Bathroom Reveal

This has been a long time coming and I'm finally ready to reveal our newly remodeled bathroom! Remember my post about the 10 Things I Hate About My Bathroom? Well, I now love everything about my bathroom! Ta da!

Funny thing is that I left the spindles. Can you believe it?

They don't really look so bad now that everything else is so pretty. I might just embrace their cottagey charm. We will see.

The lady at Home Depot didn't like my idea for my backsplash. Well, look at this lady. In your face!

 

We decided to just replace the vanity rather than refinishing the old one. So glad we did!

 



Then we caved and bought the matching cabinet for over the toilet. Best decision since we only have a mirror over the vanity, not a medicine cabinet.

The mirror is the same mirror that we've always had hanging, I just painted it white to match everything else. Looks like a whole new mirror!

And of course we replaced the flooring with this beautiful ceramic tile.

Here's a closer look.

 

Now, I know I've already showed off the shower, however, there's been some more additions there. A shower light (so we can actually see now) and a new shower curtain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm loving the little details too. The new vanity light fixture, bath hardware, and new art!

 





I even got myself a new clock since I accidentally broke the old one moving it around so many times. Oops!

Last but certainly now least is my most practical idea. Putting an outlet inside the vanity cabinet! Now the electric toothbrush and shaver don't need to be charging on my countertop anymore. Yay!

Now, I can take credit for the designing of all of these updates, and of course for painting, but my dad is the real talent here.  He did everything from the electrical, to plumbing, to the tile work. Amazing job! If you are in the North Metro area and would like him to tackle a project in your home I can send him your way!

Bring Christmas Outside!

Not only do I love Christmas lights, I also love to see a festive house during daylight. Plus, when one has a white house after a blizzard it can tend to blend in with it's surroundings. Trying to avoid a bunch of tacky plastic yard decorations I decided to use some good old fashioned wreaths. My inspiration...

Between Naps on the Porch

 

 

So I ran to Menards and bought the cheapest/expensive looking wreaths. $10 bucks a piece.

 

And then some $1 bows.

Just wire those bows onto the wreaths and whollah!

 

We have wood window frames so I just put a nail in the middle of each one. SUPER easy! I've been waiting for a good snow storm to show them off and what do you know. We have well over a foot!

 

Here's some more sun!

 

Over to the garage. We have plant hooks and I have been having a hard time the past two years figuring out what to put on those darn things. Menards had exactly what I wanted! Stockings!!

I love them!

I'm going to stay in for the rest of the day now. Brrrr!





Master Bedroom

There really isn't many rooms in my house that I would consider finished. Something always seems to bother me that I need to have fixed or updated before I want to show it off. I have finally finished our master bedroom though. I don't have much for before pictures besides what it looked like when we bought it.

Before we even moved in we replaced the carpet with laminate wood floors and painted.

Our full length mirror addition.

Then I did my picture frame project.

I just wasn't feeling it was right after I completed this project. After some thinking I decided the bed needed to be moved under the window. However, the window is not as wide as the bed. To Pinterest I went and saw this amazing illustration.

I figured I could just make my window look big enough. So I extended the rods out and put them up a bit higher, then bought some $10 cream curtain panels from Target!

Needed some charecter on the sides of the window so I used some metal plant hooks from Menards and some lanterns I found at Pier One.

Here's where our dressers are now.

It seems so much more cozy and comfortable now.

Where are the oval frames you ask? I found an even better spot for them on the wall in our stairway.

So happy that our bedroom is now officially complete. When we have a million other projects going on in the house I can just go hide and there and forget about all of it.

Dog Bath Issue

Since we became dog owners we have always had a hose type shower. It may not be the prettiest thing in the world but it make giving the dogs a bath a breeze and cleaning the shower is not so bad either. You can see it here.

So when we put in the new shower and new bath fixtures we just couldn't bring outselves to put that ugly thing in when it can look at fancy like it is now.

A few days after we put the new stuff in the dogs needed their bath. What a nightmare! I don't know how people do it. A cup, seriously, you rinse them with a cup of water! Sorry friends but this does not work for me. And, I don't see a special dog bath being installed any time in the near future.

Anytime I feel like I need to invent something new, I go to the internet and discover that someone already invented it so to Google I went. Instantly I found my solution.

 

Yay fot the Pet Shower Sprayer! It easily pops on and off when needed so no one even has to know that you have a top of the line dog bath. It's even more convenient than that ugly thing we had before because there's a control button on the sprayer to turn and off and off when needed without having to mess with the shower faucet. Life changer for $22!

Bathroom Update: Tub & Shower

I'm so excited to share our most recent update to our bathroom. Yes, this remodel is going to happen in steps but my goal is to have it all done by Christmas. Sounds like a reasonable expectation to me. If you remember from my earlier post 10 Thing I Hate About My Bathroom I had some bad things to say about our tub and shower. Everything from the color, to the shower mechanics, to the fact it leaked into our laundry room every time we took a shower made this one of my least favorite parts of the room.

Notice that their also wasn't much for storage space. Yeah, I know there's only the two of us, but some of us need alot of products in the shower, don't judge. If you look closely you can see that we needed a plug to take a bath. For some reason the plug in the tub never quite worked right from the time we moved in.

The most important thing to me was to be certain that whichever new tub we put in would be deep enough. That's all! We went back and forth between getting a regular store bought shower surround or doing tile. Finally we spotted a really nice looking shower and tub combo at Menards for half the price as one we had our eye on at Home Depot. Less work and less money... We'll take it!

Ahhhh, I could look at this all day. You wouldn't believe what goes into putting in a new tub and shower. Because the tub is wider and it was deeper all of the plumbing had to be adjusted. On top of that we had to redo the sheetrock all the way around the shower to build it back in. I didn't even think of that.

I am so grateful for my dad and Ryan for working there butts off this weekend to get this in. I did the priming, painting, and cleaning after the fact so don't give me much credit.

We've still got a long way to go in the bathroom but this was a huge part of it. What's next on the list? We're waiting for our new vanity to be delivered. Another built-in fiasco!

Patio Buffet + Storage!

I don't know about you, but I really struggle when it comes to entertaining out on our deck. I feel like all I'm doing is going in and out, in and out, grabbing this and grabbing that. Then when we're not outside grilling, our grill tools are taking up so much room in my drawers I can hardly close them sometimes. Then one day I came across the Organizing Made Fun blog where she turned a dresser into a patio buffet.

And wouldn't you know it, I just happened to have a dresser that I wasn't using that fits perfectly on my deck! So I moved it downstairs to my workshop (our unfinished sunroom) and got to work.

This was a dresser I got for free that I painted a pinkish purple a few years ago to match a quilt in our guestroom. I wanted to paint it black to match my newly painted shutters and I had plenty of paint leftover.

Luckily the hardware I bought from the previous redo looks perfect with the new paint job. Next I wanted to get a decal for our last name just like she did in her blog. I found ours on Etsy.com (I would tell you the shop but I wasn't really impressed with them, I had to cut some pieces off when I opened the package.)

 

 

Now that the decal was on I used a spray polyurethane to seal everything.The one I found was meant to be used on outdoor items to protect it from the sun and rain.

 



Next I wanted to add some corkboard drawer liners in the three drawers. This will keep everything from sliding around when the drawers are opened (they are kind of old in sticky) and when we move it around.

Lastly, we added wheels on the bottom on the legs and handles on the sides so it'll be easy to move from one side of the deck to another. Plus, also easier to wheel into the garage before winter.

 

 

The first most exciting part of this whole thing is we now have a place to set all of our food to serve when we grill. There just isn't enough room on our patio table for that and eating. 

 

 

 

The second, and most important is storage!

 

From grilling tools to can koozies, and paper plates to bottle openers this unit will take care of all of our entertaining needs. I'm really excited to keep plastic ware and paper plates in here too! I'm still working on finding plastic bins to put those in just to make doubly sure they stay dry after a good rain.

I hope I've inspired you to take your organizing outside too! Totally worth it.