Twice a year, in October and April, Linda from

Calling It Home

 and

House Beautiful

hosts a One Room Challenge. Over the course of 6 weeks, 20 select designers and bloggers tackle renovating or redecorating a specific room, and share their

 progress with weekly blog posts. 

When the April 2017 list of selected designers was announces, I was so inspired by how many of the participants are blogs and designers I admire. I knew I wanted to participate too!

The One Room Challenge encourages Guest Participants, so I'm joining the fun, sharing the magic of an Annex Guest Room makeover we have yet to tackle.

What's even more exciting, is this is a linked event, which means that all the Guest Participants will share a common link and you'll be able to easily surf through a ton of room transformations. You'll find that link at the bottom of this post!

Warning: The following "before" images are scary!

I often share this 'before' image with people who don't know the

state in which we acquired Content

.

I suppose this

Annex Guest Room

image was taken during the bank's repossession of the property prior to foreclosure.

Luckily, when we closed on Content in October 2014, the trash and junk had been cleaned out.

But, it always amazes me that just 5 short months after this picture was take, two knuckle heads (John + I) showed up bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and jumped feet first into the biggest renovation project of our lives.

Even though we've done a lot since 2014 (i.e. the blood, sweat and tears chronicled throughout this blog), nowadays the Annex Guest Room has mostly been used as storage.

Here's John and my Dad, likely discussing how I'm a closet hoarder of second-hand furniture. 

Over the coldest winter months, I did spend a few days replacing all of the window weight mechanics so all the windows now properly function.

People often ask, "How long will Content's renovation take?" Our honest answer is - forever! And that answer is said with love. We love working on old houses (ours + our home consulting clients) they're just needy! . We promised early on to approach every project with the motto "do it right the first time". . And this weekend we were reminded of that motto when a simple paint job required us to first pull off all the window casing to fix the double hung weights. We're pros at window weights these days!

A post shared by c o n t e n t + c o (@contentandcompany) on Feb 6, 2017 at 5:28am PST

Overall, the Annex Guest Room has awesome bones, just like the rest of the house. This space features a brick fireplace (which needs a mantel), exposed beam ceiling and four original, double pane windows.

The original wide, hardwood pine floors are still in this room. And the space has beautiful ceiling and baseboard molding too!

The overall goal of this makeover is to clean up the walls and ceilings with fresh paint, and create a "disappearing" guest room. Huh?

Stay with me... We refer to this as the Annex because it attaches to Guest Suite #1 and the Great Room. We think this would be the perfect space to provide friends and family, traveling together, with additional accommodations.

But we want to reserve the ability to remove the beds should the space be needed for a special event, in conjunction with the Great Room.

So far, I have a vintage camp theme in mind. I think this will lend itself well to the "disappearing" beds, as well as to a lounge setting.

I have a bunch of ideas floating around, and can't wait to see this fun, quirky makeover come to life.

Be sure to follow along with our progress and comment below with your thoughts!

KEEP IT GOING!

You can connect to all the

One Room Challenge Guest Participant week 1

updates here! #oneroomchallenge

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