The Official "After" Bathroom Post

Here's the pink bathroom one more time

(because I know everyone really wanted to see it again):

And here it is now:

This cabinet does need a little more painting and some knobs,

but I didn't want to put off the post any more. I had our "worker man" build this for us. We took out the medicine cabinet and this bathroom desperately needed somewhere to put stuff. I was nervous about how it would look in the small space, but I'm super happy we did it. Those baskets are from Hobby Lobby (half off baby) and they don't currently hold much other than hair bows for the girls.

I kept our old shower curtain thinking I'd shop around for a new one (I LOVE this one from Anthropologie but $148 is a little high for me! And check out this bath mat! Only $38 so maybe that will happen one day. In the meantime a bathmat towel works just fine for our poor student feet.)

I'm so excited about the fixture set I got on clearance at Home Depot for only $100. It's Delta, it's awesome, and it's normally almost $300. It feels amazing!

Loving the oil rubbed bronze! And the refinished tub is beautiful! You can not buy a bathtub like this anymore I've been told. It saved a lot of money to just refinish instead of replace too. In a picture later in the post you can see the lines of the tub's side. Lovely!

Here you can see the built in shelves. This was a very smart move, I think. It makes the bathroom feel more expensive and custom. And more storage! We lost a little room in the hall closet but it's worth it. The shelves are from the floor up to the ceiling.

We did tile all the way up to the ceiling instead of only part way up like the pink tile was.

We put some of the accent tile on the floor too. I love it! (A note on the tile - you do not have to spend big bucks on tile. You can, and if I had the money I would, but this tile tile only cost 1/4 of what we originally picked out and it looks great. I think adding a touch of accent tile goes a long way and with a bathroom this size wasn't a big cost anyway. I'm no tile snob! All of the tile was purchased at Lowe's by the way.)

One last look from the doorway. I haven't decided what, if anything, I'm doing for a window treatment. It gets a little busy since the shower curtain is right there so I'm leaning towards nothing. I still have the bamboo shade from before so we'll see. Also, the paint color is nomadic desert by Sherwin Williams (had it color matched at Lowe's with Behr paint). We started using that color for our flip house and I haven't found another I like better as far as this color family goes.

We've been in heaven with this new space. After living with the pink for so long, this is just incredible. It's still not huge, but it feels waaaay bigger. LOVE!

The End.

Getting Closer to Having a Bathroom

This whole bathroom thing has been long and painful. Mostly because of where the bathroom is and how whenever work is being done I have no access to my bedroom and all of upstairs is crowded and messy. The little ones like to play in their rooms a lot during the day so it's been a challenge. Anyway....Here's some progress pictures:

tile that still needs a good cleaning

some of the grout and all of the caulking has to be done after the bathtub is refinished

here are the built in shelves that aren't all the way set in or painted yet

Can you feel just how small this bathroom is? We've just been happy to have 2 1/2 bathrooms in this house. Most houses around us seem to have only 1 or 1 1/2 bathrooms.

Having a toilet in the hallway closet is a new trend we're trying to start. Don't be jealous!

The beginnings of tile

Everything's still very messy, but we have progress! I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but we're making built in shelves where there was just a wall. We'll end up losing a little of the hall closet space but I think it will be worth it.

I'm excited that I found tile for a really great price that still looks great. It does in my opinion anyway! (and it is my bathroom and my blog so I guess I get the final say!)

There's a closeup of the accent tile.

Hello, you beautiful little piece of my oil rubbed bronze handle. I love you already.

I told you it was still messy. Work resumes at 10:00 tomorrow morning.

Dusty Brown is the Color Now

Here's the progress from the first day. The pink tile turned out to be very stubborn. Whoever picked it out so many years ago must have wanted it to stay forever because they put it down with a couple inches of cement. Everything thing hanging on just about every wall in the house either fell off or was crooked because of all the banging and pounding. Wow.

Interesting to see what's behind the walls. I was hoping to find something cool so we could be on that show called "If Walls Could Talk" on HGTV. Maybe next time.

The tub refinishing man just came a little bit ago to start the tub.

But then he left because our contractor told me wrong. Apparently, you should do everything else in the bathroom first and then have the tub refinished.

Major bummer since now the tub people are a couple weeks out in their scheduling. Hopefully someone will cancel or another company can come sooner. This tub is the only one in the house. We have the (smallest ever) shower in the yellow bathroom but the three younger ones can't use it. At least it's not summertime so they won't be sweaty and gross. Lots of sponge baths may be in their future.

These things are never easy, are they?

I Love Pink

....but not so much that I want it all over our bathroom.

Pink is finally on its way out!!!

Here's a picture of the bathroom before we bought our house:

And then here are a few pictures I took this morning after taking everything out and the demolition was about to begin.

When we first looked at our house, I thought the tub just needed a good cleaning. Wrong. It needed much more. I'll look a little closer next time we're house hunting! I don't think the picture shows how bad the tub is. Lucky you.

It's been a long (almost) two years to wait for this day. My house is currently covered in dust from all the work, but it's going to be so worth it! By this weekend (hopefully), we'll be doing a happy dance. (Okay, I admit it - I'm already doing a dance now!)

Downstairs Half Bath

Our potty to people ratio definitely improved when we moved into this house. That's a good thing, as Martha Stewart might say.

When we first moved in though, I pretty much just closed the downstairs bathroom for business (pun intended). There was carpet in there (gross and not bleachable) and the toilet wasn't working very well. It didn't take much money and effort to rehab this little room though.

Here's a picture before we ever moved in (notice the weird light placement, the wooden potty seat, and the golden mirror):

The only thing wrong with the mirror for my taste was the goldness. I took that little guy outside and taped it off and sprayed it down.

I used this kind of paint but if I did it again I wouldn't use the metallic finish. I suppose it doesn't bother me that much though or I would have already repainted it. Either way, spending $3 for a can of paint beats $40+ for a new mirror any day.

Here's the bathroom with a new light (above the mirror instead of beside it!), the newly painted mirror, a new pedestal sink (these are dirt cheap at Home Depot and Lowe's) and the new faucet. I got to use a 10% off coupon too. =) That brought all of those things down to less than $100.

The potty was a discontinued model (that I LOVE and I'm sad I can't put them in my other bathrooms - look at the curves and the lines!). Because they no longer stock them, I got this one on clearance. We used tile and grout leftover from our last house so that was free.

The walls are painted caramelized onion by Valspar in a flat finish. (I used this color in John David's room first and I heart it very much. I couldn't bear to not use it again!) All the wall things I already had. That art plaque is strategically covering up an ugly silver vent fan. So don't do stinky things in my pretty bathroom - the fan is covered up!

So while my upstairs bathrooms are pink and yellow, at least I have this downstairs. Ahhhhhh......

Our Den

Just a reminder of what it looked like before we bought the house:

And here’s what it looked like very early in the redo – furniture was already in the middle of the room and the floor was taped off:

Here I’ve painted the fireplace and primed the walls:

Next I had to remove all the cabinet doors and the hardware:

It’s always a good idea to use some ziplock bags for hardware or switchplates when you’re painting or remodeling. Don’t think you can put them aside somewhere and keep them all together. (Trust me on this one.)

My Purdy paintbrush took a beating with this project but it did the job. If you invest in a good brush and take care of it, it will last a long time. I like Purdy brushes and for this angled 4” brush you’ll pay around $12-$15.

Here’s what the den looks like now:

That’s the garage you see outside the windows. I was unsure about what color to paint the door, and I started with white that matched the trim. It wasn’t right though and it really drew a lot of attention to the door, which is not where I want the eye to go. A deep chocolate brown was much better. I didn’t have money to buy new hardware for the cabinets so I used some dark brown Valspar spray paint and gave them all new life. $3 for a can of paint was much better than paying $3+ for each knob plus all the hinges!

Here’s a view standing near the tv corner. There’s the pass through into the kitchen. (That used to be an exterior window – this whole room was an addition in the 70’s. I painted both closets the same color as the walls (“coffee” by Valspar) since again, I didn’t want to paint them white and have them take up a lot of visual space.....Never mind about the pass through window - my picture was cropped by blogger and you can't even see it!

I love this little area! I’m still working on it (the baskets you see are temporary until I find a little side table about that height that I can rehab). The shelf thing has vintage door knobs as the hooks and it’s quite distressed (naturally!). I’m still thinking about what I want to go above it or on it. The chair is a $15 thrift store find and the plan is that this area is for putting on and taking off whatever huge snow boots we will be wearing for the next three years of our lives. (yea!)

This weird metal bug belonged to the former owners. Why would somebody own this? How funny. Funnier still is the fact that I haven’t removed it! Kind of a creepy little guy, huh? What a great white elephant gift. Maybe I should hang on to it?

And in order to not close with a freaky looking bug picture, here’s one last look at the room. I really had a difficult time arranging furniture. The shape of the room plus the fact that there’s not a lot of usable wall space - due to window seats and closets – had me pretty frustrated. It finally worked when I put the tv on my grandmother’s old sewing table and stopped worrying about blocking some of the cabinets. I used a $.50 garage sale suitcase to give the corner some height and to anchor a lamp sitting on a couple of vintage books. The wicker ottoman is purposefully under the tv in order to add texture and to hide lots of cords. The container of sticks and eucalyptus was the final touch for that corner. It really finished it out.

So there you have it. A very different (and I think much better looking!) room for the cost of paint (about $50) plus a few garage sale and thrift store accessories. If I had the cash, there would be beautiful bamboo shades on all the windows plus some better decor for the fireplace. Also some pillows for all the window seats. I’ll probably make some pillows this winter though and the shades will just have to wait. Besides, I like the view outside!

This was one week’s worth of work that, to me, is very worth it……