One Room Challenge Week 1
ORC Week 1: What Should We Do with Our Daughter’s Old Bedroom?
Welcome to the One Room Challenge, and my eight-week transformation of our daughter’s old bedroom into … something else.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, the One Room Challenge is an online event held twice a year that invites designers, DIYers, influencers, and all sorts of overly ambitious homeowners to tackle the transformation of a single room in just eight weeks. Like many other participants, I’m joining for the first time as a guest as a way to kickstart a project that I’ve been putting off for months. What better way to force yourself to stop procrastinating than to publicly announce what you’re planning to accomplish? (Along those same lines, I’ve been telling everyone I know that I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro next year, so now that definitely has to happen. Yikes!)
The room in question? The only (sort of) unused room in our house, left (mostly) empty when the last of our children moved out about a year and a half ago. While we swiftly repurposed our other children’s rooms when they moved out, we keep waffling on how to use this one. The main issue is whether to leave the twin bed and small desk in the room, or to get rid of them and turn the room into a dedicated workout space.
Our daughter happily moved on from her childhood bedroom furniture. Should we give it up, too?
Extra Guest Room vs. Workout Room
Here are the arguments for and against each decision:
Keep the furniture?
While we already have a guest room for regular visits from family and friends, it might be nice to keep the twin bed as an overflow guest space. Maybe someday our son and daughter-in-law in Arizona will have children, and we’ll want the extra room for them when the family comes to visit us. The key words here are “maybe” and someday.” In fact, let’s just change the “maybe” to “probably.” That still leaves us with “someday.” Do we really want to hold onto this inexpensive old furniture for some future “just in case” scenario, when we could be putting the room to a more immediate use now?
It’s also nice to have an extra bed for those occasions when my husband or I get sick, or his allergies are acting up, and one of us is keeping the other awake with coughing or snuffling. Yes, we do have the guest room, but the bed in there is a wall bed. It’s always made up and ready to use, and it’s quick and easy to pull down into a bed, but it’s still not the ideal solution when it’s the middle of the night and we need a quick escape.
I can also see the desk getting occasional use. I’m planning to turn the closet in that room into a gift-wrap center, and it would be nice to have the desk as a flat surface for wrapping. But is it worth keeping for such a limited use? I mean, we’re not exactly talking about high-end furniture here.
Whatever we decide to do with the room, the closet is going to end up as a gift-wrapping center.
Turn the room into a gym?
I’m already using the room as a secondary workout space, so it makes sense to turn it into a dedicated gym. We have a treadmill in the adjacent craft room – and, yes, I do use it on a regular basis – but it basically takes up the middle of the room and gets in the way of everything else I want to do in there. If we move it to this room, I can do all of my workouts in one place, instead of moving back and forth between the two rooms. And then I could also get my craft room back.
It would be nice to add gear for more workout options. I would love to add a rowing machine, stationary bicycle, or elliptical trainer to possibly entice my husband to also work out at home, since he’s just not into the treadmill.
If we turn this into an exercise room, are we going to want to take out the carpeting and put in a more workout-friendly flooring?
If this room is full of exercise equipment, where will our future grandbabies sleep?
And what’s going to happen with Mr. Panda?
Decisions Made: The Overall Design
Regardless of how this room ends up functioning, I’ve already made most of the decisions on the overall design. I’ve purchased a wallpaper mural, bought the paint, and stocked up on the supplies that I’ll need to make it all happen.
Here are the biggest challenges that I see myself facing in the coming weeks:
Prepping the ceiling. I’ve made the bold (foolhardy?) decision to go with an ultra-gloss paint on the ceiling, which means I’ll need to skim-coat it and sand it to an absolutely smooth finish. I plan to also smooth down the wall with the wallpaper mural, to be sure none of the existing orange-peel texture shows through. Am I going to regret this? Probably.
Hanging the wallpaper mural. I’ve never hung wallpaper by myself before. What could go wrong?
Finding time to get everything done. The room is small, and I’m not planning any major construction work, but eight weeks isn’t much time! I have an out-of-town visitor coming one week, and will be away on a family vacation for two additional weeks. Oh, and I also have my actual job as an interior designer. Let’s hope I can get this project completed!
I’ll see you all in the coming weeks! You can follow along with my weekly progress here, on my Instagram page (@cancaninteriors) or on the oneroomchallenge.com site. You can see all of the ORC Week 1 posts at Fall 2025 - Week 1 — ONE ROOM CHALLENGE®.
