of navy for the French Country Laundry cabinets as part of the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE™ has not been easy. Colors for the wall and ceiling tongue and groove boards have been easier to choose than the blue for the cabinets. Fortunately, paint is one of the least expensive parts of a major renovation project. 

The color scheme in the new laundry room is navy blue and white with white washed wood.  Lots and lots of white, a bold spot of navy, and white washed wood set the background for French Country style and accents. 

The new unfinished beech cabinets were painted during Week 2 of the ORC™, hosted by Linda at Calling It Home and sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens. However, from the first week I have wavered between two shades of navy for the cabinets. 

French Country Laundry | ORC™ Mechanicals Week 3

Mechanical renovations in the laundry room were the reasons for updating the room. Once the decision was made to update the washer and dryer connections and to add insulation, it seemed a good time also to add French Country style to another room in our post and beam house.

Welcome to Week 3 of the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE™ hosted by Linda of Calling It Home and sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens. 

French Country Rustic Fall Entry

A small entry welcomes Fall with rustic French Country decor. White mums in a woven French flower basket, small green and white gourds in a French wire basket, and a vintage green chippy wooden folding chair invite visitors into our post and beam country house. 

Earlier this Fall, the front entryway was decorated with blue and white cottage style with a white French ladder back chair and a metal basket of white pumpkins. If you missed how the entryway looked then, you can read Fall Blue and White Cottage Style Foyer Lives Large. 

The rustic Fall French Country entry is the second of three ways I decorated the small foyer this year. All of the ways are filled with ideas for decorating a small entry with style.

French Country Laundry | ORC™ Design Week 2

W E E K   2 
ONE ROOM CHALLENGE™
sponsored by Better Homes & Gardens 

Transforming an outdated laundry room in need of repairs, new insulation, and a fresh look means adding French Country style at my house. 

For Week 2 of the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE™, you are getting to see the Design Inspiration board for my laundry room. Plus, I am sharing the Pinterest boards behind the Design Inspiration board. Two personal Pinterest boards helped me recognize design factors that appeal to me. The boards helped me to see what colors, floor plans, cabinets, lighting, and functional plumbing kept showing up over and over. As I studied the boards, an overall plan emerged as the boards helped me organize my thoughts about what I want for a beautiful updated laundry room. 

Pinterest boards are great for collecting ideas and sources. If you are dreaming of new projects at your house, I highly recommend you create Pinterest boards for those projects. Pinterest is the modern-age electronic equivalent of paper scrapbooks where we once stuffed torn-out magazine pages for inspiration. 

Elegant Halloween Black and Gold Mantel

A Paper Series Post

Add a little gold to black decorations to create an elegant Halloween-themed mantel for the first Fall holiday, Halloween, to start decorating for the Fall and Winter months. The Midas gold touch adds sparkle and sheen to brighten dark blacks and draws your eyes across an entire arrangement. 

A perfect look for decorating for a Halloween party for grown-ups! 

A lone carved orange Jack 'O Lantern on the front porch has been the only Halloween decor at my house in years past. However, you might say I am embracing Fall in a totally new way this Fall with a sophisticated take on Halloween decorations. 

Keep reading to see how to arrange a mantel with a new twist on Halloween, designed with a little creativity on old themes. 

French Country Laundry | One Room Challenge Week 1

W e e k   O n e

B E F O R E  

Can a laundry room have French Country style? Plans for my laundry room are to replace damaged sheetrock, to update the washing machine and dryer connections, and to insulate the room better to keep it warmer in the winter. What began as purely functional updates has expanded to give the room the style I love ... French Country. 

Since I am working on the room anyway, why not take the opportunity to do a complete overhaul and to add beautiful French Country style? Why not go for it! Why not remove the sheetrock walls and ceiling down to the studs and create a completely new functional and beautiful laundry room? As my daddy always said as I was growing up, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right."

And why not do it within six weeks as part of the 

O N E   R O O M   C H A L L E N G E ™

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