Hiatus

True story...we have been on a 2 month long blogging hiatus. With good reason! And leaving very little time to do any work on our home. Since the last time we posted we have been very busy. In the past two months, we have....

Been cheering on the Panthers

Made multiple trips to the mountain house to check on its progress and make final decisions

Stuart spent Labor Day in Charleston for Hunter's (my brother) Bachelor weekend--no pictures from this weekend, and I still don't even know what they did for 3 nights...I'm blissfully uninformed about the goings on, as I should be.

While Stuart was Bacheloring, I briefly tripped to Houston to see my parents for a few days while my dad was recovering from some health problems.

I celebrated Erin's (my sister-in-law!) Bachelorette in Savannah (there ARE pictures from this weekend, but none taken by me! So below is a pic from one of Erin's showers earlier in the summer)

Traveled to Columbus, GA for Erin and Hunter's wedding

Hosted my parents at our house for a few days post wedding (tiny picture of them when we took them to see the mountain house for the first time!)

Celebrated this guy's 27th birthday with a family dinner

Became Senior High youth advisors (Stuart building a wheelchair ramp for a community youth service project)

Went to PC's (our alma mater) homecoming

Stuart celebrated another Bachelor weekend with a fraternity brother (and once again, I'm not privy to Bachelor weekend photos or goings on)

Celebrated our 1 year anniversary at a B&B in Hot Springs, NC and ate our cake topper from our wedding (it still tasted really good after being frozen for a year!)

 

So I know 'tis no excuse to treat our blog like the red headed stepchild, but we are exhausted! Here's to being home nearly every weekend between now and Christmas and hoping we have the motivation to do some projects and keep this ol' blog running.

Live From Our Downstairs Bathroom

or, How Our Bathroom Went From Looking Like This:

To looking like this:

Oh yes we did...we started our first big renovation project last Thursday. It all started when Stuart emailed me at work saying that he just couldn't take the bathroom door getting stuck on the carpet each time he went into the bathroom and that he was going to rip up the carpet when he got home. Fine by me--the carpet was filthy and a very unattractive mauve color. Honestly, who puts carpet in a bathroom? So before I knew it, I was so excited about the project that when I beat him home, I ripped it out myself. And, although we didn't realize it at the time, thus began our bathroom renovation. We had planned to tackle this bathroom first in the category of major renovations, since it is a very small space (20 sq ft) and there was really no way to make it worse than it already was (so we thought). We figured it's a good place to start learning some DIY skills. And learn we did...after ripping up the carpet, there was a layer of linoleum glued to some backer board.

 

So we went to Lowe's and bought a crow bar. It took Stuart about all of 5 minutes to rip out the floor when we got home.

Then, I googled how to remove a toilet and sink and we took those puppies out. I swear, you can do any DIY project with the help of YouTube. And our toilet and sink sat on our front porch for at least 24 hours. Just keeping it klassy 'round here.

After removing the sink and toilet, we tackled the tile. Using the same crow bar tool that we removed the floors with, we used a hammer to get the crow bar down behind the tile and then yanked/pulled/hit the tile until it all fell down.

Unfortunately, one of our plaster walls came down with the tile. It literally crumbled before our eyes. But it's alright--we have some drywall that Stuart is hanging right now!

Our plans for putting the bathroom back together include the bit of drywall I mentioned, tiling the floor, hanging beadboard on the walls with molding and a chair rail, installing new light fixture and updating electrics, reinstalling our old toilet, and installing a new sink. The room will also get a new coat of paint and new hardware.

This picture reflects some of the supplies we have purchased for the project. Our supplies include:

• 2 sheets of beadboard
• 12' of chair rail
• 12' of molding
• 12' of quarter round
• 21 sq ft of carrera marble hexagonal tile
• dry wall
• backer board to adhere tile to
• tile mortar
• tile grout
• tile sealer
• tile spacers
• trowel
• grout float
• grout sponge
• small nails
• nail filler
• new wax ring
• new toilet seat
• new toilet part (oops--we broke whatever part it is when removing the toilet)
• new toilet handle
• toilet paper holder
• towel bar
• light fixture
• marble transition piece for tile to wood floor transition
• paint (wall paint and molding high gloss paint)
• level
• multiple saws, screw drivers, wrenches, hammers, etc.

How do we know what we're doing, you might ask? We don't! We are learning as we go. We've made a friend named Jeris at our local Lowes who is VERY helpful! A real expert when it comes to tiling. And even though we didn't buy our tile at Lowes he said he would cut it for us--SCORE! Also, Lowes cut our beadboard, molding, quarter round, and chair rail for us while we were shopping. Double score. Now we are just waiting for our tile to arrive from Amazon to get started on the floor! Keep your fingers and toes crossed that we can put everything back together again.

Shutter Headboard

Ever since Mr. Mull and I finished painting our 2nd guest bedroom mentioned here, we have been working to complete other projects in the room. Projects include (in a nutshell):

• Paint and hang shutters to function as headboard
• Sew curtains (4 panels) and hang hardware
• Sew skirt for bedside table
• Paint wooden door and saw horses to function as desk
• Have glass cut for top of desk
• Accessorize (lamps, pictures, wall decor, knick knacks, etc)

We decided to go ahead and cross the headboard off the list, since we have had the shutters since December and they have been waiting patiently to make their debut in the room. We bought the shutters for $30 at a little salvage place in Greenville, SC. Shutter headboards make a great alternative to a real headboard, as they were obviously very inexpensive and add some uniqueness to a room in place of your traditional headboard. In the post I mentioned above, the shutters were already positioned behind the headboard but they were not painted or hung. Thus, our first task was to paint them a high gloss white to match the room's molding and trim. So we lugged them outside (these jokers may look light, but don't let them fool you--they are heavy!) and propped them up on the saw horses that are later going to become our desk legs. Might as well get as much use out of those horses as we can...We tried to take a shortcut by using high gloss spray paint to cover the shutters (more on this later). We coated each shutter twice and gave them about an hour of drying time. 

Here is one shutter complete next to the other still awaiting paint. Although they looked white to begin with, you can see what a difference the coats of paint made. Before we painted each shutter, we arranged them how we wanted them once they were hung on the wall. We decided to alternate between the shutters closed up and down.

And below is a picture of our very imprecise attempt to find the wall studs. We have a battery powered stud finder that came in very handy when locating each stud. However, as you can see by the 6 (yikes) nail holes for our last stud, there were a few complications in locating the final one. Circling it helped us remember which hole was the stud. We made sure the nail holes were all along an even line by measuring down the same distance (9 3/4" ish) from the molding. Then we were ready to drill screws thru the shutters. The studs really dictated where we hung the shutters--we had to make sure that they were positioned in such a way that each shutter could be screwed into 2 studs since the shutters were wide enough to cover 4 of them. We drilled the first screw on the far right shutter and then measured our stud distance from that for the other screws.

Here is a close up of the shutters screwed to the wall. You can see the pencil line we used to mark where the stud was and make it easier to know the exact line we needed the screw to fall on.

 

And here is Mr. Mull after hanging the first shutter. He was SO proud of himself--the next morning after we were done with the project, I kid you not he asked "What are we doing tonight to the house? I want to use more tools." Typical boy. You can see in this picture based on where the screws are that the shutter fell along 2 studs.

And here are the shutters hung and the bed back in place. I mentioned that we tried to take a short cut by using high gloss spray paint on the shutters. Well, it looked very gray next to our high gloss paint paint, so we ended up painting the shutters again once hung on the wall with real high gloss paint. Oh well, the shortcut was worth a try!

I wanted the "headboard" to be really high and dramatic (I mean, as dramatic as a white headboard can possibly be). The accessorizing component of this room will include large, gray shams behind the white pillows to give some depth to the bed. Also, a tall table lamp like this little guy from Ikea will be a fun addition the the bedside table.

We bought some new sheets to coordinate with our new color scheme (and yes, there are other colors in this room besides gray and white, I promise!). I love the little gray detail along the top of the sheets and sides of each pillowcase.

And since I always want to keep you hanging around for the next project, here is a sneak peak at the material for the table skirt and pillow shams. I wanted something in a solid darker gray, but with a little pattern to keep things interesting. I found the fabric below at Mary Jo's cloth store in Gastonia, NC. If you're anywhere near the area, you MUST stop in! It is by far the best priced fabric store with the most selections that I have ever been in. And I'm no rookie when it comes to fabric stores. It is a wonderful place and truly fits the saying "if we don't have it, you don't need it". They have a little bit of everything.

So until next time, that is what's new at the Mull residence.

Have any questions about this post? Feel free to leave me a comment! And if you're reading along, I invite you to "Follow Me" or subscribe to the blog. I would love to know who all is following us out there!

Sewing Table Turned Nightstand

Back in December I bought an old sewing table from Habitat for about $9 (it was 1/2 off day, of course so I thought $9 down from $18 was a pretty good deal). I liked its size and thought it would make a nice nightstand for my side of the bed. The one downside? It was so ugly. It looked like the previous owner had tried to prime it and then not followed thru with painting it. Anyways, I figured for the price even if it didn't come out much improved, it wasn't too big of a loss on my part. So home with me it went! And home with me it sat for oh 8 months or so. Until last week, to be exact, when I finally worked up the motivation to mosey on over to Lowes (it's less than a mile from our house) and pick out a paint color. My paint choice was influenced by the new curtains in our bedroom that I wrote about here. I thought an orange might add a nice, unexpected pop of color against the curtains that will utimately be the backdrop behind this table (once I get the last 2 panels sewn and hung). Here is a picture of the table before it was painted (with a few sample brushstrokes of the orange before I began painting).

(And yes, my side of the bed is pretty much always this messy!)

The table was a little high for our bed, so I planned to saw a bit of the legs off after the painting was complete.

I also wasn't crazy about the pull on this drawer, so I bought 2 little knobs from Lowes to replace it.

I removed the pull and covered the holes with some wood glue that we had on hand. Then, I sanded it down to leave a nice smoothe finish.

And a shot of the table opened--obviously no sewing machine in here anymore!

So I thought I had picked a good color and I was ready to slap some paint on this lady and be done--quicky project. No siree. First off, I made the rookie mistake of not sanding it down a little before painting. I stupidly assumed that the previous owner had sanded the table and then primed it. That was not the case, so my mistake right out of the gate caused the new paint to scrape off of the piece at the slightest rub against something. I painted three coats of the new paint on her and it was still scraping off very easily. Second mistake? I picked a terrible color! I honestly don't know what/how it happened--I thought this light creamy orange would be really nice, but not so much:

Yikes!! I didn't take a picture of it next to my bed because I was so embarrassed, but the result was not good. ::sigh:: I even tried to rub some leftover stain from our floors on the orange paint to darken things up a bit, but to no avail. I had to walk away from it for about a week before I could get my butt back to Lowes to pick another color. And this color was chosen by Stuart! He is always drawn to darker colors while I stay on the lighter side, but this time I liked what he chose and thought it would work well with the new curtains. So we brought the paint home and took the table outside to sand/scrape off the old paint and start over.

And Stuart sawed off a bit of the legs before I painted--in the picture below 2 of the legs have been "trimmed" and 2 have not. We only took off about 1.5" but it made a big difference. Stuart used a jig saw but I'm sure any saw you have around the house would be just fine.

And wah-lah! The new paint color, a darker green that will look really nice once the curtains are hanging behind the table. (And yes, I cleaned up my side of the bed just for this picture!)

Here are the new knobs--they resemble the door knobs that are on each door throughout our house and I think they give the piece some added femininity.

I tried to create a feel for how the table will look with the curtains. Stuart is out of town so I didn't have anyone to hold the curtains behind the table, but you get the idea. I am thinking of adding a little skirt (most likely beige colored) to the table so that I can hide all of my bedside junk things underneath it. But for now, this girl is hitting the hay and may or may not doze off while admiring her facelifted $9 nightstand.

Come On Over...

to my other blog--Mull Mountain House--and see the first blog post of what will be a chronicle of our mountain house building adventures! You can get there by clicking the link here or by clicking on Mull Mountain House along the righthand side of Mull Makeover.

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July! We are celebrating our country's independence and also walking around our house saying happy 4th to each other because we have finally finished painting the 4th room in our house (which we blogged about here). We started with the living room, then painted guest bedroom #1, then our bedroom, and now guest bedroom #2. We are so happy to be done and also glad that we only have a few more rooms and hallways to paint before we are done with picking out paint colors and taping off windows. Here are some pictures of the finished room--now we just need to add more furniture, accesories, fabrics, and wall decor and we will be done!

This picture is taken from the doorway--the chair in the corner is waiting to be painted and recovered.

The bed was in the middle of the room pretty much throughout the paint project. We are very glad to have it set up again for guests. I found this quatrefoil bedspread at TJ Maxx several months ago for $39.99--can't beat it. And the shutters behind the bed will ultimately be painted and hung on the wall (and thus will look much taller for a more dramatic affect--they are resting on the floor right now). The room is going to be accented with mustard yellow and the fabric bolt in the corner is going to be used for curtains. I got 10 yards off of Fabric.com (a great online fabric site) for $6.48/yard.

Many more changes to come! But for now, we're just enjoying putting the paint cans away.