Category Archives: Bathrooms

Wainscoting in the half bath

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Working on the half bath has been spread out over many, many months- but my goal is to have it done by the end of this month because I now have the tools to complete it myself. Holler!

Let me run you through the steps we’ve covered so far.

This is what the bathroom looked like when we moved in:

very before

The half bath is in the basement, and was poorly DIY’d by the previous owners. The bottom half looks like painted wainscoting but it isn’t. It’s painted textured wallpaper that was bubbling and peeling. And the yellow top half was so bright it was almost offensive.

Matt set about to remove the wallpaper and found that in removing it he was also ripping off the drywall- no bueno. We changed our plan of attack from removing the wallpaper and painting to removing what we could, adding actual wainscoting to cover the mess, and repainting the top half. With some gift certificates we bought 2 of the following:

kit info

All of the pieces in the kit fit together, the wainscoting is groved to lock in, and the bottom trim is groved so the wainscoting tucks into. The top molding requires finishing nails to add the final touch.

Matt & his friend Nate spent a day cutting it down to size and putting it up, they got about halfway done:

hammering in

The bottom trim got liquid nailed to the wall, then the wainscoting parts fit right into it (also liquid nailed to the wall), then it all got finishing nails to make sure it extra fit. Even just the left side and back wall took hours– it’s not hard work, but it is tedious work. So since October it’s looked like this:

left side

Well I’m sick and tired of imagining what it will look like when it’s done, and I got real sick and tired of waiting for someone else to do it- so I messaged my blog friends, we picked out a jigsaw, and it arrived in the mail on Saturday! I’m going to finish this job my damn self. WORD.

Since I’ll be doing the rest myself I’ll be able to provide a much better how to and some more in depth pictures, so stay tuned!!

Here’s what I’ve got left to do:

  • put up wainscoting, trim, and molding  on the other half  of the room
  • prime and paint all the wainscoting (white)
  • prime and paint the vanity and light fixture white (not seen)
  • decorate! ….with horror movie posters. because I promised Matt the downstairs was his.

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PS- Have you voted for me to win an Apartment Therapy Homie yet? I’m never going to win, but right now I’m sitting happily in the middle and I’d love to stay there. Also, you can vote for as many blogs as you’d like so vote away here!

Jars as light fixtures?

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Yesterday my girl Emma posted about using jars as updated light fixtures and had trouble finding a jar that would work, so I told her I’d test out a few from my hoard to see if I could make anything work.

I have an intense glass jar hoard: sauce jars, jam jars, peanut butter jars, salsa jars…. you name it, I’ve got it. And ultimately I found that the jar from the weird peanut butter my fiance likes (Natural Teddie Peanut Buter) was the one that had the largest mouth, and therefore the one that not only fit in my fixture but also fit over my regular sized light bulb.

Before I share with you pictures I’m going to ask that you kindly refrain from judging the following areas of my bathroom:

  • The weird spot by the mirror where the previous owners stopped tiling, which is perfectly located in a spot far enough out that one couldn’t just buy a larger mirror to cover the area
  • The tile itself, it’s disgusting
  • The fact that I totally didn’t even close my shower curtain all the way when I took these pictures
  • Anything else awful about my bathroom I’m forgetting to mention

Please and thank you.

And now, a whole mess of pictures:

One the left you can see the original old lady fixture, and on the right you can see the peanut butter jar, and in the mirror reflection you can see my gross yellow glowing vent.

Here she is at a level view. If we stick with this, we’d get a prettier looking bulb.

And from the side- you can see here I’ve got the type of fixtures that requires you tighten 3 screws to hold the cover in place, as opposed to one where you would thread it in (like tightening the cover of a jar).

One more that shows you the current one vs. this one

So here’s the deal, if you turn on that light it is like THE POWER OF THE SUN in there. So we’d have to go with a lower wattage if we stuck with this. And then we were thinking maybe we’d just paint the top half too… but I feel like it’s so close to the bulb that might be a bad idea? Thoughts on this?

Another concern: I immediately felt like this looked ridiculous because it sticks straight out from the wall, as opposed to if we had a fixture where it would sort of hang over (like the one in Emma’s post), but Matt seemed to really like it. What do you think?

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Wainscot for the half bath!

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Thanks to Matt’s lovely family we had enough money in gift certificates to enter THE FINAL PHASE (please, read that epically) of the half bath redo! Woot woo!

When I last left you, our bathroom was looking like this:

egads.

 

The room used to have painted contact paper on the lower half and when Matt tried to remove it the wall came off as well. No bueno. We decided to leave it as is and cover it with wainscot, so two days ago I purchased two of these bad boys:

The whole kit & kaboodle all in one!

 

For some reason wainscot was crazy hard to find in person, so we ordered it online (free shipping at least) and it’ll be here in a few days. I contacted our handy dandy friend (who helped with our kitchen sink and built in shelving) and he’s agreed to come on board once again.

Here’s my best guess at what’s still to do:

  •  remove current baseboard
  • install wainscot
  • possibly paint wainscot (I think it may just be primed)
  • paint vanity and mirror
  • decorate

Hope fully it’ll be done in a few weeks!

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And one last thing, would you pretty please vote for me to win an Epic Room Makeover? All you have to do is scroll down to the entries here and click the little star under entry #36- no log ins, no connecting to Facebook, just a teensy tiny little click! <3

 

 

It’s a Dirty Job

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Matt was busy, busy around the house last week getting things done before he’s back to schooling and work full time. Of all he did, I’m most pleased he tackled the grossness of our upstairs bathroom. Even though we painted, frosted the window and removed the drape, added a new curtain, and switched up the mirror , and redecorated a little there was still two big issues: stank and mold.

First he tackled the vent- which I will not share pictures of because I could barely look at them myself. But they were rusted, bubbled, and full of dust and pee. Yes, pee. My lovely fiance scrubbed, sanded and repainted and now it’s fresh white and un-stanked.

Next up  he tackled the ceiling, which was covered in various types of mold. Here’s a few shots of it:

I don’t even want to talk about how it feels to look up from a shower to see patches of that lurking above.

Oooh black mold, my favorite.

Somehow this is my THIRD experience with moldy ceilings. Hopefully it is my last. But from experience, I instructed Matt to completely bleach the ceiling (1 part bleach, 2 parts water) to kill the mold, let it dry, sand and scrape it off, and then to paint. Things are looking much better now:

The absence of color never looked so good.

Painting the ceiling made a WORLD of difference. This room has graduated from “dark, sad, and awful” to “bright, light, and live able.” I’ll take it! If you want to see what we started with, just check here.

Half Bath Update

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When I last mentioned this room, it looked like this, so really anything is an improvement. This started off as Matt’s project but I’ll be stepping in over the next two weeks (I have some vacation time coming up) to help out and speed things along.

So far the trim has been taken down, the ceiling has gotten two coats of bright white paint, the painted wallpaper has been almost taken down (more on that in a second), and the top coat has been laid out.

Still to do:

  • Add trim paint to the built in
  • Sand down and paint the vanity white
  • Sand down and paint the mirror white
  • Install bead board or wainscoting

But enough words, here’s the visual…

Anything is an improvement over sunshine yellow and navy, right? Right?

We always, always, always use Behr paint because of our very scientific and in depth research: Dad said so. We went with a blue that’s a few shades lighter then the office  and a few shades lighter then what we have in mind for the adjoining room- it’s called Waterscape. This means all of “Matt’s territory” will be steely, manly blue and the rest of the house will be a smorgeous board of crazy Stephanie picks. Fair enough.

Try and ignore the lower wall. I promise it will all work out.

When Matt was attempting to remove the wallpaper that was on the lower half of the wall he ran into a bit of a pickle: apparently the wall was coming off with the paper. He decided to hold up, and we’re going to leave the paper on there and cover it up with bead board or wainscoting. A friend of ours, the same one who helped put in the kitchen sink, will assist with the install. We’ve estimated it’ll cost a little under $100 for all the supplies, so we may  not get to this until early September.

Oye.

I think once the lower section of the walls are white, along with the vanity and mirror, it’ll look really nice in here. Maybe a little beachy? I’m not sure that’s what I’m going for but it may end up being the case anyway.

Have you done any bathroom updates lately? Ever install bead board or wainscoting? Let a girl know!

Making a Curtain from a Cardigan

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If you read this blog regularly (or you know me, of course) you know we’ve got a lab mix puppy. He’s 10 months old now and after lots of time and love and training he doesn’t destroy nearly as much as he used to. However, several months ago when he was teething he got hold of lots of things, including my favorite cardigan sweater…

It doesn’t look like much here, but I assure you it was adorable. And it was on sale!! For shame…

Because I’m a hoarder, I’ve been holding on to this sweater for months- there was perfectly good fabric and very usable buttons! How could I throw it out?

Then yesterday I posted about my newly spray painted  bathroom mirror and how I was unsure if it needed to be more snazzy or not. One of the comments suggested I get better curtain for the vanity and maybe some accessories or art. Well that got me thinking…. this sweater just so happens to have the perfect cream color to match the tiles and also has yellow and gray that ties in with the living room. Hmmm…..

First, I cut straight across the fabric right where the seam was at the bottom of the arm. I also cut the sleeves free and set them aside, and the seams where the buttons and button holes were as well. The sleeves didn’t have holes in them, so yeah I was still going to save that scrap fabric. Waste not want not, people!

I had a pack of Stitch Witchery that I bought when I made a halloween costume a few years ago, and basically it acts as a fabric adhesive so you don’t have to sew. I folded over each of my rough edges with the Witchery, placed a damp cloth over the fold, and steamed it into action with my iron.

I wear a size small, so unfortunately after folding over the seems to make even edges the “curtain” was too short- otherwise this would be a completely no sew DIY curtain project. To add length, I decided to sew my sleeves together to create a rod pocket.

Sewing the sleeves together was the most difficult part because I didn’t want to accidentally sew the pocket closed. I placed both sleeves on my arm and loosely sewed around the whole thing, then I went through and sewed around a second time.

Unfortunately, this looked pretty crumby when I turned it right side out because I winged it and had no idea what I was doing at any point during this project.

To cover this up, I took the buttonhole seams and used the Stitch Witchery to hide my mistakes. It wasn’t a perfect option, but it was clean enough and in the end result it looks like a purposeful design and not an attempt to hide my curtaining-without-a-plan.

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I doubled up on adding the seam, one line to hide my terrible sewing and another to cover up the rough edges. I was a little worried that it would be too thick and the Witchery wouldn’t adhere, but it worked perfectly fine as long as I applied pressure when ironing it on.

So now I had my curtain as one piece and my sleeve rod pocket as another piece, all that was left was to put them together.

I love you, Stitch Witchery. With the power of a thousand suns.

I gave the whole thing another once over with the iron to get all the wrinkles out and then headed upstairs to hang it up!

Here’s a reminder of what the old curtain looked like:

For some reason when we bought the house this vanity door was missing, nothing a tension rod and an old curtain couldn’t fix.

And now here’s the pretty after pictures:

Oooooh!!! Ahhhhh!!!

How cute is this little guy? It’s far from perfect, but I love it!

And here it is from the doorway, still being cute.

So there you go, almost-but-not-completely DIY no sew curtain from a cardigan sweater! I think this is one of my new favorite projects. If you don’t have puppy chewed clothes, you could always pick up a cardigan or even a long skirt from a thrift store to make something similar!

Now tell me, what have you up cycled from from old clothes or remnants?

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I’m linking up with the “Make It” link party!

Painting Metal

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I don’t know why, but I can’t just focus on one room of the house then finish it and move to the next. I’m working on every single room of this house simultaneously, but I just keep getting ideas here and there and it’s easier to jump around then try to contain them all.

Today’s project is my favorite kind: f-r-double e FREE. I updated the bathroom mirror using materials I had already purchased for another project and it looks much much better.

I’ve been working on this bathroom steadily for a few months now. First, I repainted it to change it from dark dank brown to light airy cream, then I bought a new accessories and but frosted contact paper on the windows to further brighten it up. Now I’ve done just about all I can do until we figure out if we’re going to get rid of the tile.

This mirror was hanging when we bought the house…sort of. The previous owner actually tried to take it and I had to call the real estate agent to get it back. It was a weird situation. But either way, it fits perfectly in the space and buying a new mirror that size would cost too much money so luckily I’m a fan of working with what you’ve got!

The mirror isn’t awful, but in the interest of brightening up the room and getting as many things to match as possible I wanted it to be white- maybe with a cool stencil or pattern on it.

From a distance it looks fine, but up close you can see it’s got a lot of discoloring and dings and scratches. No good.

I took the mirror outside and placed it on a tarp because spray paint can make a big old mess. First I put painters tape all around the border, on the mirror, and then I put cut up paper bags on top of it to help prevent overspray from getting on the mirror. Now that I’ve done this, I suggest you use plastic and not paper. You’ll see why in a minute…

I used Kilz spray primer because regular paint would not adhere to the metal, but the spraypaint I had on hand was good for both wood and metal. Shake the spray paint bottle for a good couple of minutes then use thin, thin, thin even coats. I probably went around the frame three times, one right after another, lightly misting it over each time. This prevents it from getting a thick sandpapery texture and drips around the edge.

Immediately take off all the paint and paper/plastic guard because spray paint dries quickly. You can see it also managed to seep through the paper and get on the mirror. Ugh.

If spray paint does get on your mirror, just take a razor and lightly scrape it off. It won’t do any damage if you hold it at an angle. (Look mom, I did my nails again!)

This is the part where I had to make a decision: leave the mirror completely white or stencil a design on it. I really wanted just a little stencil on each corner to make it pop, but I tested out my stencil on a piece of paper first and it turns out I suck at stenciling, so that was not an option. Then I created this really super awful mock up of what it would look like if I just taped a random pattern on the mirror and painted in the empty spots:

I used a white Yankee Candle bag inside out and that blue is actually the new color of the half bath, which I have yet to show you. I wanted to make the stencil or pattern in the same color as the half bath so the two rooms would match, and they would also match the movie room (when it’s repainted) and the office.

I actually really like the idea of this, it’s quirky and different without being too much (in my opinion). However, the bathroom has a lot going on already so after talking it out with Matt we decided that I’d just paint a coat of glossy white paint over the primer and we’d live with it for a few days before we decide if we want to add a pattern to it.

Here she is up and about! What do you think? A big improvement? Does she need an abstract paint job?

I think it really helps the room to have as much as possible painted a light color, the cream walls, the lack of a curtain, and all the white make it look so much better.

And just for reference, here’s the other side of the bathroom:

So what would you do- leave it clean and simple? Deck it out with some blue paint? I honestly can’t decide, but I am so glad it’s not silver anymore.

Half done in the half bath!

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Matt is officially done taking college classes, which means he officially has time to take on some of his own house projects. His first project: fixing up the half bath. This bathroom is attached to his movie room, so it’s a priority for him. It’s also a room that needs A LOT of work:

In pictures it just looks messy, not awful- but trust me that it is awful. The yellow is SUPER bright (and that is coming from someone who painted a room glowing orange) and the bottom half is actually painted contact paper that is bubbled and peeling. Simply put, this room is a hot mess.

The room is a good size and stripped down it is a good space to work with, but as you can see some of the painted contact paper/wallpaper (whatever the heck it is) has just been peeled right off. The molding along the bottom of the floor was never even painted. The vanity is outdated.

First, he removed the chair rail that went around the room, hiding the seam between actual wall and wallpaper- all he had to do was pry it off. Then, as I did upstairs, Matt started by peeling off as much of the “whatever it is” before he went about using DIF and scraping it.

Unfortunately when he did start scraping, the drywall started coming off as well- no bueno. So we decided he should just prime as far down as he could and we would use bead board or wainscotting to just cover over what we can’t remove. While he was at it, he also put two coats of ceiling paint up.

Even just half done, the space already looks brighter and more open. Also, Matt later went back and painted the built in white.

Yesterday we went to Home Depot and got paint for the top half of the room (a nice shade of blue), and we plan to paint the bead board or wainscoting white.

So, still to do in here:

  • paint the top half
  • put up the bottom half (that’ll be a fun how-to post!)
  • possibly paint the vanity and switch out the handles on it
  • find a way to clean the sink
  • add frosted contact paper to the window (like I did in the upstairs bath)
  • decorate!

What do you think? Any tips? Have you updated a bathroom recently?

More Bathroom Brightening

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I tried at least 8 ways to photograph the bathroom in a way that shows what I actually did, but it was impossible. So you’re going to need to use your imagination a little.

I decided that I like the openness and brightness of not having a shade or curtain on the window but because we have neighbors directly behind us, something needed to be done. I got frosted contact paper from my grandmother and put it up over the window, that way the light still comes in but no one can see us showering (whew!)

When I tried to photograph this as a wide shot, it was so bright that the window was blown out and you couldn’t even see that there was something on it. This is a super close up of the contact paper applied to both panes of the window. I measured, cut, and applied it with my license. If you use your hand to smooth out the paper when you’re peeling the back off you’re going to end up with a lot of bubbles and bumps, so instead slowly peel it back while flattening the contact paper with a smooth surface (like a license!). I also used a razor to cut the paper where the window lock is and around some of the edges where it ended up a little long. The window was longer then the length of the paper by about 3 inches, so I just lined up the design the best I could. You can still see a little bit of the seam, but I think it looks just fine.

I also got a new white shower curtain, silver hooks, and two white rugs for the room. Again you can’t tell by the picture, but the pattern on the shower curtain is the same as the pattern on the contact paper:

Overall, I think the room is looking about as good as it can until we get rid of the tile. The white really makes it look cleaner and the open window helps to curb some of the claustrophobia you feel when you’re in there.

Here’s a view from the shower curtain out into the hall:

There's the second little rug in front of the sink, with a white hand towel to match. I still need to paint that silver mirror white but I have a few other projects to get to before I tackle that.

I got the shower curtain at Target and the rugs at Bed, Bath & Beyond (with a gift certificate!) so it was under $50 for all three. All three are also machine washable, because there is no way whites are going to stay white for long in this house!

So in case you missed the first post, here’s how things started out:

Brown! Dark! Sad!

Dank! Gloomy! Barf!

And here’s where we’re at today:

Leeeeeeet the sun shine! (sing it as you read it, it's better that way)

Bathroom Progress

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Let me start by saying that I seriously hate my bathroom. If had had a few thousand dollars laying around I wold smash the room down to its’ studs and start from scratch in there, but I don’t clearly, so I’m slowly making due with what I have.

The bathroom is, in a word, dank. It’s got cracked tiles, uneven tiles, permanently stained grout, and terrible lighting. When we first moved in we washed the floor with regular floor wash (ok, it was Fabuloso from the dollar tree) and I 409′d all the surfaces. It just never looked clean, so over the past 2 weeks I have bleached the wall and floor tiles, whichworked wonders. My grout is apparently a light beige and not the tan-ish brown we’ve been living with since August. I also used a bleach and Comet mixture on the sink, toilet, and tub and got off more stains then I even knew were there.

So after the intense scrub down, this is what I had to work with:

This is a hard room to photograph because of the size, but you can see in this before picture that the walls were a very dark brown- not an awful color, but just no good for the space. You can also see here that the sink setup is missing the main cabinet door, so I’ve just got a curtain on a tense rod there. :le sigh:

In the above picture you can see that the previous owners put tiles on top of tiles- some spots have 3 layers- and it wouldn’t be awful if it was done evenly and neatly but of course it wasn’t. There’s also that heavy shade, which is very nice quality and in good shape but that’s as “open” as it gets so half of the light from the window is immediately blocked out.

I decided to work with what we had lying around and painted it the same color as our bedroom, because I still had plenty of primer and paint left and this meant not spending any money:

The color IMMEDIATELY brightened up the room, it’s a huge difference and I’m very happy with it.

Still to do in this room:

  • Add frosted contact paper to the window so the neighbors can’t watch us pee
  • Either paint the silver mirror white, or buy a new white mirror
  • Replace the shower curtain and floor mats with a white curtain and mats (I really like the curtain we have now, but it’s seen better days)
  • Bleach and repaint the ceiling (it’s got scum and mold on it, blech)
  • Possibly buy a white medicine cabinet to hang over the toilet
  • Eventually replace the overheard fan and two light fixtures

When I was priming the room, I noticed that my tub-o-primer had a picture on it of tiles being painted. Can you paint tiles?! And if so, how does it hold up over time and what does it look like? If I could paint these tiles my whole life would change. Ok, maybe not my whole life, but a significant part of it. Imagine if all the beige was hospital white! Or soft teal! It’s the kind of thing every 26 year old girl dreams about… or, at least this one does. So I need to do some research on this, but feel free to chip in if you have any insight or experience!