Bathroom Update, Part II

If you've been keeping up with us, you know that our bathroom originally looked like this when we bought our house (minus the cat food on top of the toilet--we added that classy touch before we gutted the bathroom. And don't worry--Louise's food and bed have since been relocated).

Then, we posted here and here about the work we have done so far to bring our little downstairs 1/2 bath into the 21st century. Since our last bathroom update, we finally worked up the courage to install our new pedestal sink ourselves. We spent about an hour researching pedestal sink installation on YouTube and watched a handful of videos before we felt like we were ready to begin. Each video seemed to include a new or different component of sink installation than another, so I recommend watching a variety if you are looking to install your own sink.

Our pipes are VERY old (as old as the house, so our plumber says), so we cleaned out the main sink pipe first by pulling out all the debris we could with our fingers. Remember, we have been working on this project since August (!!!!!!) so there was a lot of dried up rust looking stuff in our pipe. Ick.

After we cleaned out the pipe, we started laying out and assembling the different components of our sink. Based on our research, we knew we were going to need:

-a sink

-a faucet that would fit our sink (4" centerset)

-a P trap (the curvy part the extends from your sink plumbing)

-an arm that extends from the P trap into the wall

-an extension from the P trap to our faucet part

-hot and cold water supply connectors

-3 covers for where the plumbing enters the wall

-thread tape (plumbing tape that you wrap around your threads to prevent leaks)

-a level to be sure the sink basin and pedestal are level

-bolts to attach the sink basin to the wall

-caulk to finish things off

Here is Stuart laying all of our pieces out and beginning to put things together. I'm not sure if this is true of every sink installation, but the hardest part of the project (as in, it took us like 2 freaking hours to figure it out) was putting the faucet pieces together. We bought our faucet online (you can find it here--we bought ours for $67 on Amazon--there must have been a sale going on at the time because the price has recently increased) and it came with directions, but they just weren't very good.

(Stuart modeling P trap)

Anyways, once we assembled the faucet we attached it to the sink basin, installed the actual plumbing parts (P trap, extension, etc.), and bolted our sink to the wall. I didn't take pictures of those parts because a.) there are loads of tutorials, etc on the Internet already and b.) I think you really need a video to understand the installation process--pictures (as they pertain to plumbing) are definitely not worth a thousand words.

Here are the results:

{note: I promise the sink and toilet are the same color--it's the lighting in the bathroom (and probably my camera) that makes them look like different colors in these pictures!}

We bought our sink from Lowe's and you can find it here. We needed a very tiny sink for this space so we were somewhat limited in our options--this sink ended up working well for us and I think takes up even less space than the sink that was in here before since the basin is round instead of square. The basin is just under 18" wide.

Our faucet is oil rubbed bronze to match the rest of the finishes in the bathroom. We are going to bring in a little gold with the accessories to deemphasize the matchiness (that's a word, right?).

Stuart and I both love the little hot and cold pieces on the faucet--I think they fit well with the style of our 1920s home.

And as you can see we still need to paint the walls above the beadboard. That's next up on our list now that everything is installed and we once again have a fully functioning 1/2 bath (although I just know our guests will miss "washing" their hands with hand sanitizer)!

Paintlift

A lot of times cosmetic work can make all the difference in an older home. Admittedly, our house needs more than just cosmetic work, but there are certainly some areas where a little "paintlift" can make an incredible difference. Our hallways are one such area where a little bit of paint (ok, several gallons) can cover up a whole lotta ugly. Enter Exhibit A -- our upstairs hallway after Stuart removed the wallpaper last summer. LAST SUMMER people. That's right, we have lived with it like this for a year and a half. That's about 14 months too long in my book.

And here is a (crummy) picture of our hallway nook taken on our first visit to the house with our real estate agent exactly 2 years ago this month. That green wallpaper was in both the upstairs and downstairs hallways. Can I get a yikes?

So last summer Stuart was able to remove most of the wallpaper. But there was this bit above the stairs that we couldn't figure out how to safely get to to remove. So it sat...

and sat...

and sat.

And finally, with an urge to make our house more presentable for family visiting at Christmas, we decided to hire some guys to come remove the wallpaper AND paint the upstairs hallway and stairwell. We decided to go with Olympic's Bone White for the color. In order to save some money, we had the guys remove wallpaper and paint the walls only. We knew that although it might be painfully time consuming, we could do the trim work ourselves and put a little change back in our pockets. We were very pleased with the work that the paint crew did. After removing the remaining wallpaper, they sanded all the walls, filled all of our cracks (and let me just say, there is no shortage of cracks in our house), and painted. What would have taken us possibly weeks of a few hours here and there took our 2 guys only 2 days!

Before painting the trim, we filled nail holes with our wood filler, sanded, and cleaned the baseboards. Here are some close ups that show how grungy our baseboards and doorframes were.

 

After several coats and many hours of work, our upstairs hallway had its paintlift!

And in case you are super confused by where things are in our house, here's a little reference picture of the upstairs taken with my back to the staircase and the hallway nook directly to my left.

There was a lot of trim and a lot of doors = lots of high gloss white paint.

And here is a shot taken with my back to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. ::sigh:: so pretty compared to what it used to be!

And a view of the nook.

For anyone wondering, we bought the small rug for the nook and the hallway runner last summer at a rug store in Blowing Rock, NC.

And for some final before and after shots....



I'd say it's a vast improvement. We still need to remove the door hardware throughout the hallway to strip it of paint and give it a new look like we did here and here. Also, we would like to get some more pictures and art on the walls, paint the hallway ceiling, change the lighting, and possibly add crown molding much farther down the road. But for now, we think our inexpensive paintlift looks like a million bucks!

We are still working on the staircase trim and have a gallery wall in progress along the stairwell, so hopefully we will be back to share an update soon!