Just Being Mean

I thought it would be fun. You know...keep you on your toes. I didn't realize that it was just flat out mean. Evidently not knowing the outcome is torturous for some.

I am sorry about that. 

Kind of. 

If you can't stand the suspense, may I suggest that you not read this post either, because, it will not end well.

We last left the bathroom like this. An open shell...with a toilet.

Blake had managed to pull out everything. Even the treasures that were left in the medicine cabinet for us. Hopefully we didn't pay more for the house because of the vintage floss. What is the going rate these days for retro floss, an old razor, and an ant trap?

So the bathroom was gutted.

The plan is to move the stack into the wall, move the drain in the shower so that we can have a bigger shower, sheet rock the walls, tile the floor and have the whole thing done by Thanksgiving. Pressure much?!

In order to move the stack you have to cut the concrete.

Say what?!?!

You know that you are doing some hardcore manly things when it involves a giant concrete saw...and sparks.

I would just like to point out here, that Blake and I don't go around randomly cutting our concrete in our house all willy nilly. 

We have a friend who is a plumber. He did it. Then we were left with the grunt work. I use the word "We" here pretty loosely. Blake did the grunt work, I sat around cheering him on and making sure the kids didn't walk into his sledge hammer while he was swinging away. 

Evidently removing concrete is not for the faint of heart. I wouldn't know. I didn't do it. It looks pretty simple to me. 

One minute the concrete is there...

the next minute it isn't.

OK. I kid.

Truthfully there was a lot of concrete, a lot of dirt, and a lot of rocks.

As it turns out, one of our pipes had a hole in it just below the concrete. Not that it mattered too much. Just interesting. Other fun fact? Our kids took a bubble bath the other day and the dirt hole filled up with bubbles. Yeah...pretty sure that isn't supposed to happen.

Blake just finished clearing out the holes last night. He has been a champ about it. Trying to dig out the holes, and all the while working around work, kids sleeping, and other stuff has made for some odd work times. But, he did it.

When I took this picture I told Blake it looked a little underwhelming on my phone. You can not tell by the picture how big or how deep the hole is.

There you go.

So...that is where we are at now. See? I told you. Nothing really resolved, but a step in the right direction.

Ball Rolling

This bathroom could adequately be described as "a project run a muck." Sure it started innocently enough. OK  That may be stretching it a bit. This bathroom was never OK or innocent. This bathroom is located downstairs. It was going to be a "fix it down the road" kind of bathroom. The problem that I had was that walking into it felt like walking down a large hallway to go to the bathroom. There were other glaring problems wrong with it too, sure, but nothing that a little paint couldn't pretty up. But the thing that really bugged me was the cupboards/shelving to the left.

I decided a long time ago that I wanted to remove the shelving. It was great storage...but they were ugly, and we have enough storage. 

So one night I told Blake I wanted them gone. Lucky for me, Blake is willing to appease my little "moments" and got to work.

Blake took down those shelves like gangbusters.

With the shelving gone I was now left to my own devices.

I planned on removing the peel and stick tile and painting the concrete floor. That was the plan.

If you have ever read the book "If you give a mouse a cookie" you will understand where this story is heading.

The plan was to paint the floor. Then I happened to read somewhere that if you paint a floor you can't tile directly over the top of it. Which is something that we planned to do down the road. I mentioned this to Blake and he said "Well. If we plan on tiling down the road why don't we just do it now?!"

Easy enough. 

Only one problem. See the wall that is up on the left with the toilet behind it? On the other side is a vanity.

This vanity. 

And...If we are going to tile the floor it is silly to not remove the vanity and tile underneath it. And, if we are going to remove the vanity it is silly to put that ugly thing back in the bathroom when the floor is done. So we bought a pedestal sink.

Well, if you are going to have a pedestal sink you don't want that wall by it...so let's remove the wall.

If we plan on taking out the wall, replacing the vanity, tiling the floor, then why not re-sheet rock the walls?

If we are removing the sheet rock, tiling the floor, replacing the vanity and removing a wall then why not replace the shower?

The shower sits about 8" off the floor

and looks like it was caulked by a toddler.

Now, I don't have anything against the color ivory. But this shower looked dirty.

So it seemed only right to replace that too.

Out it all came.

Goodbye vanity. Goodbye sheet rock. Goodbye moldy sheet rock in the shower, goodbye shower. 

It was a dirty job but I am fairly certain Blake enjoyed it.

What we were left with was an open bathroom. Not that we were in the clear yet. See the pipe in the middle of the room that runs from floor to ceiling? It is called a "stack." It is the plumbing to the two toilets upstairs.

We thought that we would do a pedestal sink. The problem is that the plumbing to the sink has to hook into the "stack". No one likes to see plumbing coming out the front of their sink, or a pipe in the middle of a room...so we had a dilemma.

Want to know what we did? Stay tuned. It gets real manly up in here.

In the meantime, admire the before and afters.

How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck?

The downstairs room....er dungeon?

I am not really sure where to start with this room. It has a lot of wood going on. Problem?...it has a lot of wood going on.

There was "wood paneling" along all the walls but one. On that one there was wall paper that matched the wall paper border. I say wood paneling with "" because it is not true wood paneling. It is almost like wood wallpaper. It is wood...just thin and placed up on the wall.

Now, for the moment when it is evident that I have no shame. This is pretty much what this room looked like for the last 2 months. Trust me. I looked for pictures that showed what everything looked like and this is the best I could come up with. Keeping it real. 

Notice the wood paneling galore.

Textured wallpaper. 

Mostly it was a cream color with light blue and peach swooshes.

I use the downstairs closets as mine. It makes it easy so that I don't have half of my clothes upstairs and half downstairs.

The spare room was used for storing pictures that hadn't been hung on the wall yet and for storing the paint that I was using on other projects.

It was pretty much a disaster area up until we found the beds on KSL. Then it was time to get down to brass tacks.

Before I painted the beds I set them up to make sure that they would fit well in the room. Once we saw that they would work it was time to pull out the ole paint brush and get to work.

The ceiling was a cream colored acoustic tile ceiling. It was dirty. I wasn't really sure if you could paint acoustic tiles...but that didn't stop me from trying. 

It wasn't hard work...it was just tedious. 

After I had done one coat with the roller using ceiling paint I went back and had to use a brush to do all of the cracks. After painting all of the cracks I applied a second coat and it looked as good as new. Well, as new as an acoustic ceiling can look.

Then came time to work on the walls. I decided to tackle the wallpaper wall first. I assumed it would just peel off. Nope.

I think they applied that wallpaper using superglue in putty form. It was awful! I tried hot water, I tried fabric softener, nothing made that big of a difference. But finally I was able to get it clean enough to paint.

My plan was to paint the room a light grey color. I did one wall and then stood back and looked. It was not good. Blake even made the comment that it looked like a sanitarium with our beds without mattresses in it.

So we tried blue. Nope. 

How about a dark grey? Definitely not.

I was truly stumped.

Then it occurred to me. White. The room needs to be white. When I told Blake that I wanted to paint the walls white he said "in all the years we have been married I don't think you have ever painted a wall white." He was correct. Until now. After painting one wall it was evident that I needed to prime all of the walls.

I also had to prep the desk nook by removing the contact paper. 

It was in sad shape to begin with and peeling it off was a cinch.

The walls were primed and it was time to start painting.

I ended up using the porch and floor paint that we had bought on the walls. It wasn't going to be used for what I had originally bought it for so there was no reason to let it go to waste. I think it ended up being good for hiding the imperfections on the walls.

Once the walls were painted and the beds put together it was time to decorate.    

It ended up being a little more difficult then I thought it would be. I have had the most trouble finding bedding that is affordable, cute, and fits the room.

I found this comforter at Target. I liked it OK for the price. It wasn't too busy...

Problem?

Why make a comforter that isn't even going to cover the side of the bed?

This one was too dark. I did manage to make some pillows for the beds, though.

Once again I settled on the fact that I want white bedding. I didn't think it would be so difficult to find....It is. Do you think the rule of white after Labor Day applies to bedding too?

Blake and I randomly found this yellow chair at a store in Salt Lake. I thought it was fun, but couldn't think of anywhere for it to go.

Turns out....it found a home in our spare room.

The rest of the room has managed to come together in pieces. The curtains were trial and error (15 errors).

The shelves got a mini makeover with some family photos and mushrooms from my collection, to add a little bit of fun.

I finished putting stuff on the shelves and then about 5 minutes later our kids redecorated them. They are very helpful.

Around the room are some other vintage finds (green house picture, blue scale, and blue canning jars), 

colorful accents, and a little bit of fun.

Mostly what we want, is for whoever stays here to feel like they have a place that is relaxing but also makes them feel welcome and happy.

The room seems, to us, like a far cry from the cave it started as.

Still to do:

change out florescent light

find bedding

hang TV on wall

find a small table for in between the beds.

Anyone want to visit?