Archive for the ‘Redecorating’ Category
James’ room was the first room to get a makeover after our move (see: Room Reveal: James’ Room) and is one of my favorites in our house. Not too long ago our little boy transitioned from a toddler bed to a big boy bed and so his room underwent its second revision in eighteen months.
Oh, how I loved James’ airplane themed bedding. One of the biggest arguements I hear against buying baby bedding sets is that they’re so expensive and you don’t use them for very long. And it’s true, they are crazy expensive. As in, some people pay more for them than they do in deductible to actually give birth to the baby. So when we were picking out a set for our firstborn’s nursery I deliberately chose one which was more Little Boy and less Baby. I was determined even then that with a $180 pricetag, I’d use that sucker for more than the first year of my kid’s life.
Here are some snapshots of James’ teeny tiny nursery in our first home. Sigh, sniff, nostalgia.
Gosh, I loved that little room even if it had no storage and barely any floor space. When we moved in to our current house we kept the same motif, subtracted the crib and changing table, and added a cutey little toddler bed. Again with the sighing and sniffing.
As the crib bedding still fit his toddler bed, nothing really changed except adding the moulding treatment on the feature wall. (Which had nothing to do with his age and everything to do with my love for moulding treatments.)
So several months ago my big kid outgrew his toddler bed and it was time to change things up again. The first step was to prepare his new Big Kid Bed. We’d had this fantastically orange wood headboard in storage for years:
It was Travis’ when he was a boy and came with the entire set of bedrom furniture we’ve been refinishing one piece at a time over the years. (The dresser shown above was part of that set too, refinished to a dark cherry color.) Rather than strip/sand/stain/seal this particular piece I decided to paint it white. A little room rearranging placed it up against the feature wall and I love, LOVE how the white pops off of the color.
The bedding was not a cheap find…..but when you pre-determined your colors with an extremely labor-intensive feature wall and your theme from a pre-purchased bedding set, you have limited options. So when you find a set that a) matches your existing color scheme and b) fits the airplane theme but ratchets the age level up a notch, you just buy it. It was still less than half of the cost of the nursery bedding. I really love the vintage airplanes because they will carry the theme all the way through elementary age. Plus oh.my.word. the comforter and sham are the softest, squishiest, comfiest fabric ever.
So back to that nursery bedding set. It came with sheets, comforter, bumper, crib skirt, and window valance. I was determined to use as much of it as I could and part of that was repurposing the crib sheets into pillow cases. We had two sheets that matched the set so I cut off the elastic edging, sewed them into pillow cases, and now James has two that coordinate with his new bedding and are super soft from years of washing.
The crib bedskirt was repurposed into the new bed’s bedskirt. Because crib skirts are four-sided and a twin bed only has three sides showing, I was able to cut the skirt apart and piece each of the four sides together into one long strip. I then tucked it under the box spring and it just barely made it all the way around his new bed.
Next up, every big kid room needs a night stand. This beauty just happened to be free on the side of the road:
I know, I can’t imagine why, right? It was a garage sale leftover and it seems no one wanted it despite it’s insultingly low price of $3.00. I’m never too proud to stop and pick up something free if it has potential, a trait which annoys the junk out of intrigues my husband . I thought those little cubbies underneath were darling!
The table had a big hole in the top where I’m guessing a lamp pole used to be, but that was pretty easily fixed by plugging the hole, spackling over it, and sanding it down. Once the whole thing was spray painted a semi-gloss white you can’t even see where it used to be!
And there you have the main players in your big kid room: new bedding, big bed, and night table:
The dresser and rocker stayed, though we removed the footstool. The curtains remain from the original bedding set, along with the blackout panels I made years ago when James started waking with the sun. Not cool, kid.
The quilt from his nursery bedding stayed as a wall hanging, as again, it’s more boyish than babyish.
The frames are new and started out looking like this:
They were $1.00 each at a garage sale. I discarded the old artwork and painted the frames a white semi-gloss. For the artwork I cut squares of fabric and several of the appliques from the crib bumper and framed them.
The rest of the crib bumper was cut up and sewn into pillows. I just whacked them off at the right length, stuffed a little more padding down inside, and sewed the ends closed. I stitched leftover cording from the bumper into the ends of my new pillows so they look finished. I made two, one that sits on his rocker and the other tucked into the back of his nightstand.
The little end table next to the rocker is a square chest and was a garage sale find years ago. I originally had plans to paint it and cover the rattan panels with fabric but for now it does just fine. James loves that he has a treasure chest in his room!
The bookshelf display got a little makeover as well, adding a mirror salvaged from my Mom’s house, a framed drawing of James sketched by my Dad, and two wooden puzzles made and given to him by my grandfather.
The final change to James’ room is the one he found far and away, most exciting. Anyone who knows my boy knows he has an obsession with ceiling fans. And “obsession” is probably stating it far too lightly. So much so that he has a “favorite fan”……which just happens to be the fan hung in the master bedroom at our old house, and under which my boy spent hours napping and playing in his first two years of life. That same fan was on display at Menards for years and every time we went there James would ask to go visit his “favorite fan”. So when Menards discontinued it and took it off display last year we had one crestfallen little boy. Enter Daddy to the rescue….Travis ordered this ugly favorite silver ceiling fan online and then earned Daddy of the Year award by installing it in James’ bedroom. Oh my, if you could have seen the elation on that boy’s face. Daddy is his hero.
MY favorite part of James’ updated room is the saying above his door. It was gifted to him by my Mom and truer words have never been spoken.
There you have it…..from nursery to big kid room. May we not redo this room again until he’s old enough to pick out something hideous more mature for himself!
This post has been a long time coming. And not just in the sense that I’ve gotten horribly behind in blogging my projects, though that remains true. I have about 52 others to photograph and share as well. But let’s start with the kitchen because it’s new and shiny and my current favorite. I know you shouldn’t play favorites with your children and your rooms, but there it is.
So. When we bought this house the kitchen was one of the two rooms in which we planned on investing some money in updates (the other was the bathroom). Here are some shots of the kitchen from the real estate listing:
Now don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a cute periwinkle girl’s room like everyone else but that’s a rather violent shade of purple for a kitchen, no? Thankfully they repainted the kitchen to a much more neutral (albeit boring) shade before we moved in.
Here’s a shot of the new paint color, during our second showing:
So much better. I’ll take Bland Beige over Electric Smurf any day of the week. Sadly there was no painting those blueish-purple countertops. Believe me, I considered it – after all, I Paint Things White right? So while we a) figured out what we wanted instead and b) waited until the budget allowed, we lived with the blue. Embraced the blue, even. And I decorated other rooms for 18 months because the color scheme I settled on was black, white, and green, and one cannot have a green kitchen when one has blue countertops. Unless it’s Easter and pastel eggs abound, and then it looks right for a day. So 18 months went by and I’m not about to pretend I was sad on the day those babies made their way to the ReStore.
But that’s not to say I didn’t start working on what projects I could and making decorating decisions with the big picture in mind. Here is the kitchen right after we moved in:
See that white fridge back there? Yeah, it came with the house and only made it six months. The day before they finished working on remodeling the master bathroom it petered out. Of course it did. So with the future plan in mind, the unexpected Step 1: Buy a new fridge. We bought a black one.
Step 2: Stalk Craig’s List for months and months and sweetly ask your husband to drive your hugely pregnant self all over town gathering furniture to fill the space. This is a BIG kitchen. We had a table and chairs that were in sad shape and too small for the space so I began the quest to find a larger, round table. You can see its transformation here. That big empty space on the right was filled with the Craig’s List Hutch.
Step 3: Drive yourself off-the-cliff crazy trying to pick the right paint color. Collect paint chips from every store in town. Lay them all out in grids. Finally narrow it down to three and tack them up on the wall. Pick one. Stare at it for a while weeks then second guess yourself. Start over. Pick two new options and get sample sizes. Paint samples up on the wall and finally decide on a color.
Step 4: Paint the kitchen including those cramped little spaces where you end up standing on the stove and telling your toddler to never, ever stand on the stove. Also, remember why you didn’t do this while pregnant. Realize quickly that because you had the Valspar paint color mixed as a color match instead of in the original brand, the shade isn’t right. And only you will notice but still, you will notice. Everysingletime you walk into the kitchen. Which is about 300 times per day.
Step 5: Have the color mixed in the more expensive correct brand of paint and repaint the kitchen. Thank the Heavens that it’s the right shade this time.
Step 6: Hire your favorite contractor to come rip up your kitchen.
Step 7: Pick out sparkly new black granite counters and then live without any for a week while waiting for the new counters to be fitted. Almost set something down on the island that is not there 4000 times.
Step 8: Rejoice when the install is done and new construction is finished. Stare at your brand new countertops and pretty, pretty island. So pretty. Realize it was worth the wait.
Step 9: Buy barstools for the new island. And then sweet talk your husband into cutting them down a bit because at their original height you’d have to have three-inch thighs to fit under the bar top and that’s just discouraging.
Step 10: Spend entirely too much time playing with your new cabinet and desk, getting everything off of your kitchen counters. Ahhhhhh.
Step 11: It’s time for curtains so the neighbors can stop watching you have dinner and judging you for serving your child chicken nuggets AGAIN. Square your shoulders and take on your sewing machine to make lined curtains out of the fabric you purchased six months ago and have been avoiding eye contact with ever since. Feel tremendous relief when they turn out just as you’d hoped and you don’t have to rip out seventeen miles of stitching. Not that that’s ever happened.
Feel cheeky because you purposefully mixed patterns like those Real Designers do. Love, love, love.
Step 12: Use the scraps to piece together a valance for above the kitchen window. Make it ruffly so no one can see how you can’t sew straight.
Step 13: Add more patterned fabric to the room because you have a small addiction to bold, graphic patterns. Buy inexpensive white IKEA chair pads and two different IKEA fabrics. Feel disproportionately proud when you manage to sew covers that fit AND tuft them with upholstered buttons, all without cursing or bleeding. BEAM with pride.
Let’s take a break in our programming for a Before and After comparison:
Step 14: Feel in love with your kitchen every time you walk into the room. Enjoy cooking for and visiting with your family and friends even more than you did before. Spend most of your day in this, the center of your home. Thank God that He gave you such a space.
Step 15: Feel extremely gratful that no other room in your house requires so extensive an overhaul trickling out over eighteen months. The end.
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I’m linking this post to Thrifty Decor Chick’s Before and After party!
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Remember waaaaaay back when I redid the laundry room and I mentioned that I had one finishing touch I was still waiting on? No? That’s because it’s been ages. A year I think. Several months ago I finally found that missing piece and finished that final touch. And then I didn’t blog about it for half a year. Score one for me.
What I wanted was a way to tie the yellow, grey, and black colors all together. I was looking for a fabric that used all the colors and kept striking out. I finally found on on fabric.com and ordered the measly little 1/4 of a yard I needed.
And here’s where I added it:
To “line” the underside of my shelves I cut cardboard rectangles that just fit the spaces. I then wrapped my fabric around them and hot glued it on the back. I used adhesive velcro strips to stick my fabric-wrapped panels to the underside of the shelves. I love that you can see the little pops of color in an unexpected place.
I also added a little bit here:
That basket holds wooden clothes pins for the clothes line I no longer have, but some day hope to regain.
As one final touch I bought inexpensive but durable black mat from Menards. It both grounds the room a little bit and catches all the junk that comes in on our shoes, from the garage.
NOW the laundry room is done.
Room Reveal: Half Bath
Posted on: March 30, 2011
I’ve finished another room! It happens to be the smallest room in the house, but a room nonetheless. The main level half bath is just off the foyer, so it’s one of the first spaces you see when you enter our house. (Welcome to our home! Aaaaand here’s our bathroom.) So I wanted it to be decorated as much as any other room. Here is where we started:
Builder’s grade oversized mirror, yellowy beige walls, no accessories of any kind. Then when shopping at TJ Maxx with a Christmas gift card, I happened upon this bathroom rug. My color scheme was born!
I also bought this matching hand towel….how cute are those little embroidered butterflies?
Here come the Befores and Afters!
I wanted the paint color to be dramatic, since it’s a small space. So I matched the darkest gray in the rug to a Pittsburgh Paints color called Gibraltar Gray.
The builder’s grade mirror had to go. After some searching I found this lovely brassy mirror on 66% off clearance at Hobby Lobby. It was originally $89.99 and I paid $29.99. I gave it a coat of Adhesion Primer and then several coats of white and an accent color from Dutch Boy called College Park Green (though it’s actually an aqua, not green at all).
Before and After:
Remember this? I told you it was destined for a makeover but I bet you never guessed it was meant for a bathroom!
Here it is now, repurposed as a magazine rack.
This bathroom is tiny and I was having trouble finding a solution for the magazines my husband piles in there that didn’t take up most of the floor space. (Confession: I totally switched out most of his magazines for mine for these photos because, well, his are ugly.) So I came up with the idea of a hanging magazine rack and put it on Travis’ To Do list. Then I spotted whatever this thing is (Any guesses what it’s original use was? I can’t come up with any) for $3.00 at Goodwill and I knew I could make it work. Without having to wait six months for Travis to have time to make me one. Patient I am not. The best part is how little space it takes up in the room – look at that low profile!
For accessories I mostly “shopped the house”. The vase on the vanity came with some flowers my sister sent me on my first Mother’s Day. I kept it because I loved the color…and lo and behold it’s a perfect match. The faux hydrangeas came from Hobby Lobby.
The little shelf used to be in our guest bath at the Whitehall house. Now it displays tea cups from a set I pilfered from my friend Emily’s garage sale pile. The color is perfect and you can’t beat the price!
It also holds an aqua glass pitcher that was a gift from one Shelly Alley several years ago and a little creamer I found at Goodwill.
So should you come visit me you might find 75% of my house somewhere on the spectrum of Unfinished, but my potty will be pretty! The end.
Looky, looky at my new toy!
Posted on: March 10, 2011
Is it possible to have a crush on a room in your house? ‘Cause I think I do. I’m all googly-eyed over one particular space in our house.
Who wouldn’t be in love with this room?
I kid.
That’s the listing picture of our front sitting room, dubbed the Reading Room. As you can see, it was probably ignored used for a lot of sitting by the previous owners. Here’s what it looked like from right after we moved in until just a couple of weeks ago, complete with books piled in the corner. Nine months of book piles. Awesome.
And it wasn’t just the one side, we’re equal opportunity book pilers.
The day we walked through this house I told Travis that I’d like built-in book shelves in this room. I could see them in my head and they were fantastic. Almost exactly one year later, I had this:
Piles of melamine shelving in the dining room, free standing cabinets in the middle of the floor, new light fixtures strewn about, holes in the ceiling….ahh, bliss. Oh, you don’t think that’s what I had in mind? Yeah, me neither. But my extremely handy husband was dilligent and patient and accommodating and after living with ^ that ^ for a couple of weeks things began to come together.
But only because he had a lot of very important help. It’s essential when undertaking a large construction project, to have someone close by who can hand you essential items like your green plastic ruler.
It’s especially helpful if your assistant comes with his own power tools and snazzy training pants.
And next thing you know, you have this:
BAM. Mama is happy. And just a little bit smitten with her very own Reading Room.
(We’ve since added hardware to the doors and drawers but I’m too lazy to take the pictures over again. Plus the sun hasn’t been out once since the day I took these. Humph.)
I spent two days shopping the house, digging through boxes of long-packed items, finding things I’d love to display, and re-arranging it until I liked what I saw. It was ridiculously fun.
Some befores and afters? I think so.
Sigh. Love.
February’s Thrift Store Blitz
Posted on: February 24, 2011
Last week a friend and I bundled up our four boys and did something stupid took them all on a thrift store shopping tour. I was looking for two specific things (a desk chair and framed mirror), neither of which I found, but I did find a few other treasures. Wanna see?
These Land’s End boots retail for $50. FIF-TY DOLL-ARS. Are you kidding me? Who pays $50 for a pair of kids boots, which they will grow out of in one season? Seriously. I don’t even own an item of clothing that cost that much. I paid $2.00 at St. Vincent’s, gave them a good washing, and tucked them away for next winter.
Ok, I’m really, really, really done buying Christmas items now. Really. But this wreath was too pretty to pass up. It still has the Hobby Lobby tag on it for $39.99 and I paid $10 at the Salvation Army. It looks kinda irridescent and gaudy in the photo, but in person it’s just beautiful and shimmery.
This one I won’t tell you about just yet, other than to say it was $3.00, because it’s part of another project. Any guesses what it will be?
This wine rack was $2.00 at Goodwill and now holds towels in my bathroom.
See?
The following glassware came from St. Vincent’s and the Salvation Arm. The apple and short canister are in my kitchen, the pagoda-looking one is on display on a shelf I will tell you about soon, and the vial is headed for my bathroom shelves. I paid around $8.00 for all four.
And since I’m covering thrift store purchases for the month, here are a couple of items I bought on a quick trip to Goodwill earlier this month, looking for that elusive bathroom mirror. Isn’t this little biscuit tin cute? I don’t know if it’s meant to hold the Tea or Dog variety, but I loved the gigantic cork topper.
Did you know that you can spray paint yellow trays with roosters on them and then put them in your living room? You can. And the world thanks you for it.
This little milk glass bottle was $1.00
And finally, I have a thing for little pedestals. For example this one that I bought at Goodwill several years ago and painted, pictured in our old kitchen:
This pedestal bowl is wooden and I spray painted it white (shocking!). It sits in my living room next to pictures of an adorable baby. I imagine it will look beautiful full of ornaments at Christmastime.
But technically it’s not a Christmas decoration. Because I’m done with that. Really.
Furniture Rehab: Kitchen Table
Posted on: February 16, 2011
One of the things I love most about this house is the huge kitchen that just begs for big family and friend gatherings. When we moved I just plopped our old table and chairs in the eat-in kitchen and hoped that someday I’d be able to get a bigger table to better suit the space. Here’s a shot of shortly after we moved in:
I really wanted a round table, specifically one that seats six while still a circle – not four as a circle and six if you add a leaf and make it an oval. We plan on having at least four children (I say that now, when we only have two) and my little mental picture includes all of us sitting around a round table at dinner and talking. Or if our current pattern holds true, “talking” will consist of all of us sitting around a round table and Travis and I taking turns telling four faces to JUST PUT THE BITE IN YOUR MOUTH ALREADY.
Anyway.
I looked all over online and any round table that was big enough to accommodate six chairs was waaay out of my price range and then chairs would be an additional expense. I planned to save my pennies for a couple of years before I could afford a new set.
Enter my best friend, Craigslist.
I responded to countless ads looking for a table the right size and even posted a wanted ad. Nothing. Then one week before Edison was due I came across an ad for a round table that was just big enough for our room, for only $60. My fingers went flyin’ to my email. So on the Tuesday before Edison was due on Thursday, my long-suffering husband trucked me and our toddler out to the edge of town and loaded up a solid wood table into the back of our van. It juuuuuust fit. And at 99.9995% pregnant, I was no help. He loves me. (Side note: the lady wouldn’t budge on her $60 pricetag, even for a hugely pregnant chick. Bummer, that belly on my short frame was usually good for at least 10$ off.)
So we brought her home, stuck her in the kitchen, and then I had a baby. Well not that same night, she’s no Magic Labor Inducing Table (can you imagine the postage I’d spend sending this thing around the country to labor-desperate friends everywhere if she was?), but a few days later. There she sat covered with a tablecloth for about two months until I felt the project itch again.
Here she is, before I got my hands on her:
The table top was pretty scratched-up medium tone wood and the bottom had been previously painted cream. It looks pretty good in that photo but up close it was really dinged and dirty.
It’s a drop-leaf table; check out those fold-out support wings. Eeesh. Fly baby, fly.
The first thing we did was cut those suckers off. Travis then cut and attached new streamlined support pieces that disappear under the tabletop. Then we toted it out to the garage (Our neighbors must think we’re crazy. Every couple of weeks we’re out in the front yard manhandling various pieces of furniture into or out of our house. In the dead of winter. I think there’s a good possibility we’re this neighborhood’s Janice and Ernie.).
Since my plan for our kitchen is to eventually decorate in black, white, and green, decided to go ahead and paint the table to match the plan in my head. I applied one coat of adhesive primer and then killed off a large portion of my family’s brain cells spray painted the top in black semi-gloss, to match the kitchen hutch. Did you know that if you spray paint something large and then leave your garage door open just a pinch the smell will spread through your whole house? Awesome. If the contact with the paint fumes has hurt James’ grasp of the English language we certainly haven’t noticed. Anywhoo. I brush painted the bottom with two coats of white semi-gloss. The top received four coats of polyurithane and so far it’s cleaned up and held up beautifully.
After:.
The new “wings”….much better!
Once the table was finished I began the hunt for chairs. Again, I didn’t want to spend a lot per chair since I’d need to buy six. I came across these darling schoolhouse chairs on Amazon and a quick Google search found them for only $43 a piece! Sold. It was a website I’d not heard of before but for that price I was willing to risk it. They arrived less than a week later, with free shipping no less.
And then they arrived and I gave myself carpal tunnel putting those silly things together with a million tiny screws and one of those teeny hexagon screwdrivers. Quarter-turn, quarter-turn, quarter-turn.
One final comparison Before and After:
A custom table and six chairs for just $300!
Me and Mr.Craig
Posted on: January 18, 2011
We’ve got a thing goin’ on.
So, I’ve been Craigslist-ing again. I’ve been on a six-month search for a comfy chair for our front room. You know, that room every house has so that it doesn’t look lopsided from the front, but no one actually uses? I guess it’s intended as a formal sitting room but as we so rarely entertain the Pope, I’ve decided to claim it as my own Quiet Space. Subtext: “The rest of you can go sit in the family room to behave like baboons. Out.” I call it the Reading Room because I harbor buried hopes that someday I will once again have time to read something beside the dosing instructions for Children’s Tylenol, the episode descriptions for fifteen segments of Sid the Science Kid while searching for the one specifically requested by my toddler, and my recipe for Macaroni Salad.
Anyway. Back to my Quest for a Reading Room Chair. When we moved in I put this too-small, not-comfy accent chair in my reading corner as a placeholder. (You can see how I rehabbed that desk chair here.)
I shopped furniture stores andy noted that no way was I paying $279 for an “accent” chair sporting a loud, geometric print and which most of the time, came with no arms. Nor was I willing to purchase something in the gingham/plaid recliner realm and attempt to recover it; a seamstress I am not. And WHAT is with the current trend of purchasing (and apparently quickly evicting, per the number of craigslist ads) hugely overstuffed Michelin Man chairs which eat your whole room and in which one could permanently misplace their smaller-than-average toddler during an unfortunate bout of timeout?
So the search continued. And finally, one week after Edison was born I happened upon a possibility. Neutral color, classic shape, durable fabric…..and a pricetag of only $50. Two emails and one day later I left the babies home with their Dad and went to inspect and hopefully cart home my prize.
Ta da!
AND it’s actually a recliner in disguise!
I.big.fat.puffy.heart.Craigslist.
P.S. The small side table and lamp came from The Christmas Tree Shop, purchased on Christmas Eve, of all times. I’d been looking for both items for cheap for this room and happened upon them while getting some last minute stocking stuffers. The table fit my list of desired qualities including a) a round table, b) that was black, c) didn’t take up a lot of floor space, and d) didn’t cost more than $20. The fact that it was the last one didn’t stop me from taking it right down off of the shelf, sticking it in my cart, and toting it up front to ask if I could buy the display model.
The lamp was on clearance for $7 and I loved the idea of adding a little sparkle to the room. Isn’t she adorable?
I cannot wait to show you the finished room, the picture in my head is awesome!
Look at me, embracing the blue.
Posted on: January 11, 2011
So we find ourselves in that awkard period between the holidays and Spring when the Christmas decor is down and put away but it’s way too early (and optimistic) to be bringing out warm-weather decor. (Insert longing sigh when I moved my Spring wreath to the side to put away the Christmas boxes).
So in an effort to pretty up my newly-nekkid kitchen hutch, I continued my quest to Embrace the Blue. (No idea what I’m talking about? See this post .) Thankfully I have some wintery snowflake decor to use that isn’t also Christmasy. Check it out (you can click on the pictures for a better look):
I had two blue, white and silver placemats (gifts from my mother-in-law on our first married Christmas) which fit perfectly under my favorite white serving bowls. (Note to self: find something to put in the white bowls). The matching cloth napkins were crumpled up and stuffed into the domed glass containers on the shelves. The small glass jars were filled with white and silver tea lights and the big cookie jar contains pine cones. The pine cones I’ve had for years, gathered up from the forest floor at a Wisconsin resort.
The display cabinet holds a few blue snowman dessert plates and mugs, gifted to me by my Mom several Christmases ago.
This little display sits on my island:
An Evergreen scented candle and two sets of snowmen and snowflake napkin holders, arranged on a wooden pedestal I bought at Goodwill last summer and spray painted white. That little pedestal was such a great find at just $1.00 since it was missing the glass dome.
Grand total for this kitchen decor makeover? $0! Gotta love that.
Room Reveal: Master Bath
Posted on: January 8, 2011
Alternate Title: Potty Talk
I live in this house with a husband, a toddler boy, and an infant; there are soooo many ways I could go with that alternate title. But I don’t think in my first week on the new blog I need to develop a reputation as the girl who talks in depth about baby poop. Or (thus far unsuccessful) potty training. Or my husband’s penchant for reading trivia books in the bathroom and using toilet paper squares as his bookmarks. But I digress.
For now we’ll go with the master bathroom remodel instead, mkay? Fair warning: there are twenty-eight pictures in this post. Yes, twenty-eight. Just consider it one per day that our house was a construction zone. (Hint: you can click on any picture to see a bigger version.)
When we bought our house we planned for a master bedroom and bathroom remodel within the first few months after the move. The master rooms were the only part of the house we didn’t love for long-term living and we knew that with a baby coming, if we didn’t start the project right away then it wouldn’t happen. So four months after we moved in we hired a contractor on recommendation and moved ourselves into the spare bedroom. (Which, incidentally, is setup with twin beds. Yup, we were Ricky-and-Lucy-ing it for an entire month. Turns out when you’re eight months pregnant and getting out of bed every hour to pee sets off seismic activity, seperate beds isn’t that bad of an idea.)
Our contractor had originally estimated the project length at two weeks which we knew was waaay optimistic. Especially as he is basically a one-man operation with only one assistant whose job it was to haul stuff up and down the stairs. But his bid on the project was also only half that of all the others because he does everything himself instead of sub-contracting it all out, so we mentally planned for three weeks, and went with it. Many, many hours of comparison shopping and planning, one extremely expensive afternoon at Lowe’s, and one delivery truck later, we were ready. Behold, a bathroom in boxes:
You’ll remember that before the renovation our bedroom and bathroom looked like this:
There were small his and hers closets on the left and right, forming a small hallway into the attached bath :
I have plenty of before pictures from the bathroom as well, but we’ll save those for comparison shots with the afters. I love me some good before and after shots.
Our big plan was to remove the two small closets and allocate half the space to the new bathroom layout and half to the bedroom. The tiny fifth bedroom next door (yes, there were five bedrooms on our second floor, hate me) would then become the master walk-in closet via a new doorway. It wasn’t a legal bedroom anyway, as it had no closet of its own. Follow me?
Day One of the renovation was SUPER EXCITING. Tons of pounding and sawing and lots of the old and ugly being carted out to the dumpster. At the end of the second day it looked like this:
And by the end of Day 2 we were well on our way to new walls:
Day 5 gave us those new walls!
And then it got really boring and I stopped taking pictures. Lots of wiring and plumbing and duct work and such. So let’s skip ahead three more weeks (yes, it took a full four weeks before he finished, and then only because the Hugely Pregnant Woman threatened that if he didn’t finish up soon he would be driving her to the hospital in his truck when she went into labor), and see some befores and afters!
Before: single sink, standard builder’s grade wall mirror and faucet fixture, and no over head lights.
After, double bowl vanity with new brushed nickel faucets, individual portrait mirrors, dark mahogany stained vanity, and overhead lighting.
The new custom counter is a granite remnant. We tried and tried and TRIED to find an off-the-shelf five-foot stone counter for the vanity in the subtle mix of browns and blacks. Turns out you can only buy that particular pattern for single bowl vanities, not double. So off to the granite remnant show room we went and within ten minutes had picked out this beauty. As an added bonus we were able to have it cut to the full seven-foot length of the new room, which gave us the built-in look and a cubbyhole for a hamper (Bed, Bath & Beyond).
Before: no step into the garden tub, white tile, and chrome builder’s faucet with “crystal” nobs.
After: a customized step leading up to the jacuzzi tub with brushed nickel fixtures.
The subway tiles were cut by our contractor. We looked FOREVER for tile that we a) liked, b) wasn’t too red or too yellow, and c) came in both 12×12 and 6×6 options for the floor pattern. And of course when we found it, it didn’t come with a subway tile option. I really wanted a subway tile around the tub so our contractor used his wet saw and cut 12×12 pieces down to subway tile size. Which is why he is awesome.
Before: Single stall shower with no lighting and chrome single towel rack (which means one of us always had a damp towel draped over something else – gross).
After: double-head shower with new lighting. Shower curtain came from Wal-Mart, double-rod towel rack, hand grip, and shower rod came from Menards.
Before: One window, faux tile laminate floor.
After: Two windows, tile floor laid in pattern I saw in a Menards display. I took a picture with my phone and handed a printout to our contractor. 🙂 The rugs came from Wal-Mart and incorporate our light shade of blue, a darker blue, and the chocolate brown of the dark woodwork and granite.
What you can’t see is that we replaced the regular door which swung inward with a six panel pocket door, to maximize the open space.
So that’s it for the big changes! Now let’s talk about some of the details. The paint color took two attempts. I wanted something a very, very pale blue. Like almost a neutral with just a hint of blue so that the fixtures and tile were the showcase, not the walls. The first color I chose looked really pale on the strip….and like a smurf on the wall. Gah. So back to Sherwin Williams I went with a paint chip that looked practially white on the strip, and was the perfect shade of barely-there robin’s egg blue on the walls.
The corner shelves came from Menards. They balance the heaviness of the mirrors on the left side of the vanity.
The portrait mirrors came from Menards in the home decor section:
A closeup shot of the brown/black granite and faucets:
The tile detail on the tub:
We almost didn’t have him put in the glass tile accent, but I’m so glad we did. It highlights the shape of the corner tub and new step, and pulls all the colors from the granite counter into the other side of the room. And since we bought it in 12×12 sections and had him cut it down, it wasn’t an expensive addition.
The final piece (so far) were the window treatments. I wanted something solid in color because we already have a lot going on with pattern in the room, and I didn’t want them to be white. The window wall needed some visual “weight” to balance the rest of the room. I happened upon these roman shades at The Christmas Tree Shop (LOVE that store) and they were an exact match to the darkest blue in the rug, with just a hint of z damask pattern. Score!
All that remains is to find something for the walls above the potty and tub. I’m finding it difficult to find large-scale artwork appropriate for a bathroom. I’m not a fan of the generic botanicals or geometric prints you can find in any home store, I want my wall decor to have some kind of meaning, and any classic art with people in it is out… I think I’d feel like I was being watched while in the potty. 🙂
The other half of the renovation was the bedroom/closet. But you’ll have to wait for those pictures, as those rooms have been basically untouched since the construction was completed. At some point I’ll get to the projects and save for the purchases necessary to make them reveal-worthy. Until then, this will have to do!
I suddenly have the urge to go sit in the hot tub. Just like we have almost every night since it was installed. 😉
A Painted House 