21 Jul HGTV’s Beach Flip Living Room Challenge!
It’s all about the Gulf.
That’s what we kept repeating to ourselves as we set out to design HGTV’s Beach Flip Living Room Challenge. Nicole’s advice kept ringing in our ears.
We went minimalist.
Maybe too minimalist.
Well, not maybe. We definitely did. It cost us the win. Honestly, I never would have thought of faux beams–Martha and Alex’s idea was gorgeous and it was hard to compete with that.
Want some behind the scenes juice? We had a lot of mold and a lot of water damage by the sliding glass doors. We had a ton of sub floors to replace before Lumber Liquidators would even consider laying our floors down. Nick and our carpenter Mark had a lot of work to do after we spent hours getting up all that tile. You end up being so proud of all that work and you haven’t even gotten to the design elements!
Renovating houses is a lot of work.
But we do love it!
Let’s break it down:
How about those stinking cute mint green chairs!!!??? I’m obsessed with them! The wicker table gives it a casual look. We loved how well our dining room set played off the striped blue wall in the kitchen and with our sleeper sofa.
That reminds me…
As of right now, our beach front property sleeps 4 people. Two in the master and two on this sleeper sofa. In a rental property, the more people you can sleep in your space the more money you can charge. I may have screwed up giving a rental property fancy closets but I learn quickly.
Remember this sheathing? We used it in the Master Bedroom as well. Did I tell you we saved it when we ripped it off the house to make room for the new window in the bedroom? Well, we did. We like to reuse stuff. We had some extra and I decided to make some DIY wall art. One of my favorite responses to the question, “How are you?” is “Living the dream.” Nick, Mark, and myself used to say we were “Living the Gulf Dream” since our beach house is called Gulf Dreams. This wall art seemed fitting.
How about this Nick original?! I was so proud of Nick when he finished this. There were areas he could have improved but the piece was pretty solid and it really looked beautiful as it hid the 50″ TV. We conditioned the wood with paste wax and added cleats to tie it in with the kitchen hardware. The entire thing cost us less than $75.
We can’t believe the series is almost half way over! We still can’t believe we were chosen out of over 1,000 applicants! Someday soon I’ll have to blog about that whole audition experience…it was cray cray.
Make sure you bounce on over to HGTV.com and vote for your favorite master bedroom, kitchen, and living room space. I’m sure you’re biased (*wink*) but feel free to have fun and answer honestly! You probably already know this, but I absolutely adore our competitors. We learned a ton while filming this show—and yes, it’s hard to grow and learn knowing the nation is watching—but I never do things the easy way. Our competitors kept us on our toes. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Make sure to tune in this Sunday, July 26th at 9pm EST as we renovate the guest bedroom! Also, find out how much value each team as added at this point!
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