Powder Room Heaven

On December 18, I received a call at work from Rob.  He said, "Guess what I did?"  I thought maybe he took my chair to get reupholstered.  "What babe?" I asked.  Rob responded, "I just took an ax to the bathroom and it's completely gutted.  Toilet and all!" 

If you're not an enthusiastic DIY couple like us I'm pretty sure this news would be terrifying to hear.  And especially if you had no ideas or plans for what you wanted to do with it.  But me, I was excited.  My only wish is that Rob's timing for his random act of demolition hadn't come one week before Christmas and three weeks before a baby shower was being thrown at our home. 

We briefly talked about redoing this bathroom, but NOTHING was definite and we never discussed timing.  So, although I was excited to hear the news, I was also stressed because we had no idea what we were going to do.  But knowing you have 20 plus people coming to your home in less than three weeks for a party is a good way to kick your butt into mega work mode.  We devised a plan really fast. 

Here's what our bathroom looked like on the morning of Dec. 18th.  I took this picture with my old iPhone during our final walk through in Aug. 2009 - so I apologize for the quality.

And this is what the bathroom looked like after demolition.

But now, our bathroom looks like this.  Heavenly.

The inspiration for this bathroom came from several different images.  To see my inspiration images check out the Inspire Me page.

Xylem manufactures the white Marble counter top.  I ordered it from FaucetDirect.com on a Wednesday and had it in my living room by Monday - I'm an extremely happy customer.  Most local retail stores could have ordered this for me but the average delivery time was 2-3 weeks.

The light fixture is from Home Depot.  It's more modern and attractive than I thought it'd be.

The mirror is Martha Stewart

The knobs are a nice touch that we added on the vanity doors.

This is where the old toilet used to be.

It's a stinky job - but somebody had to do it

And this is our new and improved, slow closing lid and comfort height, Kohler toilet.

I purchased the picture frame above the toilet at a local thrift store

I want to tell you about some of the things we did to our bathroom...

Below is a picture I took when I was setting the tile.  That's correct, when "I" was setting the tile :) .  We both agreed that I'd be the best person for the job because I'm the more detail oriented one.  And when you set tile you have to make sure you get the lines extremely straight, otherwise the imperfections will show when you grout. 

We were lucky because the floor was cement and level.  If the floor had been wood we would've had to lay sheets of cement to create a hard surface and level it out.  We simply mixed up thinset and then I applied it straight to the cement floor with a trowel, shown below. 

As I set the tile in the thinset, I placed spacers in between the tiles to help assist me in getting perfectly straight lines.  The spacers helped - especially because sometimes the tiles can shift as they're drying.

Once the tile was set and dry and the counter top was installed, it was time for me to apply the glass tile backsplash.  These tiles were super easy to work with and thank goodness they can be purchaed on square foot sheets, otherwise I would've never attempted this backsplash. 

I used the same thinset and trowel that I used to set the tile on the floor.  We used nine sq.ft. of  tile for the back wall and about one and a half for each of the side walls.  When the tile was set and dry, we grouted with a sandless white mixture.

I decided to keep the vanity we had and stain it a dark mahogany.  It took some convincing on my part to get Rob to agree to this, since he really wanted to buy a brand new one.  But once he priced out a few vanities he realized  how much money we could save and quickly jumped on the thrifty boat. 

To achieve the dark mahagony vanity we envisioned, first I sanded all the wood with 220 grit sandpaper.  When I was finished sanding I used a tact cloth to thoroughly wipe the wooden doors and vanity base.  Tact cloths are great for removing teeny dust and dirt particles that can ruin a paint job if left on.

I used a MINWAX wood stain and conditioner on the vanity.  The wood conditioner is great for preparing your wood for stain and it helps you apply even coats of stain onto the surface.  I chose a wood stain with Polyurethane already in it - this was a super time saver and allowed me to skip a crucial and important painting step. 

You should invest in a higher end brush made especially for oil paints, finishes and stains because it will hold up longer and is easier to clean.

This shows how our Maple doors looked after just one coat of Bombay Mahogany wood stain.  I painted four coats of stain, allowing each coat to dry for five hours, before I achieved the look I wanted.  Notice how there are no knobs on the doors?  Rob installed the silver knobs onto the doors.

My original plan was to stencil this design on the powder room walls and fill in with a high gloss paint, but unfortunately the time crunch got the best of me. 

Plan B?  I had a large gold picture frame in the closet that I bought for $10 in a thrift shop.  Is gold making a come back?  Since I didn't have time to paint the stencil, I decided to add a piece of patterned fabric into the picture frame.  The fabric was on super sale at JOANN for $4.

And that concludes this long tutorial.  I hope you enjoy the "after" images as much as we love how it all turned out.

If you saw something in these pictures that you have a question about please, please feel free to shoot me an email - I'd be happy to hear what you have to say (good or bad) and answer your questions. 

Thanks again for stopping by and checking out my latest DIY project.  Good night!

THIS TUTORIAL IS PARTYING WITH THE BEST OF THEM AT:



Kitchen Makeover

Yikes!  It's hard to believe that this was our kitchen one year ago.  When we bought our town house this is exactly what it looked like- the horrible border, two layers of caked-on wallpaper (hard to see in pics), 21 year-old blinds, stale cabinets, and oh yeah, the gi-NORMOUS light fixture.  How can you miss that thing?

Our kitchen was the second project we tackled once we moved in.  The first room that we worked on was our living room. 



The knobs were actually pretty decent so we kept them





Just your standard maple cabinets...



And here's how the kitchen looks today!  This project was a BIG one for us...our biggest yet.  All said and done, I'd say we worked on this extreme makeover for about a month- maybe a little longer.  But hey, well worth it in my book. 



I LOVE, love, LoVe, lOvE how it turned out.  We get so much sunlight in here and the feeling is super airy and open. 



The two corner glass front cabinets and light fixture is new. 




I'm happy with the way the knobs look against the Valspar Swiss Coffee paint. 

 



New Blinds!!!  What a DIFFERENCE blinds make people.



We peeled and ripped wallpaper and argued and sweat and peeled wallpaper and almost gave up and ripped more wallpaper.  The wallpaper just kept appearing. 

We've mastered the art of sanding, smoothing, priming, painting and drying.  

Today, Rob has quite an extensive handyman list of accomplishments- but a year ago, installing a new dishwasher was a pretty impressive task (for a city boy) to do himself, to say the least.  Thank goodness for handy hubbies! Muah.

Poster Bed Find

This may sound weird to a non-DIYer...but this poster bed find made my year! 

I consider myself lucky for two reasons.  One, because yours truly actually stumbled across this.  And two, I found this ON MY LUNCH BREAK!!!  I know, I know...you're jealous :)~  I rarely leave the office on my lunch break so I consisder myself super special.

When I laid eyes on this bed I would have bet money that someone else had already bought it.  I thought to myself, "There's NO WAY that bad boy hasn't been purchased yet.  It's waaay to special!"  It was sort of off to the side too- almost as if someone had intentionally tried to keep it out of eye sight.  Well my friends, I scored this beauty for $54 buckaroos.  I know, I know...you hate me!




Here's the poster bed at Impact Thrift Store at the time it caught my eyes.  It's hard to tell from this picture but the bed was actually off to the side a ways- seperated from the other bedroom furniture.

At first, I debated painting the bed becase the wood was in such great condition and had so much shine.

 

Here's the bed  when we got it home.  I had to go back to the thrift store with Rob and pick it up several days after I purchased it because it wouldn't fit into my teeny car.



This is the bed after one coat of paint.  I'd like to apologize for the awful cellphone picture quality.  As I mentioned somewhere on my blog before, at the time I started alot of my DIY projects I didn't know I'd be blogging about them today- otherwise I'd have nicer pics to share :)

 To check out the poster bed, in its finished glory, click here and scroll down.

Rob and I sanded the poster bed with a medium coarse sandpaper until the surface was roughed up pretty well. Then, we used a finer sandpaper to smooth out the wood surfaces. Finally, I painted the poster bed with a black semi-gloss paint. I wanted the bed to really look nice and thought that by using a paint with some shine would do the trick.

When I bought this bed I was so excited I didn't realize that the bed frame was sold separately.  I snagged a frame at the same thrift store for $10.00.  All said and done, our guest poster bed only put us back $97 with materials.  Actually, that's way ahead in my book- my budget loves me!!! 

Not too shabby, right? I hope you like.

THIS DIY PROJECT WAS LINKED AT The DIY Showoff,  HERE

For Our Special Guests

I'm so happy to tell you that I just finished a makeover on a dresser and nightstand for my guest bedroom.  After I found the super chic poster bed for this room at a local thrift shop [on my lunch break] I knew I could definitely find the perfect dresser and nightstand too!

About a month ago, Rob was randomly searching around the furniture section on Craigs List when he came across a couldn't-be-more-perfect set for our guest bedroom.  The best part about it was that seller literally lived around the corner from us.  Well actually, the best part about it was that we scored both pieces for one hundo dollars- Cha Ching!!!!

Here's what the pieces looked like when we picked up the furniture



These are the draws I removed from the dresser while I was preparing for the sand down



As you can see above, the wood was badly warped from condensation- but nothing a good sanding job wouldn't take care of.





Our first step was to sand all surfaces with an extra coarse 60 sandpaper .



The course 60 sandpaper worked really well to break through the glossy top coat and in roughing up the wood surface.  Once all surfaces were sanded, we used a very fine 180 sandpaper to smooth out the wood and prepare the surface for painting.



When the sanding was complete, and all surfaces were as smooth as a baby's you know what, we wiped everything really well with a tact cloth.  Tact cloths are great beacause they're really sticky and do a very good job in wiping off all the fine wood particles.

Next step was to paint a primer coat- I chose a latex primer because at the time I wasn't in the mood to deal with the messy clean-up involved with an oil based.  We let the primer dry over night. 

Finally, we painted the pieces with two coats of a black semi-gloss paint.  I chose this type of paint because I thought that the added shine of a semi-gloss would give these peices the extra umph they needed.  Also, I used a semi-gloss on my poster bed and I wanted the finishes to match.

And here's how they turned out

All said and done, this very thrifty dresser and nightstand combo cost us $140.00.