Kids' Bathroom Renovation

Renovating the Kids' Bathroom

Renovating the kids' bathroom was a time consuming process.  When we first moved in, the walls were white, the trim was orange, and there was no charm or personality in the bedrooms or bathrooms.  The kids' bath was the first room I painted, and I decorated it in an "under the sea" theme.  I painted the walls and ceiling an aqua blue, painted fish throughout -- copying many of the sea creatures from Disney's The Little Mermaid, and then accented with stuffed animals.  We had an octopus, a seahorse, floating jellyfish (you can sort of see that hanging from the ceiling), and two "stuffed animal" scuba divers that I picked up on a trip to SeaWorld.  I even painted the bottom of a boat inside the shower area, and mounted a fishing line from the ceiling which dropped down and connected to a stuffed animal fish.  So cute!

As darling as the sea theme was, the children have since grown up.  The bathroom was in desperate need of updating, and we were now ready for a more sophisticated teen/tween his and her bathroom.  

My daughter picked out the Kate Spade shower curtain from Bed Bath & Beyond, and I got creative from there.  I painted the ceiling white.  Then I sanded, stained and sealed the orange cabinets, turning them into a beautiful mahogany.  I then sanded and painted the baseboard trim and the trim around the window frame white.  Then I painted the walls an ivory color.  

And then it got fun!

First, I painted the stripes around the middle of the room.  I fiddled with designs on paper until I got the right proportions and the right color pattern.

   

Then I painted the picture frames in my three main colors.  Painting the frames turned out to be a bit of a taping challenge.  But after having taped up the entire downstairs bathroom, I feared nothing!  I used tape to exactly represent the size and shape of the frame I wanted.  After measuring for level-ness and plumb lines, and measuring out to make sure the corresponding picture frame was identical in size and shape, I then placed a piece of tape adjacent to each piece of tape of the original taped frame. So at first, it rather looked like a blue taped frame, with a second blue taped frame taped up around the outside of the original frame.  Then, without removing the tape, I taped along the inside of the original frame. So now I had an inside frame, the original frame, and the outside frame all in blue tape.  Then I pulled off the middle pieces of tape (the original frame), and I was left with a cream colored frame from which I could begin my masterpiece.  

In order to get my crisp, clean lines, I painted along the outer edges of the blue tape and the inner edges of the blue tape with my cream colored paint.  This way I was sealing in the cream color, so that my navy (or pink or orange) frame would not bleed out onto the cream colored wall beneath the tape.  Then I painted two or three coats of my desired color frame, allowed to dry, and removed the tape.  Voilà!  A perfect picture frame!  Well, mostly perfect.  Sometimes even my best intentions didn't quite work out, and I had to go back and do a few touch ups.  But I'm a perfectionist.  :)

Next, it was time to paint in the words.  I decided to choose a variety of inspirational quotes to encourage my kiddos, and inspire them to become great people.  I figured that if they forgot their novels, they could read the walls while sitting on the potty or when brushing their teeth.

I chose quotes from their favorite books, favorite television shows, and from other quotes I've found inspiring.  From Doctor Who, I chose "Allons-y."  From Harry Potter, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."  Zsa Zsa Gabor even made the cut with, "Don't be like the rest of them, darling."

I found a great technique suggestion from Pinterest on  how to get the words up on the wall while having different fonts for each quote.  

First, I printed up the quote exactly in the size and shape and font that I wanted up on the wall.  Then I took chalk, flipped the paper over, and rubbed the chalk across the words on the side of the paper that was going to be next to the wall.  Then I carefully taped the paper, chalk side to the wall.  Then, using a ball point pen that was out of ink, I carefully traced each and every letter from the quote onto the wall.  This part took forever and a day.  And it made my arms tired.  Poor me.  Don't fret.  I stopped often and ate chocolate to recuperate.  I followed Lupin's advice to, "eat this, you'll feel better."  And I did! :)  Then I carefully removed the paper, and the letters in their perfect fonts were chalked directly onto my wall!!

Then with the utmost care, I painted over each letter.  I am rather precise and a perfectionist, so this stage also took a very long time.  I then let the whole thing dry.  When I was absolutely sure it was dry, I carefully brushed off the chalk.  Sometimes I used an *ever so very lightly* damp paper towel to remove the chalk.  Then I painted over the letters for a second coat.  And after all that, I was absolutely thrilled!

I had thoughts and wishes and dreams of perhaps changing out the quotes every year or so until they graduate from college, spicing things up.  But since it took so darned long to get the desired results, I decided, wisely I think, just to leave well enough alone.

I found the hot pink and orange apothecary bottles on the bathroom windowsill at Michael's on super sale for less than a dollar a piece.  I bought the loofahs and the hot pink and orange towels at Target.  The light fixture I bought at Lowe's.  The mirror I picked up for cheap at TJ Maxx.  

The last little bit of change had to do with the door.  At first I stripped, sanded, and painted the door white to match the rest of the trim.  But I felt profoundly disappointed.  The door looked like a cheap, plastic door.  Ugh.  So I took it off its hinges, stripped it, sanded it, stained it, and then sealed it with varnish.  The results were much better, and I was happy.  Bummed about how much extra time it took me, but pleased with the results.

Here are the two pictures of the door so you can compare.

I am so much happier with the stained door!  So happy, in fact, that I refinished all the doors upstairs to match.

My hubby changed all the electrical outlet innards to white ones, and we added new brushed nickel accessories around the room (and a brushed nickel doorknob which didn't make it into the picture).  I took down the old shower curtain rod and added in a curved one, and bought new curtain holders to go with it.  I found a liner that felt good without feeling like plastic, to line the inside of the cloth shower curtain.  Then I changed the faucet to a pretty brushed nickel faucet.  We'll be getting new granite countertops with an under mounted sink and back splashes at some point in the future, but for now, I'm just thrilled with the results. :)

Seeing someone in an unexpected place

Why is it that we get so excited when we see someone we know in an unexpected place?  Today as my hubby and I were driving to yet another home improvement store, we saw the folks in the car in front of us honk and wave to some other folks who happened to be standing at a corner waiting for the traffic light to change.  Once the waves were noticed, there was much hooplah, gleeful shouts, grand waving gestures, and everyone immediately broke into smiles.  

What inspires such a grand reaction?

I've found myself in similar situations before, running into neighbors or people from church, or former teachers in a variety of settings completely unrelated to the place from where I know the person.  Sometimes it takes a moment to place the familiar face in the unfamiliar location.  Other times, it's quite easy.  But it seems to me, as I recall, that in almost all of the circumstances, my heart leapt.  Leapt!  I felt a thrill, a rush of excitement to spy someone I recognized in an unfamiliar environment.

Do we live such dull and dreary lives, filled with such rote and boring daily routines that seeing one's neighbor at the grocery store should invoke a smile to break out upon one's face, and one's heart to pound in one's chest?  Such a thrill, one would think, should be limited to finding long-lost relatives, or seeing a favorite auntie for the first time in several months.  

I'm not sure upon what the psychological implications of such a grand reaction are based.  Maybe it's a gift for those of us who need a little pick me up.  Maybe it's a nice way to realize just how much we like those people we run into.  But I do know that I enjoy such encounters.   And I hope that the rush and thrill of seeing a familiar face continues to bring me such joy.  

I'm sure at some point or another, I'll have another such encounter at one of the hundreds of home improvement stores about town.  At the rate I've been visiting them all, I'm sure that soon enough the store employees will become some of those familiar faces.  Maybe, at some point in the near future, they'll recognize me too.  And, like on the sitcom, "Cheers," they'll all stop when I enter, smiles will fill their faces, and they'll all yell out, "Kaaaaaaaay!"

* * * * *

Master Bathroom Renovations

Enough ramblings for this week!  Let's show you some nice before and after pictures!!

Here is my master bathroom renovation.

When we first moved in, I think we quickly realized that the owner of this house before us liked to live in a cave.  The master bedroom was a dark, dark, DARK, green.  Almost black.  With a flat finish.  Periodically we'd find sections of the walls where the previous color shown through.  Back then, before the dark green, he'd painted the master bedroom a navy blue with a high gloss finish.  Evidently, he used this same navy blue with the high gloss finish in the bathroom as well.

Our master bath is teeny tiny, all things considered, for a master bath.  One of the first things I did when we moved in was paint this bathroom white.  But that was just a 'hold over' until I could figure out what I wanted to do with it.

So the master bath renovations started with Pinterest.  Well, actually, it started when we talked to a Real Estate Agent to ask about selling our house so we could move to a house that already had features I wanted (like crown molding and chair rails, and wainscoting), so that we wouldn't have to add them to this house.  After a quick run through of our house, the Real Estate Agent said we couldn't sell our house until we redid the kitchen counters, the bathrooms all needed to be updated, and we needed a neutral color in our living room.  At that point I realized that if I redid the bathrooms, the kitchen, and painted all the trim white, I'd actually like my house.  So began the renovations.

I started with the living room.  I chose a neutral peanut butter color for the living room.  Took me about seven different samples to find just the right color, and then I just ended up mixing up the tiny paint bottles and creating my own color.  The peanut butter color looked great in the fall, with my red silk flowers for decorations, and my red vases and table clothes and such.  But by the time Christmas rolled around, I was no longer enamored.  I began searching Pinterest, and found that gray had become the new neutral.  Or had returned to being the new neutral.  Or whatever.  Anyway you look at it, I fell in love.  And I fell in love with the idea of gray walls with white trim and dark mahogany doors.

I was afraid of sanding and painting the trim.  I don't know how to take it off, and I definitely don't know how to put it back on.  I wanted the white trim in my living room, but I was afraid to try something so drastic downstairs without trying it out in a smaller room.

So I started with my master bathroom.  It's a small room, and, I thought, fairly easy to transform.

I started with the cabinets.  I sanded them down to the bitter ends of their lives, stained them, and varnished them.  I then had hubby drill holes (wow!) into the cabinets and install brushed nickel knobs and drawer pulls.  We had none before.  The whole thing took forever.  And I learned a lot of important lessons.    Like, for example, when you're waiting for varnish to dry, don't let your cats roam about in the bathroom, or they'll, oh, say, jump up onto the counter and leave kitty foot prints.  You know, basic logic.

So then I sanded and painted all the trim white.  I kept all the pieces in place, and didn't remove them.  I spent way too much time on my patukus on the floor, and realized quickly that I should eventually learn how to take off the trim and put it back on.  But I still don't know how to do that, and I ended up sanding and painting the trim in all 3 bathrooms with the trim in place.

I also learned an interesting lesson after painting the trim.  I caulked the edges of the trim with a clear seal.  I thought sealing them would be great.  But it turns out that clear caulk does keep the water out, and keeps things from falling in the crack.  Yay! However, other than that, it really just shows the gap between the wall and the base board.  I switched to white caulk (after refinishing the kids bathroom and seeing the AMAZING difference), and wowza!!!  MUCH better.  Gap closed, water staying out, hair and dust staying out, and then it looks like the white trim is actually perfectly lined up to the wall, without any gaps showing.  WOW.  Much better choice.

I also heard from somewhere that you could spray paint polished chrome and make it look like a brushed nickel finish.  So I bought some spray paint, taped the entire inside and outside my shower and everywhere else with newspaper and spray painted the polished chrome trim on my shower door.  It *almost* worked!  That is to say, it worked well enough.  And it looks heaps better than the polished chrome.  But I have not perfected my spray painting technique, and there are a few places the spray painting ran a bit, and I'm not thrilled. I would have been better off painting the whole thing with a brush.  I'm an excellent brush painter.  I spray painted the toilet flusher knob as well, but the results felt gritty.  So I bought a new flusher knob for $10 or so, and again was much happier with the results.

I then painted the ceiling, including up into the sky light.  Then I patched up the holes in the wall from where the towel rack fell down. Then I took off the wall mirror.  It had been superglued into place.  Oh the joys the previous owner left me with.   That left some marks.  So I ended up having to sand the wall a bit.  Strange thing to be doing, but it helped reduce (even though not completely eliminate) the marks left behind from where the mirror had been glued to the wall.

Then I took down the old light fixture above the mirror and the light fixture in the center of the room.  (I had no idea there even WAS a light fixture in the center of the room.  The lightbulb had been burnt out from the very beginning and I completely forgot it was there until I started painting the ceiling!  How unobservant am I?) I even painted the vent.  It just popped down, I mucked all the dust bunnies out of it, and painted it in place.  Then when it dried, I popped it back up into place.  Looks so much cleaner and nicer, and matches the ceiling perfectly!

Then I did some plumbing and replaced the faucet with a nice brushed nickel one.

Then I had hubby come in and remove all the electrical outlets and replace those.  Then I painted the walls.  Then we added in new brushed nickel electrical socket face plates.  Nice touch.

We bought the light above the mirror at Lowes.  The mirror I bought with the other two mirrors (kids' bathroom and the powder room) at TJ Maxx.  The brushed nickel face plates we picked up at Home Depot.  I think the oil rubbed bronze ones we got for the powder room were from Lowes.

A few weeks later I braved my fears and sanded, stained, and sealed the pocket door (IN PLACE!).  I used a slightly different product than I used on the cupboards, with an all-in-one stain and sealant.  I would recommend this product only for *experienced painters who excel at brushing and are fast* and for projects where time is of the essence.  I tried using the same product on the bedroom door, and was not pleased with the results.  I ended up re-sanding the bedroom door and starting over the old fashioned way, and was much happier.  BUT, for the pocket door, the product worked GREAT, and allowed me to do both sides of the door at the same time, since I kept the door hanging in place.

The pocket door is peeking out.  I also replaced the handle to a brushed nickel one instead of the gold/brass colored one.  Easy peasy.

So even though the transformation doesn't seem quite as dramatic as the downstairs powder room transformation, I did a lot of work in making this bathroom look this way.  It's not great, but it's a whole lot better than it was.  I'm much happier with the other two bathrooms.  When we get new granite countertops and an undermounted sink, I'm sure I'll like it even more.

Maybe I'll get around to doing something else to our bathroom to perk things up.  But for now, it's in a good place, and that's what counts.

* * * * *

Renovations -- the not so much fun part

I'm stuck in the land of in between.  And I'm just not having fun.

Years ago, when we first bought our house, we bought the biggest house we could afford, and barely eked by.  We knew over the next several years our incomes would increase and we'd grow into the house.  And that, for the most part, came true.  We love our neighbors.  We love our location.  I just never truly fell in love with our house.

Most of my issues with my house came from the orange colored wood.  Orange trim.  Orange cabinets.  Orange, orange, orange everywhere.  My least favorite color, and I found myself surrounded in it.

But, as we'd found ourselves rather house-poor, when we did have a few spare extra dollars for home improvements, the money ended up being spent on such things as a new roof.  A new fence.  Sprinkler system.  Water heater.  Furnace.  Not, exactly, what I'd call the *wow* factor.

It wasn't until last year that I got up the gumption to take some house improvement funds and I started renovating the upstairs.  I sanded and painted all the trim white.  I painted the halls a pancake color to mellow out the orange trim that still exists downstairs.  Each of the kids' rooms has been fully redone, and both turned out beautifully.  Last year I completed the two upstairs bathrooms, the hall, and then our master bedroom.  So, other than needing new carpets (and some day new windows, sigh), the upstairs is complete.

I planned to begin the downstairs renovations this summer.  If we could afford it.  Having a couple of kiddos strains the olde pocketbook.  And we were hoping to start saving up for a few trips next spring and summer.  There is, after all, only so much money we can stockpile away.

So when the dishwasher leaked and led to the whole fiasco that is sucking the very life out of me in dealing with insurance agents, and claims, and battling it out with who's going to pay for what, and discovering crawl space issues, and needing new floors, and now new cabinets and new counters, I'm overwhelmed.

I thought remodeling would be a fun adventure.  I thought it would be like planning a wedding.  I'd have my remodeling "bridesmaids" to go with me to ooh and aah over floor samples.  They'd help me pick out carpet colors.  They'd accompany me and help me select the best tile and trim pieces.  They'd tell me how wonderful I'd look in my cherry cabinet covered kitchen.  I was the remodeling *BRIDE!*  I was going to be oohed and aahed over, and I was going to enjoy every moment of my planning, knowing just how very much money is being spent on this whole renovation project, and how fabulous the *BIG DAY* was going to be when all the renovations were complete.

I was not, however, expecting the experience to be like the one where my husband-to-be at the time went shopping with me for my wedding dress.  Back then, I thought that would be a great idea.  I wanted him to see the dress before hand, because I wanted to make sure he thought I looked great in it.  I didn't want to ruin our *BIG DAY* when I discovered he thought I looked hideous in a dress he hated.

So when I took him granite slab shopping last week, I thought we'd find some great patterns, and have trouble narrowing things down, and we'd agonize over our decisions, making sure that our $6000 countertops would, in fact, look spectacular against our Brazilian 5 inch plank hand scraped solid hardwood floors and our cherry cabinets with a mahogany finish.  Instead, it felt a bit more like his response to the wedding dress shopping.  That's when I heard him mutter under his breath such things like, "White dress, white dress, white dress, white dress with long sleeves, white dress."

Sigh.

I have stacks of hardwood floor samples piled on my dining room table.  I have nine inches of cabinet magazines on my kitchen counter.  I have carpet samples strewn about the living room floor.  And I'm no closer to any decisions than when I started.

And although Pinterest has assisted me in finding out the style of ideas that I'd like to accomplish, all I can see before me is that enormously long laundry list of things that I have to accomplish before the remodel can begin.  Repainting the ceilings in every room and hallway downstairs; sanding, staining and sealing the three pocket doors;  removing the two inner doors, sanding, staining and sealing them;  popping off all the orange wood trim to sand and paint before being reattached by the contractor;  moving all my office furniture into the garage;  moving all my furniture in my living room to the office;  painting my living room;  moving all the furniture from my office into the living room to paint the office; refinishing the cupboards in the laundry room;  and resealing the laundry room utility sink so that it can be, once again, white after that whole 'attempting to dye something fiasco.'  The list goes on and on and on.

I'm not even sure that's my entire to-do list, but it's a start.  And I have about 4 weeks to get it all done.  I'm simply overwhelmed.  

This just isn't as fun as I thought it would be.

So I guess, perhaps, I'll pretend I don't have to do any of that, stay in my jammies all day, make a batch of cookies, eat them all, and write blog entries.  Sounds like a good plan to me! :)

* * * * *

DST: an app for even the most reluctant riser

We lost an hour of sleep over the weekend due to Daylight Savings Time.  The time change doesn't really affect me too much.  I am a bit more sleepy today than I have been.  But it will pass in a day or two.

My kids, on the other hand, are dramatically affected by the time change.  When they were little, it took me two weeks to get them adjusted to the time change.   Kids waking up early, or falling asleep in the middle of dinner.  Or kids falling asleep too late and not wanting to wake up at all.

 I loathed the time change each and every fall and spring.

A few days ago I heard an advertisement on the radio for a new app that you can purchase.  It comes with a plug-in.  Essentially, from what I understand, the "alarm" goes off at the time you set and it triggers the plug-in to release the smell of bacon.  The "alarm" sounds exactly like bacon cooking.  Wake up to the sounds and smells of sizzling bacon!

Thanks to abc news for the photo

You can download the free app here from iTunes:

Oscar Mayer Bacon Alarm

And you can enter the free contest to win the plug-in, still in its beta-testing stages here:

Contest to win the beta-testing plug-in

As I shared my discovery with my daughter, the vegetarian, she nearly gagged.  Bacon is not her favorite smell, as you can well imagine.  She did, however, come up with an ingenious plan for a new app.

This app *also* comes with an attachment.  

In my daughter's app, she thinks the alarm should go off in the morning as a warning.  You have one shot of getting up and placing your feet on the floor.  If you don't get up in time to turn off the alarm, then the second time the alarm goes off, the little attachment opens.

You see, the little attachment in my daughter's app, is a small cage.  A cage filled with, wait for it, *SPIDERS.*  With each ten second interval that you do not get up and turn off the alarm, the cage opens and releases another spider.

In my head, the spiders are the size of Aragog and his children.  Eeeep!  But even if the caged spiders were "normal" sized, her idea certainly would get me out of bed in a timely manner!  

I'm quite certain the planning and programming of the app shouldn't be too complicated  Just think!  We'll be rich!  

If only we had a way to cage up those spiders...

* * * * *

Using my smart phone as a *gasp* telephone

Over the last two weeks I have been scrambling around trying to arrange for contractors to make bids on my home renovations and repairs, coordinating repair people to arrive with claims adjustors, making appointments to meet with flooring guys and repair guys and fix it upper guys and so on and so on and so forth.  I have been to six million different floor shops selecting every sample imaginable.  I've been to a hundred and fifty thousand granite countertop places, picking out giant slabs of rock.  I have browsed through seventeen magazine quality brochures on kitchen cabinets, with pictures of kitchens three times larger than any kitchen in a seventeen mile radius of my house, magazines that mock my puny kitchen's inadequacies.  I have searched high and low on Pinterest for ideas for backsplashes for my puny inadequate kitchen and my three bathrooms.  I have paint swatches and tile finishes and tape measurements and a million different business cards from a million different people who all want my business, who all want to give me advice, and who all contradict one another.  

All I really wanted was to repair the water damage under my dishwasher.  I wasn't looking for a massive home remodel and house renovation.  Truly.  I wasn't.  In my dreams, house remodel planning and home renovation planning is a joyful and pleasant experience.  Like planning a wedding.  Using the photos from the magazines, you plan out your dream wedding which, using their figures, will end up costing more than my current house does.  And then you start paring things down and compromising your dreams until you've developed a fairly decent plan that you can almost afford, and you spend the next six months convincing yourself it really *is* the wedding of your dreams.

But my house remodel / house renovation planning hasn't been anything like that.  It has not been dreamy.  It hasn't been joyful.  It hasn't been slow and calculated, allowing me the time to savor the possibilities, and pour over the choices until the best of the options makes itself clear.  Instead, it's been a series of panicked phone calls and urgent messages, and bids that have been rushed so that the water can stop destroying my floor and causing more damage.  

I am hoping beyond hope that when the last of the bids arrives, I will have selected my new flooring, to coordinate with my freshly painted walls and my current furniture.  I will have chosen the best countertops and a lovely coordinating backsplash with a creative and catchy design that is fairly easy to slap up there on the wall.  I will have stunning new kitchen cabinets, and new floors, and all the lovely things we wanted to have done with heaps and gobs and hoards of money leftover from our house refi.  Bwaa haa haa haa!

And it actually occurred to me yesterday as my ears grew sore as the day grew long, and the quotes started coming in that I had spent so much time on my smart phone using it as a *gasp!* telephone, that I hadn't had time to check my emails, or surf the web, or take pictures, or update my calendar, or pin a new design.  And  I won't even mention my neglect to my Words with Friends friends, or my Candy Crush pals.

For the first time in three years since I've had a smart phone, I actually used my phone as a TELEPHONE, and not as a portable computer.

This realization seemed like such an odd and strange concept to me.  I rarely, if ever, make phone calls.  I share the smallest plan of minutes between all my family members, and every month we have so many minutes leftover that we roll them over to the next month.  We've been rolling them over for so long that now we end up "losing" our unused minutes from the year before because there are just so many of them lolling about in cyberspace, and they "expire" at the end of a year.  My telephone icon on my iPhone screen isn't even at the bottom of my "frequently used apps."  That's how rarely I use my phone as a phone.  And if I do call someone, I usually only call people when I'm driving.  And then, my car syncs everything up with its bluetooth, and so I use the steering wheel on my car and the car's touch screen system to make my phone calls, and I don't really ever use the touch screen app on my iPhone.  

And if I don't use my phone as a phone, why do I call it my "phone?"  Why not call it my "life organizer," or my "handheld computer?" or my "please dear God don't ever let me lose this thing, and if I do, *please* let me have left it fully charged and with the ringer turned on so that I can find it again."  

I grew up in the days where the kitchen telephone had a cord so long you could wrap it around your body three times and still have plenty of cord left over to walk into the tv room and slouch on the couch.  Or you could take the phone from upstairs and stretch the cord out through the hallway and into your bedroom, just so you could have a wee bit of privacy and gossip with your friends about who liked whom.  We'd spend hours upon hours on the phone living the real life version of a Jerry Seinfeld episode, talking about nothing to the people who we loved the most.  It never once occurred to me, when I was a child, that a telephone could also act as my camera, my calendar, my yellow pages, my library, my dictionary, my gaming entertainment, or act as a book, a radio or a portable movie theater!!

Today, after the thirty sixth phone call in three hours (36 phone calls!!), I finally sat down and had to email a few photos from my iPhone to my contractor's supply house to help the design process of the new kitchen cupboards.  Then I used my phone's calendar to schedule out a doctor's appointment for one of my kiddos.  Maybe this afternoon I'll have a chance to check my email or catch up on a Words with Friends game, hoping *this time* to beat my über smart sister-in-law.  (Ha, fat chance.)  But for today, the telephone portion of my smart phone won out once again.

Gee, maybe this month I'll actually come close to using half of my allotted monthly minutes!!

* * * * *

Powder Room Renovations

Powder Room Renovation

Over the last little while I've been slowly renovating our house.  I've never liked the orange colored wood throughout, so I started with the master bathroom (I'll share those pictures later).  I liked the changes so much that I renovated all three of the bathrooms.  Here are the before and after pictures of the Powder Room Renovation.

First, I ripped down all the wall paper and took down the mirror.  Then, I sanded all the wood trim and painted it white.  Then I sanded and stained all the orange wood and turned it into a red mahogany.  I took out and replaced the toilet.  

The tough part was choosing a color.  I started with a grey and hated it.  I was trying to replicate a Pinterest inspiration (Pinspiration?) with silver squares.  But I hated it.  So then I painted it a peanut butter brown, and hated that too.  Then I decided to go bold, and painted it red.  Success!!

Then I painted the ceiling white.  Probably should have done that first.  Lesson learned.

Painting on the bronze squares turned into quite a challenge.  I thought I would be able to find a template, but none of them worked the way I had envisioned.  So, I ended up taping blue tape throughout the entire bathroom, making sure everything was level, and then taped vertically and removing the sections as necessary to leave the squares open.  I painted over each of the squares with the red paint to seal off the tape, then painted several coats of the bronze to make sure the squares stayed crisp.

At this point I realized that I had TOO many squares, so I had to re-tape, adding MORE tape to cover every other open square.

Once the tape came down I was thrilled with the results!!!

 Then I replaced the mirror, replaced the faucet, had my handy hubby replace the electrical outlets, replaced all the cream colored outlet covers with oil rubbed bronze, and then added cupboard door pulls, also in oil rubbed bronze.

Then I added a few pieces of artwork that I found at Bed Bath & Beyond, 

and voila!  Completion!!

Whew!

Materials used:

Granite: Typhoon Bordeaux, 3 cm, from Brazil

Backsplash: Sunset Picture Mosaic 1x1 tiles

and Somerset 1/2 x 6 oil rubbed bronze rope liner from Lowe's

Grout:  Fusion Pro Charcoal

Picture Framed Mirror:  TJ Max
Light Fixture: Lowe's
Decorative Clock and artwork: Bed Bath and Beyond
Oil Rubbed Bronze outlet covers from Lowe's
Oil Rubbed Bronze fixtures: Lowe's

* * * * *