Looking back: A powder room redo

Hey there! Hope you are having a wonderful Thursday!

It’s time to go back in time again and check out the progress of the smallest room in our house over the years. First of all – I think the amount of time and effort I’ve put into this bathroom is odd because I haven’t done much at all in bathrooms that would bring more value – like the master bath. But, we use the powder room ALL the time. And guests see it. So in the end, I guess it’s worth making it a priority.

And secondly, I’ve painted this small room more times than I’ve painted most of the rooms in our house all together. I was talking with a friend a few months ago and she mentioned how much I paint in our house – I told her she’d be surprised that most of the rooms in our home have only been painted once. They’ve stayed that way for a long time too. The kitchen, family room, master bath, guest bath and master have been painted once in ten years. And the living room, staircase, loft and upstairs hall as well.

BUT…when I paint one tiny room like 56 times, yeah, I could see how it seems like I’m always painting walls. ;)

This was a room I was never quite happy with, until last year when I finally finished it up. I lived with each look for a couple years, but it never felt quite right. Shortly after we moved in I tried my hand at molding – and I used Liquid Nails to apply the molding. You know, just in case I NEVER EVER WANTED TO TAKE THEM OFF:

Here’s the proof that we all start somewhere. I was using an electric handheld saw to cut that wood and didn’t begin to know how to cut at an angle – so I used some trim pieces in the corners. I think they’re supposed to be installed with baseboards.

The quality was…interesting. :) So years later I made over the room again. This time with mitered corners (yeah!) and lots of brown (noooo):

I actually quite like this for a while. But after a while the chocolate brown got depressing and dark and…brown.

I went all the way too:

But pretty soon I was craving a lighter look. I painted over the stencils, took the molding down, then started painting over the brown in a hurry before a party. It was months later before I finally finished it up: 

 

At this point we’re a good two years into the redo here. I’ve mentioned a few times that when I stall on things it’s either because they’re incredibly hard or because I’m still not convinced on my direction. This one was the latter. :)

But the plan finally came together in my head and I forged on! I started installing the wood planks:

And pooped out again. I knew it would look good eventually – I was just tired of the space and needed to focus elsewhere. A few months went by and I was ready again. (Told you – longest makeover EVER.)

When I was ready again I spent a few days straight working like a beast. The planked walls came together: 

You can see how I installed those here. The process is really easy, it just takes some time. And painting them in a pain in the butt, for real. 

And then I tried my original plan on the walls – painting them red:

If I was more of a red girl I would have gone for it – but I’m not. I loved the red against the white for sure, it just wasn’t the look I was going for.

After two more attempts on the color I finally got it right. Accessible beige by Sherwin Williams:

Let’s count the number of times I’ve painted this room now, shall we? I think I’m at seven. :) Seventh time is a charm I guess.

The whole room was designed around my son’s artwork – it was when I saw it that I knew exactly what I wanted to do in the room:

We obviously changed more than just the walls – the hardwoods are so lovely and the IKEA vanity offers a ton more storage. I truly, truly love this space now. It’s bright and happy and fun – and it reminds me of my boy. :)

You can see the full reveal of the room here and all the details of the space are here. Even though it’s the smallest room in our house I think it’s one of the biggest transformations I’ve ever done. Maybe I need to take five years to redo all my spaces! Oh that’s right. I do.

Thanks for looking back with me again! Before and afters are my favorite! :)

Making waves

Hello my friends! First of all, thanks for all the suggestions on my last post! I’m checking out all the links for the rugs. You guys rock! I’m back with a quick little project I finally finished up for my son’s bathroom. I shared my plans for this room a few weeks ago and your comments were so helpful as always! I’m looking into a window for the room right now. I have to special order the size I want but I found someone to put it in. SO excited.

The rest of the big plans will come later, but for now I want to at least do a few little things to start updating the space. My boy is a baby no more and he needs a slightly more mature space. The little leap frogs must go.

CRY. WAIL.

I found a ship’s wheel at HomeGoods years ago – knowing the direction I wanted to go in this room even back then. It’s been sitting under his sink for all those years. I actually forgot about it till I cleaned out the cabinet late last year. Awesome.

I held it up on the wall and it felt a little sparse all by itself, so I decided to add a little somethin’ behind it. It started with some scrap wood in the garage – don’t they all? I don’t throw wood away and this is why.

I cut it down to 24 by 24 inches using my jigsaw. I’m horrible at cutting straight lines but I’m getting a bit better. To get a good line to follow, I measure my distance every few inches along the wood, then use something long and straight (like scrap wood) to make my line:

 

If I take my time I can get a fairly straight line with the jigsaw:

Not perfect like a table saw would cut, but decent. This is why they invent wonderful things like caulk. :)

This is more of a particle board than a nice finished wood but it’s all I had in the right size, so to smooth it out a bit I sanded it down and then used some spackle to fill in the bigger divots:

I didn’t fill everything because I didn’t mind it having a slight texture. After another sanding it was ready for primer and paint. I did one coat of primer and two coats of the almost white color I used in the mud room. It has a ever-so-slight grey undertone to it but if you just look at it, it looks white. I’m planning on using this color in the bathroom since I have some leftover.

I wanted to add some fun so I picked one of the FrogTape® Shape Tape™ options to use. I haven’t used the wave design yet and I thought the bathroom would be the perfect place! I started by putting the first length of the tape right in the middle of the board. Then I measured about two inches down for each one, but I wasn’t crazy particular about it:

The goal was to make them the same distance from both the top and the bottom.

I made sure to press the tape down really well – I was a little nervous about this wood and it’s rough texture and potential seepage. After it was sealed well I gave it a few coats of a blue color I’m hoping to use on the vanity in the bathroom. Usually I like to pull up my tape when the paint is wet, but when you have to do multiple coats you just have to wait it out. It’s SO hard to wait to see how the lines look! :)

Thankfully they were PERFECT!:

I added some lattice wood around the edges as a “frame” of sorts and then laid the whole thing on the floor to see where I wanted the wheel to sit on the board:

And I LOVED it! So preppy, so fresh! Love that blue too, it’s a definite for the vanity.

Here it’s hung with a nail but I later went back and put a little cleat on the back of the wheel instead. That nail was bugging me. Details. :)

I went ahead and painted the one wall (the wall I may knock down much later) and was surprised at how much better it looked without all that yellow. The yellow tone wasn’t doing any favors without any natural light in there.

I hung the wheel on that wall and it was a perfect fit!:

I just think it’s adorable, really. The waves totally make it.

Have you done any fun projects like this lately? This one will set the tone for the whole room – now I can’t wait to get started!

Have a GREAT weekend folks!

 

P.S. The annual Earn Your Stripes™ painting contest is going on now! If you are interested in entering a project, check out all the details here. The projects last year were AMAZING. And all entries will receive a roll of Shape Tape! :) Fun stuff.

I received compensation to complete this project for using FrogTape® products but use them anyway. :) All opinions, projects and ideas are based on my own experience.

The room you’ve never seen

Dun dun dunnnnn. That sounded a bit ominous right?

I shared a bit of of this space back when I showed you how to switch out your door knobs but other than that I don’t think it’s a room I’ve ever shown on the blog. Mainly because I’ve hardly touched it for years now.

But I’ve been planning some big changes to this space for the past year or so, so I figured it was time to share the current pics (and some of my plans!). I decorated this room about eight years ago now – I honestly can’t remember if I did this when I was pregnant with our boy or if I did it after, but either way it’s been awhile and it’s looked the same since.

My stepdaughter also used this space for a long time and our guests use it too – I’m sure they appreciate the little touches I added. ;) This is one of those spaces that is not at all what I would do now but I’m proud of it and it brings back really sweet memories. It was done early on, just a couple years after moving into our home and every bit of it was done with love. (All of the rooms in our house are but the kid’s spaces give my heart that extra tug.)

I painted the walls a pretty yellow and the ceiling the same blue as the Bub’s room:

Bear with me on the lighting in here – it’s pretty horrible and the yellow walls don’t help. More on that later. :)

I installed the crown molding – the “cheater” way I showed you here – and a wall of beadboard as well:

No idea why I stopped with the one wall. I must have gotten tired.

I framed out the mirror with wood trim and went a little stencil crazy:

For a long time there was a little Goodwill medicine cabinet where the “E” is now but I replaced it about a year ago. I think that’s the one update I’ve made in all these years.

I added little touches like a little DIY towel hook and some letters in the shower room with what are supposed to be bubbles on them but have always looked like paw prints:

  

But there’s a big issue with this bathroom that I thought I would love at first. The whole separation thing – one “room” with the vanity and one with the toilet and shower – has not worked out well.

In fact, it drives me a little crazy. :) This isn’t a small bathroom (not very wide but it is long) but it feels SO tight because it’s broken into two spaces. That back room with the shower is so dark and small, we pretty much hate being in there:

I thought the separated rooms was so unique when we built the house, but within months I was cursing it.

So…I have a plan. The easy stuff first! I want to do one of two things to the vanity area -- cut down the countertop and place a tall, painted hutch or something similar there for storage. Or extend the vanity and make it twice as big. As of a couple years ago our cabinet design was still being produced, so I could just add on to the ones that are there. We chose one sink when we built and only need one – but for resale (someday, long time from now) I think adding another one may be worth it. I just need to see how much of a pain that would be.

One thing I know – I’ve wanted to paint the cabinets a navy blue for some time now, and Megan’s vanity convinced me:

Jen’s navy blue looks great too, I’m pretty sure this is the direction I’ll go:

I also considered a kelly green, but I think the dark blue is calling my name. :)

I want the vinyl floors gone and right now I’m planning on the laundry room tile instead:

It was crazy affordable and I LOVE how it looks.

Of course the wall color will change, but I have no idea what it will be just yet.

But there’s a couple biggies I’d like to add too. One is a window above the shower. I know windows and showers don’t always mix, but I’m thinking a long, skinny one well above the shower, just to allow some natural light in this space. That back area especially is so dark and dreary. Are windows near showers asking for trouble?

And THEN…about a year ago I saw this photo in This Old House and I haven’t gotten it out of my head since:

It’s hard to tell from the little before photo, but it was a similar set up as ours. This bathroom is much wider than ours, but the idea is the same. They took down the wall between the two rooms and opened it up – LOVE it. I like that this one shows the difference taking down that wall made without adding a window too – maybe we wouldn’t add one? (Adding a window is a big deal, at least it seems like it.)

And then I saw this bathroom at Houzz the other day and it made me even more determined to take down that wall:

I can’t even believe the difference it makes! That bath is a very similar size as ours and it looks twice as big without that wall.

I’ve ALWAYS wanted to knock down a wall in our house. I blame the DIY Network. This may be my chance to do just that! I’m giddy at the thought. :)

For the most part I’ve not focused on the rooms in our home that are supposed to bring more value – the kitchen and bathrooms. I’ve had big plans for our kitchen for awhile but I don’t know when it will happen, and our bathroom is totally functional so I’ve never made it a priority. And I know it will not be cheap! But I’m starting to get an itch to update these spaces – I think it must be the ten year itch. :)

Do you have a separated bathroom like ours? Do you love it or hate it? Any windows in the shower people who want to chime in?

 

P.S. The pin it button is now on all of my photos but I ask you visit the original source to pin from there.

One more black door

Hey there! How are you this fine day? Preparing for another snow storm like us? Yeah. I’m actually kind of looking forward to be snowed in for another day or so, but after that – done. I’m sure we’re not though. :)

This weekend I continued a project that’s been a long time coming. I’ve always loved the look of black interior doors in a house and started with our own home in the basement just over a year ago:

I figured that would be a great place to start to see if I did indeed love them. Indeed I did. :)

So I’ve put this off for a year now because, honestly, it takes me forever to do one door. I planned to get two done this weekend and just did one because it takes me SO LONG.

I started on the main floor with the powder room door:

Excuse the cat. There’s ALWAYS a cat. She was sleeping on the heating vent. :)

So I don’t take the doors off the hinges to paint them. Our doors are crazy heavy and you need to be able to do both sides, so I think it’s actually easier to leave them up. I take the door knob off but cover the hinges. This time I figured out an easier way to cover them:

I just put a strip of Frog Tape over each one, then used a razor to cut out around them. You’ll want to kind of push the edges of the tape down around the hinge. I still had to touch up a little bit but it really did make it easier.

I won’t go through all the how to of painting a door again because I shared all of that here. But I will say you NEED to at the very least do some checking to see if your door is painted in latex or oil-based first. (You can see how in that post.)

In most cases it will be oil so you need to prime first with a good shellac primer. I used this:

I usually get it tinted in gray – ultimately I still had to do three coats of black but it does help sometimes. The thing is – latex doesn’t cover oil-based paint well. Allison over at House of Hepworths shared her DIY disaster because her doors were painted with latex over oil and the latex didn’t stick. Like literally…peeled off.

To be safe, prime. Not just a latex primer, an oil-based primer. You’ll thank me. :)

Like I said, it took me forever, but I absolutely LOVE it:

It’s not so bad when you’re working on one side of the door – but then you realize you have the whole other side to do so it kind of takes a while. :) Maybe I’m just a slow painter, who knows, but it will take me years at this rate.

I like to take my time because unlike baseboards or even some walls, I feel like the doors are something you really SEE, you know?:

I did one coat of tinted primer and then three coats of black. The paint color is called Graphite from Benjamin Moore and I had it mixed at Sherwin Williams (a little cheaper) in an eggshell finish. The Graphite color is really a super dark gray, not a black. But it sure looks black to me. :)

I have noticed in the basement we do see scuffs occasionally, but they wipe right off with a wet or dry rag. It’s nothing that bothers us. I’ll have to see how this door does, since it gets so much use.

Here’s a view from inside the bathroom:

My lovely oil-rubbed bronze hardware gets lost on it a bit but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I love them so very much. It’s just a classic look to me that makes the white trim stand out even more.

Now I have five doors done in the house and only have nine more to do! I’ll be done in ten years! (And I’ve taken down five doors in the house so that doesn’t include those.)

For now I’ll enjoy one more done:

The painting is not really that bad – sometimes good, mindless work is just what I need. Next up I want to replace all that trim (there are three doorways right there) with more of the craftsman trim like on the new back door: 

So have you painted your doors black? Any special paint or color you love? It’s definitely a specific taste but I have fallen hard and love it!

 

P.S. To see more of the powder room you can go here.

To see our black glass pantry door go here.

Would I do it again? (Laundry chute)

So every so often I like to update you on projects that I’ve done/purchases I’ve made to let you know how they’ve held up and if I like them as much as I thought I would. I’m always curious to hear that so I like to share in case you are wondering too.

I will say…I think and research and plan things to DEATH, so it’s rare that I regret doing anything. This one I’m still not sure about. :)

I shared our completed powder room a couple months ago and I’m so happy with how it turned out:

We have a huge powder room, right? It’s big as far as powder rooms go. We could have made it a full bathroom (it’s near my office which could have been another bedroom), but we went with the half. Anyway, I’m so glad we have a linen closet in this room.

What you didn’t see at that reveal, and many of you have already seen, was the big honkin’ tube inside the closet:

That is something I dreamed about for years and was SO thrilled to get installed. By now you’ve probably read the title of this post and deduced that this is our laundry chute. Smarty. ;) (You can see more about it here.)

What you didn’t see was the horrible, no good, did I mention horrible paint job I started last year. Originally I was going for red walls in this room and thought it may be fun to add a touch of red to the shelves (they needed to be painted anyway):

Ugh. I know. I mean, the photo is horrible but seriously…I KNOW. It was horrible. This one goes in the what was I thinking column.

I was going for white walls and bright red shelves, but somewhere along the way I got lazy and didn’t tape off (WHY?) so the paint got on the walls. And the PVC was always ugly -- initially I tried to get the lettering off the pipe using a method a reader mentioned, but it didn’t work for me. Then I thought, I’ll just paint it! Red! Like the rest of the closet! Brilliant!

Well red doesn’t cover well. Your tip of the day. So I stopped.

Anyway, I fixed it – more on that in a minute.

First up, the main purpose of this post. Would I do the laundry chute again? I’ve thought a lot about this lately and actually, I probably wouldn’t.

There’s a few reasons for this. The biggest – I never do laundry. I just…don’t. My husband does his own and I wait until I am out of clothes to wash my own. I will dig to the bottom of a drawer to find an odd sock before I will do laundry. It’s just my thing. I don’t hate laundry like I used to now that we have an actual laundry room, but I just don’t do it.

It’s my thing.

BUT. Because I don’t do it often, I wait till I can’t wait anymore and then I spend a day washing clothes, so in those instances it is nice to be able to just drop the clothes down the chute. Thing is, you still have to take the basket down to carry them back up when they’re done. So if I’m doing one load here or there I just take the clothes down in the basket because I’m going to have to bring them up in it anyway.

All that being said…our closet is a major disaster right now so I’m on a laundry binge. It’s laundry all the time – and I’ve been using the chute a ton.

Perhaps if we had more kids and more clothes I would use it more? Maybe someday when I’m totally and completely organized (snort) and I keep up with washing the clothes I will find it more helpful.

But for now…I walk the clothes down the stairs as much as I throw them down. I gotta say though – it’s fun. There is pure joy that happens when you throw the clothes down and hear them thump into the laundry basket. It kind of rocks. ;)

So…the chute is staying. Which brings me back to the hideous red linen closet. I finally painted it. The powder room was next on my decluttering rampage and like usual I couldn’t pass up this little DIY that needed to happen.

I used some paint I already had – it was a color called Billowing Clouds that I originally used to paint the powder room years ago. I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on this so I painted the walls and the shelves both the blue color:

Oh, I did prime first that red first, just one coat. Since I was painting the walls it took no time at all. I was able to prime, paint and organize the stuff in here in a couple hours. I’ve put this off for a year, and it took less than two hours. Story of my life!

You may notice the polka dots. ;) Yes, I covered the tube. YES…I obviously have no life. It was just so ugly. I went through a few options in my head for covering it and then remembered I had some contact paper. AND it matched the new paint. It’s like it was meant to be!:

See, I kind of have a life – I didn’t do the bottom part. Honestly it took about 15 minutes to cover it – and the dots make me smile when I open this door. :) I want to get some sticky tiles to put on the floor in there (I didn’t have the hardwoods put in the closet since the cuts would have been so tricky and added to the cost.)

By the way, a few readers wondered if that little bend in the pipe would keep things from going down and it doesn’t at all. Nothing has gotten stuck – even bulky towels and sheets because it’s so slick inside. So as far as laundry chutes go, this is a good one!

After decluttering the stuff in the bins in here I was able to get rid of one (that is a great feeling!). So even though we have half the space in here that we used to, everything still fits great:

And it’s pretty cute, seriously. I say even though other people won’t see a space, if you have to look at it every day it’s your prerogative to make it cute. :)

SO. Overall I do like having the laundry chute, but if I could do it again I would have waited longer before installing it. I think I would have decided that we really didn’t need it after all.

Have you ever done something in your house you are iffy about? Regret any renovations or decisions you made? I don’t know if I regret this one really, I just would have waited to see how things functioned without it.

Bright basement bathroom (done!)

Good Monday to ya! How was your weekend? I was fighting a cold all weekend but managed to fit in two movies and plenty of DIY, so that’s a good one for me. :)

I’m continuing my no-spend August by wrapping up a HUGE project. I love the no-spend idea – not only do I save money when I do this (no impromptu trips to HomeGoods!) but I get a lot done. Stuff I’ve been putting off for months!

Our basement bathroom is one of those projects. It was thisclose to done anyway, and I had everything I needed on hand…so this one is checked off the list! WHOOT.

Let’s look back at how it looked a few months ago:

If you’ve been around for awhile you know we finished our basement last year. We did it slowly so we could pay cash and it took about six months total. The basics are in and everything is coming together beautifully, but there’s still a LOT we want to do down there.

So we had it finished but the basement bathroom was still incomplete, as you can see above. The floors were installed earlier this year, along with the main fixtures – the toilet and vanity. Then I showed you how I installed some storage in the form of DIY floating shelves:

I LOVE those shelves – I’m still so happy with how that came together.

But there were a few things left to do – back when I painted all the doors black in the basement I pooped out and didn’t do the back of the bathroom door. Soooo…I got that done:

Three coats and done!

Back when we had the electrical work done for the basement I knew I wanted two lights above the sink, so we guesstimated where the vanity was going to go. Well the outlet for that room ended up being right in the middle of the sink (right where the mirror went) so the guys came out a few months ago and moved the outlet (and one of the lights) for me.

They patched up the drywall and I just hung the mirror back over it and left it:

So yesterday I sanded it down and touched up that paint and a few other spots in the room. I also caulked the rest of the baseboards down there as well. OK, maybe I wasn’t thisclose to done. ;)

I used the mirror that used to be in our upstairs powder room -- it was shimmery brown so it needed a redo bad. I taped it off to prep for spray paint:

I’ve seen a lot of people not taping off and just using a razor to clean up on mirrors, but with spray paint that’s too messy (for me). So I covered it with newspaper, taped it all down and checked out my spray paint stash to decide on what to do:

I started with the satin nickel color and it was pretty, but when I got it down there it was so…boring. ;) The lights, faucet and mirror were all the same. Then I took it back outside and just went with a basic white – but, duh, that was pretty boring too. I wanted a pop of color on that wall and kept looking to my spray paint to find the right color (not spending money on DIY and all.)

Well I finally found the color I wanted in my regular paints:

It’s the same aubusson blue color I used on this project:

It was PERFECT. And it only took three tries. ;)

The blue brings the color in the towels and shower curtain over to that side of the room:

You can see all the sources for these items in this post (most was from Target).

Originally I planned on using our pedestal sink from upstairs in this space, but when it came time to install it I realized I really wanted something more substantial and something with storage. So I shopped around and found a really inexpensive vanity at Lowe’s that worked perfectly:

It’s really shallow but the sink juts out so it’s still a great size. It’s perfect for this skinny bathroom. (You can find it here online.)

I’m pretty thrilled with how this little space came together! Well…it’s not exactly little -- it’s just long and skinny:

It’s about 11 feet by four feet -- there was no other way to set up the room with the beams in the basement and the rough in plumbing. Also we had to make it this long to incorporate a support column into the wall. When the door is open it goes right near the vanity so there’s actually not much room to spare.

I had a mantra in my head the whole time I was finishing off this space -- “It’s just a basement bathroom.” :) So I went pretty basic with the finishes – the faucet, shower head and lights were all basic, inexpensive finds. We spent a little more on the toilet since this is in the basement – we wanted something that will hold up well (since the plumbing down here has to work against gravity).

Even though we didn’t splurge on much, I think the space turned out beautifully. One thing I don’t regret at all in the building process – I made sure we had a TON of lights in this space. Early on I thought it may be overkill but since I’ve realized it’s a great thing in a room without natural light:

We have a total of five lights in this space – recessed lights in the shower and by the door, the light in the fan and two over the sink. I love the look of the two lights over the sink – I did the same in our upstairs powder room. :)

I do have one more thing to do in here – paint all the trim (baseboards and door trim). But I have to do that in the entire basement so I’m going to wait till I can knock it all out at once. (That will be a fun day. Want to come over and help?)

Here’s a look at the before and after side-by-side – my favorite. ;)

I’d still like to add some art or something to that big wall at some point. I have an idea in mind but for now I’m just thrilled to have this space done! I’m knocking things off the to-do list and it feels so good! I may do these no-spend months more often!! (Although I’m starting to get a HomeGoods itch.)

If you have any questions about this space that I didn’t answer, let me know and I’ll get you info in the comments!