Main bathroom – Two Years In…

The most recent part of the “Progress in Your House” saga was the half bathroom. What do you say that we keep with the bathroom theme and head upstairs to our main bathroom? Since these posts are all about lists, shall we also make a list of the rooms to that you need to see and mark off the ones that are already in the tour?

• Entry Room
• Kitchen
• Mudroom
• Living Room
• Dining Room
• Three Seasons Porch
• Half Bathroom
• Guest Bedroom
• Creative Space
• Main Bathroom
• Giant closet
• Master Bedroom

They are all in the Tour Our House section along with the tour of the whole house from the beginning

Our main bathroom is on the second floor of the house. You see it right when you turn the corner upstairs and since the door is usually open and we would use it most often, it had to be pretty (or prettier) right away. So on the to do list, this was one of the first things to tackle.

Behind the door is the toilet – sorry about the open toilet picture

A better shot of the shower curtain (in the mirror) and the awkward towel bar and the uber long countertop

Inside the shower…just warning you, it’s gross

 

Time to make myself feel better with a list

• Scrubbed the whole entire bathroom like you would not believe
• Took down the brassy towel bar that hung 8 inches from the coutnertop
• Painted the walls in Sherwin-Williams Bamboo Shoot (this post)
• Switched out the shower curtain to one that both the hubs and I love…not an easy task
• Got new sagey bath mats (post here)
• Defolded the bi-fold door to add some storage to the door (this post)
• Removed the strange little shelf that was next to the counter when you walked in the door
• Recaulked every seam in the tub and added something to cover up the edges
• Took the snazzy mirrors off the wall by the toilet so it wasn’t so…creepy

And now for some progress pictures.

Here’s the shelf on the no longer bi-fold door (plans from Ana White)

 

The toilet nook without mirrors on the wall and a closed lid. Finding something to hide the hubs’ magazines is pretty high on the priority list too.

Oh and the shower, can’t forget to show you the shower. So much better even if the color is off a little bit.

Plans for this room include new floor tile, a claw foot tub, double sinks (!), new mirrors and I really would like to move a new washer and dryer into this room too, but I’ll admit that’s a point of debate in our house. Oh boy, do I have plans…just look at my For the Home – Bathrooms board on Pinterest. I’ve also started an ever evolving moodboard for it on Olioboard.

 

 

 

 

Half bathroom – Two Years In…

Today, I thought I would show you our half bathroom from beginning to now…complete with a checklist of everything we’ve done in that itty bitty space. Back in December, I shared with you the two year progress on the kitchen and entry room. They are also in the Tour Our House section along with the tour of the whole house from the beginning

 

Behind this door in the dining room is our teeny, tiny half bathroom on the first floor.

This is a closet under the stairs turned bathroom, so it is a very odd shape, but endearing – can a bathroom be endearing?

To the right is a closet

and a window

To the left is the toilet (I’ll spare you the full open toilet picture)

Now for the list of things that have been completed

• Scrubbed the whole entire bathroom like you would not believe
• Took down the wooden 1983 towel bar and soap tray
• Took off all the plastic-y textured wall paper (post here) – this took months…literally
• Painted the walls in Sherwin-Williams Hubbard Squash (this post)
• Added an ORB (oil rubbed bronze) towel ring to the right of the sink (this post)
• Added an ORB toilet paper holder to the left of the toilet (this post)
• Changed out the silver handle on the toilet for a snazzy (splurge) ORB one (post here)
• Created an ORB foaming soap pump for the sink (tutorial post here)
• Painted the rusted grate on the floor by the sink a matte black color
• Added some red candle holders and s’more smelling candles to the top of the sink (this post)
• Switched out the lacy curtain for frost painted glass (post here)
• Added three Ikea (hallelujah) vases and gerbera daisies to the windowsill (this post)
• Repainted the handles on the closet from chrome to ORB (this post)
• Added some hubbard squash accent paint to the closet (post here)

The new sink needs to be installed, the mirror will be coming down and replaced with one in a beautiful frame, a new light that has yet to be decided on…we’ll get there.

Everything is Better with ORB

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that there are two things that I love (besides my family and friends). The first is s’mores. Sidenote: check out this great t-shirt that my friend Kristen pinned for me

Too bad it’s a kid’s shirt…I so need that! The other thing that I love is ORB paint. I love painting stuff in oil rubbed bronze. I totally blame Rachael at Lovely Crafty Home for the borderline addiction to this lovely little thing

It’s been a long time since anything in our house has gotten an ORB treatment. By long time, I mean it was August when I ORBed some frames to use as dry erase boards! That was three months ago! Oh how I missed my ORB paint so it was definitely time to rekindle the romance. I had to paint…paint anything. Whatcha think? Now I’ll always have it with me

That may be going a little far. It was a really windy day while I was painting a couple things. I really need to learn to paint on days when it isn’t windy, but it was a nice day outside so I took full advantage of it. Remember the plastic foaming soap container I painted?

I found the idea on Pinterest from Allison at House of Hepworths and it had a monogram H on the front. I decided that I wanted to make a few of these and change them out for the different seasons. No better time to start than now and Bella was eager to help too. I got a pump that had orange soap in it…my favorite fall color

I took the labels off just like on the first one that I did. There was a lot of sticky stuff left on it so I had to get that off somehow. I could have used Goo Gone or Goof Off, but I didn’t have either one of those things on hand. What I did have was cotton balls and canola oil

I put some canola oil on a cotton ball and scrubbed it. It wasn’t as easy as Goo Gone, but it didn’t cost me anything and canola oil doesn’t smell near as bad so I was happy that it worked

I used my Cricut machine and some contact paper that I had on hand to cut out some little leaves. I measured the soap pump because I wanted the leaves to fit on it and still have room on the sides. The pump was about 2 inches across so I made my leaves 1 1/4 inches each and before long I had a little pile of leaves

I peeled off the paper backing and put them on the pump in a random pattern wrapping some of them around to the side of the pump and onto the bottom of it.

Then I headed out to the deck with the soap and the paint and started painting.

I love the look of ORB paint shimmering in the sun. Don’t you?

After the paint dried a little (but not so much that it fused the contact paper to the bottle forever) I took the leaves off and was left with this

It’s not as dramatic as I was thinking it would be, but I kinda love it like this. Once it was in the bathroom, I loved it more. It’s definitely a subtle change, but I like that the leaves are more of a different texture than a different color

I had planned for this to be part of my Holiday decor series for $10 or under, but the paint itself is over $7 and when you add in the soap and the contact paper it was over the $10 limit. Since I had everything on hand except the soap, this project set me back a whole $1 (I had a coupon for the soap).

Did you notice that the pictures in this post are smaller? Did it make the page load faster for you? Can you still see them well? Give me your feedback.

Pumpkins and TP

I totally missed out on Wednesday’s holiday decor post. We had a family emergency that has pretty much consumed the last week for us. But there was no way I would miss giving you a fall decor idea on the cheap. This is, quite possibly, the quickest and easiest idea you can do for fall. Without further ado, you will need just a few things for this project.

• A roll of toilet paper – $1 at Dollar Tree or you can shop your bathroom too
• Orange tissue paper – $1.99 at Target
• Green tulle (about 3 inches) – $1.49 for a yard at JoAnn
• Scissors – $1 at Dollar Tree
• A stick from your (or your neighbor’s) yard – free
•     Total $4.48 – and you’ll have plenty of leftover stuff to do a lot

I think it should take you less than five minutes to do this from start to finish, so get ready to start your timer. If you tissue paper is large, you’ll want to fold it in half, but you may not need to. Put the roll of toilet paper on one side of the tissue paper making sure there is enough on the two ends to gather in the middle of the roll of toilet paper.

Roll the tissue paper around the roll of toilet paper and tuck the ends into the middle of the tube.

Cut the tulle into eight pieces that are 3×6(ish). Break a piece off the stick and wrap the tulle around it.

Put this in the tube of wrapped toilet paper

Then unwrap the tulle a little to make leaf-type-things and put on the back of your toilet…or anywhere else you want to decorate with toilet paper pumpkins

I wanted these to be good through November so I’m not adding Jack faces to them, but that would be easy to cut out of black paper and tape or glue on. I also found some patterned tissue paper at Pier 1 (you know how I love that place) that is too cute to not use on this project! I’m going to have to do that very soon

Maybe you have some fabric laying around that would work instead of tissue paper. Check out this green polka dotty cuteness that I found via Pinterest.

This is another great way to store toilet paper in your bathroom in a pretty way. If you missed the last post, you can find that post here.

So, what was your time? How long did it take?

Replace the Roll

Tell me you haven’t said it. Tell me you haven’t, at some point, yelled through your house for someone to bring you some toilet paper. Maybe your scenario is that you’ve had to ask the stranger in the next stall for the same thing. When I saw this on Pinterest, I knew it was going to make it’s way into our bathroom!

Michael eats quite a bit of oatmeal and I’m always looking at the oatmeal containers thinking “What can I do with that?” One day, I took an oatmeal container like this one

Then I ripped the paper off it and was left with a  blank canvas

I invaded my trusty collection of wrapping paper that I find on sale and pulled out some red designed paper since this will be going in our half bathroom. I trimmed the paper so it would cover all the way around and have enough room to fold over onto the bottom

I folded the side under just like if I were wrapping a gift

I used a tape runner on the underside of the fold to stick it down and not show when it was done. Once that was stuck down, I flipped it over on its top, used my double sided tape runner to put a line of tape around the edge and folded the ends in towards the center

If you decide to take on this 5 minute project, you might want to consider the bathroom where you’re putting yours. Since ours was for the half bathroom, it is fine to have a paper container. If yours are going in a bathroom where there you have a shower, I would recommend making yours a little more waterproof. Sure you could just make another one with as easy as this project it, but it will be easy to make it last longer, so why not? The simple way to do this is contact paper. You could skip the wrapping paper altogether and just use some patterned contact paper. If you can’t find a patterned contact paper that will fit your decor, you can use some clear contact paper over the top of your wrapping paper. That way whether you’re a fan of lobster showers (ones that make your skin red like a lobster and make your bathroom like a sauna) or you have kids that shower you when they are taking a bath, this project would hold up in your full bathroom too!

I flipped it back over and added a couple rolls of Charmin and Voila! Ours is so stylin’ in our half bathroom, but most importantly I love having that extra toilet paper right by the toilet. I also love that I didn’t have to pay $20 for it like the toilet paper holder I saw at Target, I was able to upcycle that would be going into our garbage and for me this was totally free because I had everything in my crafty stash! Free is always my favorite price!

Hope you enjoyed this short sweet tutorial and sorry about the less than wonderful pictures…someday I’ll figure out my camera.

Just Add Paint

For months it’s been bugging me. Almost every day I would go into our half bathroom and stare at the closet.

Booooring. I knew they needed something, but I wasn’t sure what. Finally I decided, then ran it by Michael and in two days we had it done. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, let’s rewind a little. You didn’t think I would give you the before and after without a bunch of other stuff to build suspense, did you?

I’m not much for taping, I prefer to free hand most trimming, but for this project I decided to use it. Also I wanted a prefectly crisp line so I got the frog tape. There really is no substitute when you’re doing stripes.

I wanted to try just one part on the door to see if we liked it for sure, so I set off to taping and it was not easy or quick but it was worth it

Then I painted with the same color of paint that was on the walls

I made sure to peel the tape before the paint fully dried so the paint wouldn’t peel along with the tape. Michael looked at it and liked it so I started taping and painting the rest of the panels on the doors

Something else you may have noticed (or not depending on if you’re reading this early in the morning or late at night) is that the handles are missing in the above picture. You may also have noticed that it looks like those handles were painted around more than once. Did you see here that the handles were silver?

Doesn’t quite mesh with all the ORB (oil rubbed bronze) fixtures that are in that bathroom

So the handles were ORBed – yes, I just used ORB as a verb, just go with it. I so love the difference.

Now when I go in the bathroom I think “Oh, that’s pretty…and I love that it smells like s’mores.”

My Bathroom Smells Like S’mores!!!

So, I’ve kinda gotten carried away with the whole Pinterest challenge thing. I’ve chosen multiple projects to complete over the course of the week and here is project number one. It was a small project that cost me less than $5,  so I thought I would share it with you before the Tuesday reveal day…plus I’m pretty jazzed about the one I have planned for Tuesday!

We’ve been needing a soap pump for our half bathroom and we had this one picked out

The problem is that we have a teeny tiny sink in that bathroom and we weren’t sure that the pump would stay on the sink when the nieces and nephews come over…or when we would use it for that matter. Consequently (10 cent word of the day for Amy!), we’ve been looking for something else. I don’t know why, but we seem to have the biggest problems choosing some of the smallest things. I’m not sure what our problem is, but we were struggling. then I got this (p)inspiration

Awwwwwesome! One day when I was at Target (which seems to be most days) I took a trip down the soap aisle and came home with these

One for the bathroom and one for the kitchen. I took them outside along with some old newspaper. I figured our deck on a sunny day was a good place to start this project, so I put the newspaper on the railing of the deck and then clamped it on. That’s right, I said clamped – the wind was blowing. Need a visual?

We have quite a few of those clamps from our woodworking projects-a-la-Ana, so why not use them, right? It was perfect to keep my paper from blowing away! Just call me resourceful…sometimes. With my paint booth in place I removed the stickers from the two bottles of soap which turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. The stickers didn’t peel off clean, so it took a little elbow grease aka vegetable oil to get the sticker gunk off. I put a little veggie oil on a paper towel and scrubbed a little and soon they were gunk-free and ready for paint!

Time to break out the ORB paint

Oh how I love this stuff! Thanks for the new found addiction Rachael! I’ve also used the hammered copper on a different project (stay tuned for that one) and I love that too. The key when using this stuff is to keep it moving and the paint will look great. Keep in mind that the day I was painting outside, the wind was blowing. It probably took a little longer to paint and a little more paint considering three days later I’m still trying to scrub ORB paint off my hands

Fortunately I was able to get some on the soap dispensers too

I let them sit outside to dry for a while in the sun, but the humidity has been not so fun lately and I had to bring them inside to finish drying after about 2 hours. Cost breakdown

• Dawn suds pump – $2.89
• Bathroom suds pump – $1.57
• ORB paint – fuh-ree! I already had some left over from another project, but normally it’s about $7

It fits perfect in the half bathroom and if it falls, it’s plastic and probably won’t break but if it does it was less than $2. It’s also refillable, so I won’t have to paint every time we run out of soap

A couple more differences the bathroom from the last time you saw this

I got those new red candle holders at Ikea (hallelujah) on our trip back in April (see posts on that trip here and here) for $1.99 for the set of three – score! Those candles are not your ordinary candles either. They are these new candles from Bath and Body Works that were on sale for 3 for $5!

You may have already seen my post on my love of smores. Find it here if ya missed it. I totally love that my bathroom now smells like smores! It’s sooooo wonderful!

Update: When I first pinned this idea, it didn’t have the original project linked to it – so sad. Allison from House of Hepworths stopped by and let me know that this was her original creation (thanks Allison). If you look at her tutorial and mine you’ll find some differences, but they are quite similar. She recommends using a plastic paint for the first coat. I totally agree with her. The ORB paint that I have in my arsenal is an all surface paint, so make sure a plastic paint is the first one on your plastic. Allison’s been using her pumps quite a bit longer than I have so maybe mine will change, but both seem to be holding up very well. Props to Allison for such a great idea!

Happy Wife = Happy Life

Yesterday I told you I was out shopping for something for the half bathroom (post here) and told you I would share that soon. Well, thanks to another Michael surprise, this post is coming sooner than I anticipated.

When you take three ordinary vases (that I sent my friend Ashley on a wild goose chase for) from Ikea (hallelujah) like these

add in three red gerbera daisies like these…well, it kinda looks orange here…I need a new camera

then add this

and magically, the window in the half bathroom goes from this

to this

I knew I wanted that window frosted and I went to Menards to get the film for it. A great big roll of film was over $27 and the application kit was over $8. Really? There had to be another solution. I was on my Blackberry frantically searching Lowe’s and Home Depot praying that one of them had something cheaper. Then (thanks to a little help) I found the frosted glass spray paint. I brought it home and showed it to Michael and he said “You want me to paint the window?” Uh huh! Total cost of this little change is less than $10. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it…and so does Michael…well, maybe he would say he like it rather than LOVE LOVE LOVE, but you get the idea. Just a couple more things and the half bathroom will be done. I didn’t expect this to be done today, but after 9 years together, Michael is learning happy wife=happy life.

Surpise, Surprise

Do you have any idea how hard it is to coordinate the schedules of 17 people? After years of not being able to get together as a family, we started an annual family dinner…around no holidays whatsoever. The second Saturday in March every year (honestly, this will be the 2nd year, but I’m optimistic), our house fills with the love and laughter of my family. We get to spend time together and maybe get a decent family picture. When we were younger, it was hard to get a good picture

Every time we have people over, we try to make things different than the last time they came to visit. But with extra hours at work this week, there was no way I was going to get anything done, and I’m okay with that. Then yesterday I got a text from Michael letting me know there was a surprise waiting for me at home. Yikes!

Behind this door is our teeny, tiny half bathroom on the first floor. Most everything to redo this bathroom has been sitting in this bathroom for about a year now…waiting…and waiting…and waiting for it’s turn to be shown some TLC. This is a closet under the stairs turned bathroom, so it is a very odd shape, but endearing – can a bathroom be endearing? The biggest problem with this room was paint. Poor Ashley was plagued with questions about her thoughts on paint. I can do that to her because when I ask her questions like “Do you think hopsack would be okay in the bathroom?” Ashley knows that I’m not asking her if my bathroom would be a good place to don a burlap sack and hop from one end to the other. Ashley knows that I’m talking about our obsession with Sherwin-Williams. On Thursday we were tossing around words like Latte, Hopsack, Hubbard Squash and Festoon Aqua for the half bathroom

This was the beginning of that half bathroom. Check out this wallpaper that was in there. Yes, it is textured mauve and teal that had been faded over time.

There was a lot of wallpaper in that room. Cora spent hours one work day before we moved in scraping wallpaper (yes, she’s sitting behind the toilet)

Then Michael spent hours this week finishing off the wallpaper and here’s what it looked like.

I knew about the wallpaper coming off, but we were still trying to figure out the color. Turns out that I pestered Ashley about color for no good reason. The surprise that Michael had for me was the bathroom…in Hubbard Squash. I just had to decide where to hang the towel ring and the toilet paper holder. I took votes and opinions from my facebook friends about the placement of the toilet paper holder. Right side or left side? What do you think was decided??? Keep looking.

Michael and I are pretty frugal people. We got a pedestal sink to go in this bathroom for $40 (not yet installed) and then we spent $20 on this lever for the toilet. Never thought our splurge would be the lever for the toilet, but we love the way it looks in there. And Michael says it’s “built like a tank”. I’ll let you take that for whatever you want.

Here’s the toilet paper holder…on the left wall with the paper over the top

It still needs some changes, but it seems a lot more put together than it did just three days. It’s almost a John & Sherry worthy transformation. The new sink needs to be installed, the mirror will be coming down and replaced with one in a beautiful frame, a new light that has yet to be decided on and I have my heart set on this soap dispenser. Not to mention that these curtains have got to go!

But the half bathroom is half done and ready for house full of our family and hopefully Noreen can get a good picture of my brothers and sisters and me. But some things never change…this was last May!