Getting it done. And it feels good..

Hi friends!
I hope you all are enjoying the summer-like weather we're having here in the beginning of May. Days of popscicles, swimming, car washes, vacations and fireworks are just a few short weeks away. But before we get all in to that, let's look back just a bit first.

 I mentioned a while ago how some of our projects seem to get pushed to the side. Mainly, projects we've finished, except for a dot of glue here, a dab of paint there etc. So, here I am to show you our laziness when it comes to finishing things up and the final result. Yep, I'm totally rockin' the fact that we've managed to get a few of those nagging "I'll get to it later" tasks completed. So lets get started.

Here are a few pictues from a previous post about this subject.

These doors are in our bedroom. The first leads to our kitchen (the master is on the first floor), the middle door is to the bathroom and the one on the right is our closet. All the doors and trim were the wood color in the entire house. So slowly and surely, we've been painting our hearts out. This was the last door we had to do downstairs.




 After:




Much better right? We think so. So much crisper. Amazing what a little paint can do. Part of that may be the new camera. But who's counting? :)

Another painting project that was put on the back burner, was this:

Oh my goodness. This was a super-duper no-no. I can't believe I #1 let this go for so long without being fixed, but more importantly, #2. I can't believe I didn't finish is while I was in the middle of painting!? I can't imagine what happened when I decided to leave it. Obviously the world didn't come to an end, no one died, and no one was hurt (that I can recall). So who knows why I left it like this. The important part is It got fixed.

 I wish I could decide whether or not to replace the door knobs and door plates. I would love to have oil rubbed bronze ones, but they are really pricey. And I would never see that money again at resale. But these brass ones have certainly seen better days. Thoughts? Suggestions? I digress...

Anyway.. now we get into the larger of the "unfinished projects". These were primarily thresholds.

Because these are wood projects, left over from when we re-did our floors, we needed to find a stain in a very similar color as our floor. So we got our measurements and headed off to Lowes to see what we could come up with.

Here's the arsonel we came up with to tackle the job.

1.  A box cutter. If you don't have a miter saw (which we don't) this is your new best friend. I seriously love this thing. It's perfect for making precision cuts easily. And the best part? It's only 8 bucks for the whole kit at the hardware store.
2.  Liquid nails. We needed this for around the fireplace. I'll get to that in a second.
3.  Minwax polyeurothane and Cabot wood stain for staining and sealing our trim pieces.
4.  A tape measure. Just to make sure we don't screw up.
5.  Old rags for applying the stain/ poly.

We took a piece of scrap wood flooring to the store with us to find a stain that would make the best match. Here's the two next to one another. They're slightly different, but I'm ok with that. It really makes the floors pop against the trim. And it doesn't look at all like it doesn't match. They're a perfect combo that really highlight each other.  

 Here's another shot, after our pieces were stained.

When it came time to install the trim around the fireplace, things were a little more complicated than just nailing the strips in place. There was a band of cement from the brick that ran around the perimenter of the hearth, making any nail job completely useless. So, we opted to use liquid nails. We applied it to the floor first, and laid the trim on top. We sat heavy books on it and after the recommended time, we got this.

Not bad right?  We love how finished everything looks.

So there you have it, our now finished, unfinished project list. :)

What sort of projects do you need to complete? Hopefully I've given you some motivation to get some items on your list accomplished.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Master Bath details

So it's been quite a while since the master bath reveal post, and it's high time I got around to updating you all on the details.


Now, let me back up a little bit. This house was built in 1988. And in that time period, large bathrooms weren't a builder focus the way they are now. We were ok with smaller bathrooms in our first home. We knew when we bought this property it wasn't going to be our forever home, and we're ok with that.  We've never had plans to rip out walls, make things bigger or gigantic. It's not where we wanted to put our money. Looking at the real estate in our neighborhood, we likely would never see that money when we do sell, so we never made it an option. That being said, because things are a bit smaller, we knew we needed this room to work hard for us.


When I left you last, the bathroom looked like this:

And not much has changed. We added some shoe moulding around the room which really makes the room looked finished. See?

Now, about the fixtures. We chose to keep the existing plumbing fixtures for now. We're on the hunt for a nice solid surface countertop and once we replace it and get a new sink, we will replace all the fixtures at one time. We weren't in a hurry for this step, and honestly, we would rather wait and find the perfect piece than make a rash decision we would regret later. Besides, fixtures are costly and we liked keeping the budget pretty tight for this little upgrade.

But the old ratty, plastic/brass-y toilet paper holder and towel rod had.to.go. What a nightmare they were. So we purchased a new set along with the glass shelf and light fixture. They really help pull the room together. But you hear over and over how the fixtures are the jewelry of the room. So true.

Now, for storage. We removed the horrible brown medicine cabinet (see previous post) and replaced our mirror with a true medicine cabinet. One day we will recess it, probably when we replace the counter, but for now it's fine. And it does solve some of our storage issue. But like a lot of things, it's a work in progress. I would like to add a shelf in the vanity cabinet to utilize some more vertical space for bottles, etc. Ah, the to-do list continues.

But we've been living with the room now for about 5 months and we love it. Over time we've added a little art. I found some fabric that I really liked, so I bought a yard, cut out the parts I like and stapled it around a couple pieces of canvas. Simple and effective. 

Now for the floor. We hemmed and hawed about this for a while before we made a decision. We thought about trying to tile, but we really couldn't decide on a pattern we liked. Add that along with having to rent a tile saw, buy all the grout, sealer and mastik, we decided to look at other options. We had put in peel-and-stick tile in our bathroom upstairs and love it. We've had zero problems with water at bath time, our guests have no complaints and it's a very affordable option. So we carried ourselves to the store and found the perfect pattern.

It makes our "off white" tub actually look purposeful instead of like we're trying to cover it up. That was a huge issue for both of us. We knew we couldn't replace the tub, so whatever floor we went with had to be able to pull the room together. Luckily, for us. This is perfect. And for around $8 to do the whole room, SOLD! And, we're happy to report, after 5 months and 2+ showers everyday it still looks brand new. Love.

So there we go. Done, for now. Story of our life :) What have you been working on? Any big plans your way? Any other bathroom warriors out there?

Sick of the Master Bathroom

Well, we did it again. Another remodel. The victim was our master bath. I've never shown you our master bath because of how ugly it was. I was ashamed. It's been on our list since we bought the house, but for whatever reason, it took us 2 1/2 years to get to it. Here is my train of thought:

Venture back in time with me about 3 weeks. John is in Florida for work all week. I have the house to myself. See where I'm going? Well, I spent plenty of time in our bathroom; but not for the reason you're thinking. Of course I would get a stomach bug the week he's gone. You can envision me hurling my toenails for 4 straight days. It was horrible. But what made it worse, was having to do it in an ugly bathroom. After one particular session of beginning to think I was going to die and laying on our floor I thought to myself: life is waaay too short to have to puke in an ugly bathroom.

So moving forward about 6 days, feeling better with the help of some IV fluids and prescription meds, I start to get the renovation twinkle back in my eye.

So over the past week, John and I have worked our buns off to get this finished. I'll share the details later, but for right now, here's some before and afters. I hope you love it as much as we do!!

Before, realtor picture

Before- half ripped off wallpaper

Before-no storage

After

New Floors

Revamped vanity

We've added some art and shoe molding to the room since I took these pictures. I'll add those in and get to the details about what we did (and didn't do) in the next post :)