FINALLY...our Master Bathroom Update!

First of all....I can't believe that my last blog post was July 8th!  That is almost two months ago and I have lots to share.  I'm going to try and stay on a once or twice a week schedule this fall.

Second....I'm finally ready to share our master bathroom update that we've been working off and on since the end of May.   I was dealing with both a herniated C7 disc and a fractured ankle during the remodel so between those things, a couple problems we encountered and coordinating with both my husband and our plumber for time, it took twice as long as I should have, but we weren't in any hurry other than having a mess on our hands in our master suite for a while.

The bathroom is pretty large, but very poorly designed, lots of wasted space.  Unfortunately, we didn't have the budget to move plumbing around, so since we couldn't do that, there was no sense in spending money on new vanities, we just needed to update the ones we have!  About six months ago we replaced our toilet with a taller model that flushes quietly, yet strong, so we didn't have to worry about replacing that.  I also decided not to replace the vanity tops as there was nothing wrong with them, they are fine and a neutral off-white, so again, no sense in replacing.

I had half assed painted the bathroom in 2005 but I only did two walls and then did a paint effect around the ceiling parameter with small square sponges.

Here's some before pictures -

 

The tall white cabinets at the end of each of the vanities were purchased at IKEA a couple of years ago and the storage they provide comes in handy. 

We were still using the cheap ass light fixtures the contractor put in (I priced them....$13 bucks a piece) and the only nice thing I'll say about them is they give off good light, but their days were numbered.

 

Our vanities, although well built didn't come with hardware, so this update job includes new hardware for both of them.

 

 

and see that ugly sheet vinyl flooring?  It's history.

I'm pretty loyal to Sherwin Williams for paint, we have a store in my small burb, they have an awesome website to check out paint colors and I like it's durability.

 

For the bathroom, I chose SW6547 Silver Peony for the walls and SW6254 Lazy Gray for the cabinets and mirror molding.   The walls were done in SW Duration Home and for the vanities I used SW ProClassic Interior Acrylic Latex Enamel.

 

Here's a list of the things that we did -

 

1.  Painted the ENTIRE bathroom this time rather than just two walls.

2.  Painted both vanities and added hardware.

3.  Painted molding and framed both plate glass mirrors above the vanities.

4.  Replaced the light fixtures.

5.  Replaced the faucets.

6.  Took down the two towels rods and installed a bar of towel hooks instead.

7.  Replaced our shower head with a rain shower head and bought a new corner shower caddy.

8.  Installed new light switch plates.

7.  Installed new flooring.

 

Here's a few progress pictures of the priming, painting, installing, etc. that happened over couple of months.

 

 

I lined all of the drawers and the bottom of the vanities with really cute paper I found at the Dollar General for $2 bucks a roll.

A closer look at the light fixture.  THAT gave us a bunch of issues from me not finding anything I liked to having an electrical issue spring up after we took down the original fixtures that needed to be corrected.  After searching for several weeks on the internet for lighting with no success, I finally went back to Lowe's where I had seen a section in their lighting department that was a "build your own" type thing and I found the right size fixture in the right finish and the perfect glass globes.  I wanted clear and I love that these are seeded.

 

The flooring was a whole another issue.....my husband was dragging his feet for weeks on this, so I compromised and said it could wait until I returned from a girl's retreat in Colorado.  The weekend after I came home, we started and although just a couple spots that were tricky, we were both surprised how easy and quick it went down.  Total time = about six hours which included breaks.

This is fabulous flooring if your not looking to use ceramic tile in a room that gets moisture.  It's vinyl plank flooring and I found it online at Home Depot.  The product is TrafficMASTER Allure and it comes in 6" x 36" planks.  The online reviews were what convinced me to use it, plus it was affordable, especially when DIYing it.

 

There's my handsome husband.  :)  

 

 

Here's the finished product!!! 

 

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out since I couldn't have the 20K luxury gut job I would have liked to have. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The faucets were found at ATG Stores online and the vanity hardware at Menards.  Funny story about the hardware.  I ended up picking the exact same knobs as I did when we added hardware to our kitchen cabinets.

 

 

I'm not completely happy with the shower curtain I found, but it will do for now.  The picture on the left shows the color brighter than it really is, it's definitely more of a muted lavender.  The print above the toilet I found at ArtFest Midwest earlier this summer and framed it using a discounted brushed silver frame from Michaels.

 

I also made the decision to get rid of the two towel bars.  One was over the toilet where the framed print is now and the other was over on the wall where the tower hook bar now hangs.  That space is really completely wasted, so I thought we might as well take advantage of it and just hang our towels.

 

Want know how much we put into our update?  Here's the breakdown (round up or down):

 

1. Paint and Primer = $157.00
2. Light Fixtures = $116.00
3. Bathroom Faucets = $178.00
4. Curved shower rod, shower curtain, showerhead and shower caddy = $122.00
5. Framing the mirrors = $45.00
6. Vanity hardware = $29.00
7. Light Switch plates = $24.00
8. Bath Rugs (IKEA) = $30.00
9. Flooring = $168.00
10. Miscellanous = $40.00
11. New linens (Target) = $85.00

For a grand total of $994.00

 

Thanks for stopping by and seeing what took quite a bit of my time this summer!

 

 

 

 



Garden Glimpses - Part 1

With the rainfall we got here in Iowa in May and June, my flower and vegie gardens are going bananas!  I'm already harvesting vegetables that I usually have to wait until later in July to harvest and I have flowers that are blooming better than they have in years.

Some of the early blooms in our yard include:

Peach Iris (they were in my mother's flower garden)

I divided and moved the Peach Iris two summers ago and this summer was the first bloom since relocating them.

Grape Hyacinth

Flowering Almond

Some of the summer blooms came a bit earlier this year and some of them are really taking off this year better than ever before.  The mounds of Salvia are huge this year.

Purple Salvia

Pink Salvia

Peonies

Knock Out Rose

I'm afraid that after this knock rose bloomed and I took this photo, it went into a death spiral.  :(  That's the second one I've lost, the first to the harsh winter of 2013.  I'm not quite ready to dig it up yet.

We have a garden I call the "triangle garden" because its sits in the corner of our backyard.  It's my experimental garden where I plants things and see how they do.  I also like to add interest by placing a huge container pot on one side of the garden to help elevate the color in the garden bed.  This year I filled it with wave petunias and verbena and they really took off.


Container full of Verbena and Wave Petunias

We have a garden I call the "triangle garden" because its sits in the corner of our backyard.  It's my experimental garden where I plants things and see how they do.  I also like to add interest by placing a huge container pot on one side of the garden to help elevate the color in the garden bed.  This year I filled it with wave petunias and verbena and they really took off.

 

 

 

 I added a couple new pieces of "art" to this garden bed this year.  The first being a piece of driftwood that had been in my brother's yard for years that he got from Lake Rathbun and the second is a bicycle that wheel spokes turn in the wind that I found on Mother's Day at a farm/nursery south of where I live called Howell's Tree Farm.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was coming home with me and the price was reasonable too!

I also have lot of flowers growing in this garden that haven't done as well in previous years.  The Columbine really took off and as spread twice as much as last year and the clump of balloon flowers in that garden doubled.

Columbine

Balloon Flower

There's also the new aster plant that I planted last year that has come back and thrived this year.

 

I love lilies of all kinds and have several varieties.  These Asiatic lilies in the triangle bed are SO gorgeous when they bloom.

 

I'll share more photos of our garden beds later.......the husband and I are heading on a long awaited overnight road trip tomorrow and I have last minute packing and stuff to do......

Thanks for stopping by!

~**Let's Talk Bathrooms Part 2**~

Since I'm finally starting on our master bathroom update, I thought I'd share the guest bathroom that I painted a couple of months ago.  It was still the same Sherwin Williams "Dover White" that the contractor had painted the entire house in eleven years ago.  It wasn't horrible, but it was time for a fresh coat of paint.  This bathroom is only used when we have house guests.  It's has a doorway into the guest bedroom and another doorway into the upstairs hallway.

 

As you can see it's a pretty basic bathroom.........

Here's the bathroom in a mid painting state.

 

I did want a fun way to offer up various toiletries that I have collected in my many travels and are perfect for guests to use.   I didn't have a lot of room and I was keeping all the toiletry samples in this IKEA glass jar, so whatever I decide to use has to be able to hold the jar.

I came across this wooden bar stool that looked to work perfect for what I had in mind. 

So, after my husband assembled it for me, I put the jar of toiletries on top and rolled up some extra towels and used the rungs of the stool to store those. 

 

I had some cute chalkboard tags that I found at the Target Dollar Spot, so I used one of them for cute way of letting my guests know they can use what they want.  :)

I was thinking about framing out the mirror and getting a new light fixture, but figured that could wait.  I have the master bathroom to think about.  I can come back and do that later.

To save a little money and because I like to repurpose things, I switched the relatively new shower curtain from our master bathroom to this bathroom.  I think it matched the Sherwin Williams "Blissful Blue" pretty well and it's such a pretty blue.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a peek at another project that I fill my retirement time with.

*Dining Alfresco - Getting our deck ready for the season*

It's that time of the year where I bring out the things we use on our deck.  Cushions, pillows, planters, lanterns, candles, etc. and once the threat of snow passed, it's time to clean up and bring the stuff from storage.

We waterproofed our deck last year and I hate what it did to it, so I'm really hoping that it wears off this year so that next year, we'll do it right and with a better product.

I bring out the deck rug, cushion to my lounge chair & my deck poof as soon as I can but it's far from finished.

 

We keep our gas grill out on the deck year round and have been know to shovel a path through the snow in the winter to use it.  Those three container pots in corner are going to hold herbs soon.

 

I have a wire rack that I use out there and because it stays out there over winter, I usually have to touch it up with a few squirts of spray paint every year......this year was no exception.  I store a tote full of things that I like to display on that rack along with containers I plant with flowers that go on it.

This year I decided that I wanted to do something to the shelves of the wire rack besides touching it up with spray paint.  Since the shelves were wire, some thing were hard to stand up on them and I thought it could use some more weight.

I came up with the brilliant idea of thick wood pieces to act as shelves on top of the wire shelves.  So off to Lowe's I went and I came back with exactly what I was envisioning.   I found a 2 inch thick board that was 8 foot long, had Lowe's cut it to the dimensions I needed and I hauled the pieces home.

Here is one of the boards unfinished and one of them after I stained it using Minwax's Mission Oak.  It's a product that is both a stain & polyurethane.

 

 

After I was done staining, I also sprayed them with some Thompson Water Seal since they'll be outside.

 

 

I let the boards dry for several days before I went forward with the project.  In the meantime, I re-spray painted the wire rack and let it dry.

 

Once everything was dry and with the help of our son, I was able to move the wire rack back out to the deck and set the boards on the shelves of the wire rack.

 

Here's the rack filled with the planters and garden things I love.  There is a scented geranium planted in the owl planter and you can catch whiffs of it when you walk by.

 

 

This year I decided to dedicate this corner of our deck to mostly herbs with a container of petunias thrown in.  I've got chives (they survived the winter in the pot and started growing again), dill, basil, flat leaf parsley, thyme and mint growing here.  They do pretty good....lots of morning and early afternoon sun, but get a break from it in the evening.





New this years is my Hawkeye planter!  I had never seen these black & gold petunias until I was out at Canoyer Garden Center and saw them there.  I paired them with some yellow daisies.  This isn't the best photo of the planter and I think it will look better once it fills in.  I made the Hawkeye plant post myself using a post finial, black gloss spray paint, Herky stickers and sealant.....total cost...probably around $5 bucks.

 

This is a huge dish planter that I scored at IKEA years ago and I use it for herbs also.  I have Rosemary and more Thyme planted in it this year.

A view of where I like to camp out on beautiful days.  Because the deck sits on the east side of our home, it's can almost too hot and sunny in the mornings so I have to use an umbrella when sitting out there.  After 2:00pm, the sun is over the house the it's shaded the rest of the day and evening.

 

Here's where we like to dine when the weather cooperates.  I bought new chair pillow this year in a blue, green and yellow color scheme and they are just the right thing to support your back if needed.



Of course our deck wouldn't be complete without paying homage to one of our favorite things in the world.......cats!  Found this guy (made out of salvage auto parts) at our local farmer's market years ago and he still makes me smile with I see it.

Enjoy your week!  I'm heading to Texas to see some long time friends and whoop it up a bit!

Back to the Land of Living - de nouveau

Wow....it's been three weeks since my last blog post and I can't say I felt any better in the past three weeks than I did in my last post.  That "left arm/elbow/hand" thing that I mentioned in my last post ended up being diagnosed as herniated disc at C6-C7.  :(   It took two urgent care visits, one neck x-ray and a cervical MRI before we figured out what it was and it hasn't been fun.

The herniation could be worse and at this point I've decided to go as conservative as I can with treatment ONLY because I actually think my arm is getting getter, little by little, day by day.  I'm dealing with it as best as I can with medication and will probably start some type of physical therapy and massage therapy soon. 

I've really been trying not to let the injury debilitate me because it's gardening season and my project list keeps growing, I just have to take frequent breaks and know what my limitations are.  2015 might not have started out well for me but I'm confident that the rest of the year will be much better.

Since my last post, we did get the cabinet that I showed you in my last post re-fitted with sliding drawers and its working out very well for us.  Fred built us one of these type of cabinets in our first home and we liked how functional it was.

Before -

I actually re-purposed that sliding wire basket on the left by installing it in another base cabinet and it works perfect for holding a basket with various kitchen gadgets.

After -

With our pots, pans, lids and wood planks -

 

When I took this picture I still hadn't put down drawer liners but you get the idea AND I can use my foot to pull out the bottom drawer.

 

*****************************************************************

 



Here's a sneak peek of part of my next project, but it's in line after the master bathroom get re-painted.

 

and just because.....some kitty cuteness......KirbyKat love.



Back to the Land of Living

Not going to sugar coat it....I've felt like crap the last couple of weeks.  Not only dealing with an elbow/arm/hand issue but the much loved young adult in the house decided to share his upper respiratory crap with me a couple of weeks ago and it kicked my butt!  My energy level has been non existent....I've had just enough energy to do my college class work, keep the house in order and cook some semblance of dinner for the family, everything else got pushed aside.

So, I've been neglectful of my blog and I'm getting to get myself back on some type of schedule, not just with my blog but with my life.  :)

I have lots of things on the horizon to manage.  My husband is leaving next week to visit his ailing mother in North Carolina and the young adult and I are staying home because of college and work (young adult).  I'm visiting some old friends next month in Houston and before I leave, I would really like to have our master bathroom re-do almost done but with my college class wrapping up and a final project due also besides the final exam before I leave, I not sure if it's possible.

As much as I want to completely rip out our master bathroom and re-do it, we can't afford to, so I'm going to just update...it's been 10 years since I painted and the floor has taken a beating also.

The re-do consists of:

• Completely repainting bathroom
• Framing both wall mirrors over the vanities
• New flooring
• New light fixtures
• New faucets
• and maybe painting the vanities

I'd like to get the painting done while the husband is gone and won't be using the room so that's how I'm going to approach it.....baby steps....

One thing I'm super excited about that is happening next week is the custom cabinet pull outs that I ordered for the base cabinet in our kitchen that houses our pots and pans.  I came across this local company EZ-Gliders at the Home & Garden show I went to in February and I had them come out and take a look and give me a quote.   It's not a cheap enhancement, but for us it's worth it because it's the one cabinet we are in and out of the most of all and it's not awful trying to find what you want.  We even tried a cheap wire pull out for pots and a wire coated plate rack to stand pans in but it's not working for us anymore.

I'm also contemplating tile choices right now for our fireplace surround.  It's the most ugly boring beige tile you have ever seen and it's crying for a make-over also.  :)

AND in addition to all that....I have our everything on our deck in disarray while I'm repainting and freshening up some things...too many things....how in the hell did I ever work 44 hours a week?

So....stay tuned....lots to share.....hopefully I'm over the hump with this creepy crud I have and I'm ready for spring, house projects, gardening and some outings!