Renovation Challenge Week 2: The Week of All the Challenges

Welcome to week two of the Fall Renovation Challenge. This is the week of all the challenges. Which is great, given our name, but seriously we feel for each designer and all the wonderful ups and downs of renovations.

If you aren’t familiar with our wonderful participants, be sure to get caught up on the renovations and visit each designer’s Renovation Challenge profile. 

First up is Patti of Renovating Mapleson Manor, who suddenly found herself also renovating her dinning room. Accidentally becoming part of the challenge after discovering a need for new piping in her bathroom that required removing her dinning room wall. Not all bad news, as she installed the ground work for her new heated flooring.

“In good news, our tile arrived this week, and I LOVE it,” said Patti. “I am planning on using the grayCastle Rock Porcelain Hexagon floor tile for the floor (duh) and the Stone Creek Porcelain field tile for the shower.”

Great tile selections and we can’t wait to see how they look in the big reveal.

Michele of Our Uncluttered House is taking on her entryway, and this week she begin her demo work removing all her old tile. It wasn’t without a few visits to YouTube and the hardware store that she was able to do all the demo work with her adorable furry sidekick by her side.  

This week we are all truly impressed with not a demo, but a build from the ground up. Shara of Woodshop Diaries started from scratch and already has walls up and working on electrical in 100 degree weather. Running on over 25 bottles of Gatorade and water, Shara definitely deserves her dream vacation. There are so many more interesting challenges Shara faced this week, so be sure to see them all and how she resolved them in her full blog post.

Another designer who faced an equally challenging week was Virginia of Fynes Designs. With such a well-intentioned plan for her kitchen remodel Virginia found herself with more repairs and work to do.

“Bring on the demo…and all the things that come with it, like snowballs.” — Virgina

Plenty of challenges in week two, but there has also been so much progress from everyone. Overcoming challenges is all part of the process and we are proud to be part of it.

Emily of M+B Design made a game time decision and removed most of her cabinetry in an effort to open up her kitchen, and the progress is looking great.

Amy Mings was all about visualizing her renovation and wrote on the importance of having a plan before beginning to help save time and money. While Kindergarten teacher, Kelly Radcliff demoed her entry in under four hours, we were impressed with this renovation milestone.

For Amanda of New House to New Home it was about sticking to her inspiration board focusing on painting and shared a sneak peak of her tile selection to debut next week.

Yellow Rose Life’s Laura Ward shared her favorite part of any renovation stating,

“The best part of the week… SHOPPING! We’ve decided on the Basalt line of tiles, specifically the Hudson Basalt Mosaic for the floor and the Basalt 4×16 Subway Tiles for a chair rail on the walls. It’s the perfect industrial look, and the parquet pattern on the Hudson floor tile will give the whole space a more modern feel.”

Joy Maier and Kendra Galic are both renovating their bathrooms and made great stride in replacing their old builder grade products to new features, they’ll share in the coming weeks.

Closing out the week with Sara Davis, who shared a great tutorial on installing cement board as she prepares her bathroom to lay tile next week.

So much great progress from all our designers in what turned out to be the most challenging week. See all the progress from this by visiting the designer profiles.