The Reveal: Mini Bathroom Makeover

Alright, so the last time I posted, I talked about our plan for our mini bathroom makeover. Now here we are 10 days later, and the makeover is complete! This really could be a weekend project, but I only had the opportunity to work on it when the kiddos were either napping or in bed for the night (except for Sunday night when we painted the walls, my parents had the boys overnight so we could do all the painting at once) so it took us a little longer than that. I have to say, I'm pretty thrilled with the results!

So here it is, the big reveal!

Before:

After!

I am so proud of us!

So here's a list of the stuff we did:

• Painted the vanity
• Changed the vanity hardware
• Framed the mirror
• Painted the trim
• Replaced the outlet with a GFI outlet
• Replaced light switchs and plate
• Replaced air vent cover
• Replaced the door stopper (you know, the little springy thing that kids like to play with)
• Scraped off the texture on walls
• Painted the walls
• New shower curtain
• New towel bar (we also hung it a bit higher than it was before)

I know I said we were going to replace the closet door, but we haven't done that yet. We might try to do it this weekend, but I'm not sure if I want to take that on just yet since I have to go back to work on Monday. We'll see what happens. I will certainly post pics after we do it, whenever that is. In fact, we will be replacing all the doors in the entire house at some point, hopefully within the next year or so. They're really eye sores right now.

James and I have both caught each other stopped in the middle of the hallway (on our way to the bedroom or somewhere) staring into the bathroom. LOL! It feels like a totally different room! I love the white trim, I love the frame for the mirror, I love the color I chose for the vanity (I was nervous about that one). I am so happy we did this!

And in case anyone was wondering, the wall color is Sherwin Williams Upward. I used their Duration line in a satin finish. The vanity is Sherwin Williams Black Bean. I used their All Surface Enamel in a high gloss finish. And the Trim is Benjamin Moore Simply White (matched to Sherwin Williams - it 's their trim and door line, can't remember what it's called exactly, in a semi-gloss finish). All are latex paints. I don't do oil based.

I'll make posts later with more detail of each individual project, but I was just so excited to show before/after pics that I couldn't wait!

Here's some more!

Vanity before/after:

 

I already showed the following pictures at the beginning, but I like side-by-sides of before/after pics. I think you can really tell the difference more when they're next to each other.

 I really wanted a before/after pic of the mirror, but half way through the project I realized I forgot to take a before picture of just the mirror. So this is really more of a during/after picture. But WOW, what a difference a frame makes!

And since we're talking about bathroom changes, since we moved in we've already replaced both light fixtures in the bathroom, and changed the light/fan combo to be on two separate switches instead of one. I'm pretty sure the previous owners wouldn't even recognize this bathroom. And it's mostly just superficial stuff, not a huge remodel! It was totally worth the time and effort!


***UPDATE***
Click HERE to see how we framed the mirror.
Click HERE to see how I painted the vanity.

The Plan: Mini Bathroom Makeover

I've been totally into planning updates for our house lately. I've been checking out a lot of home decorating/renovating blogs, and I've found it to be very inspirational. My favorite is a blog called Young House Love. It's a young couple blogging about all the updates they've done to their home. Since starting the blog, they've owned three homes and they've done SO much work in all of them. I am totally in awe of the vision they have. They can look at a room and just know what would make it look 10x better. I wish I had that.

Anyhoo, like I said, it's been very inspirational for me, and now I have a long list of things I want to get done around the house. But making a list is infinitely easier than actually doing the things on that list. So this coming week, I'm going to start doing. And I'm starting with the bathroom.

 

Ok, so it doesn't look that bad in the picture. But I think it really needs a facelift. At first, I just wanted to paint it. We decided on a color called Upward by Sherwin Williams.We need a light color because we have no natural light in our bathroom, and I don't want it to feel like a dark dungeon.

Upward by Sherwin Williams

Before I continue, I have to take a moment to stress how incredibly terrible the previous owners of this house were at painting. I like to call them the "One Coat Wonders" because they obviously felt  that one coat of paint was enough, no matter how it looked afterward. They also must really have had something against painting tape, which is fine if you can take your time (they didn't) and have a steady hand (they didn't). Needless to say, the trim in our entire house is covered in paint. They literally just slopped the stuff on the walls without regard to anything they might get paint on, the trim, the floor, the counters, whatever.

See, I told you it was bad.

So I'm going to be painting the trim in the entire house white (I've always had a thing for white trim)  and I might as well start with the bathroom, since I'll be painting in there anyway. And if I'm painting the trim white, then we'll need to get new doors that are white. So we decided to just replace the closet door and leave the entry door for the time being (until we decide to replace all the doors, which is on the list for the future). 

Then I mentioned to James how I thought a nice frame around the plain ol' builders grade mirror would look great, and he figured he could probably make one pretty easily. So we searched a bit and found a few good tutorials on how to do it.

 

Then I took a good look at the vanity, and I said to myself, "Self, this vanity needs new hardware STAT!" But you see, it has those pesky little plates attached to the doors/drawers under the handles that were oh so popular in the 70's. And for some crazy reason that I can't comprehend, the builders stained the cupboards after they put those plates on. So there is no stain under it. So if I want new hardware, I need to either try to match the stain, or paint it a different color. So I'm thinking I'll paint it a nice deep brown, and paint the mirror frame to match. Sounds like a "fun" little weekend project. (I really hope you can sense my sarcasm.) 

In my head, it looks something like this, only less black and more brown:

And that, my friends, is how a simple idea to paint the bathroom snowballs into this list:

• Paint the walls
• Paint the trim
• Paint the vanity
• Frame the mirror
• Change vanity hardware
• New door for linen closet

Wish me luck!

Houston, We Have A Patio!

You guys, I am SO pumped to be able to finally write this post!

First of all, I am going to apologize in advance for my overuse of caps and exclamation points.

Now, if you are friends with me on Facebook, then odds are you know that we were working on building our patio A LOT about a month ago. We are really stupid and cheap and decided to do all the work ourselves. And let me tell you, it SUUUUUCKED! James took a few days off of work, so we completed most of the work during that time. We had already done the digging prior to that, so we "only" had to fill it with gravel, tamp it, fill it with sand, screed and tamp it, then lay the pavers, tamp again, fill cracks with sand, tamp again, then fill the cracks with sand again. I don't know WHAT I was thinking when I thought we could do all that in only a few days. It was brutal. Thank goodness for my parents! My dad helped so much with the work and letting us borrow his pickup, and my mom was the designated babysitter so I could help with the patio. We wouldn't have been able to do it without them.

Anyway, at the end of James's third day off, the patio was complete. But we still had a giant pile of dirt in the back yard from what we had dug up, and we needed to level out the area between the pavers and the lawn with that dirt, so I didn't want to get all camera happy and post a picture until that was done.

Well my friends, as of today it's DONE! James just finished filling in the remaining empty space with dirt and leveling out the ground around it. He also tossed some grass seed on top and I watered it. I mean, we still have the giant pile of dirt, but we're working on getting rid of that. I'm hoping I'll find someone who wants it, who will just come a take it away. We'll see what happens. But at any rate, the patio is now picture worthy!

 

 

 

Now I just need some patio furniture, which I'm hoping to find on clearance sometime soon (did I mention I'm cheap?). We have some nice folding patio chairs, and a hand-me-down plastic table, but I think my beautiful patio deserves a matching set. :)

 

And here's the pile o' dirt I mentioned earlier.



 

 

You guys, I am SO happy to be done with this project. You have NO idea. Now, on to the mini bathroom makeover! (Be on the lookout for a post about that soon!)