Bathroom Art

Bathroom art is kind of awkward, no? I mean, honestly, family photos are pretty much off limits because who really wants to see themselves pictured over the ole' porcelain throne. Can't put anything too personal hovering there. With that in mind, we needed something to hang over our potty in our downstairs half bath that we have been working to renovate here, here, and here.

I pinned this inspiration pic on Pinterest several months ago and decided it was just what the wall space over the toilet needed. Not too personal, appropriate bathroom decor. You can buy these on Etsy (if you are a non-DIYer), but they are pretty easy to make yourself.

{picture from Lolly Jane Boutique}

First, I found a picture frame that was a good size for the wall space that we were working with. Since we are trying to bring a little gold in with our accessories in this space (and since I wasn't crazy about the natural wood look), I picked up a can of gold spray paint from Lowe's and got busy.

Next, I gathered some poster board, spray adhesive, scissors, and a printed outline (after Googling North Carolina state outline) of our sweet state. Rather than tracing the outline onto the poster board, I just used some spray adhesive to attach the outline to the poster board and cut around the outline. I sprayed a light amount of adhesive so that I could remove the outline once I finished cutting to reveal the white poster board. Lastly, I needed a background to put the state on. Originally I was going to use some fabric that I have in my stash, but after the Lilly Pulitzer catalog came with pages of large pattern blocks, I cut out one of the pages and used the adhesive again to attach the state to the background page. It's a fun, spring look that can easily be changed if we want to switch things up. Here is the finished product:

Can you spy the barrier islands that we included? They are very small, but Stuart was very insistent that we couldn't possibly leave the Outer Banks off of our state art!

And we put a tiny heart over Hickory, home sweet home!

Bathroom art for under $10, check. And for the very observant, you might have noticed from these pictures that we finally painted the bathroom--final reveal coming soon!

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!

Bathroom Update

Happy New Year everyone! The Mulls haven't really made any resolutions yet (and probably won't), but here's to hoping that we get more work done around the house in 2012 while maintaining our sanity. We are still working to complete the downstairs half bath that we started demo on in August and blogged about here. It has taken us longer than expected because we work in spurts and then take a few weeks off (small steps = part of our plan to maintain our sanity!). The last image we left you with was this:

Can I get a "yikes"? After freaking out about what we had done cleaning up the demo debris, we knew we would need to put some drywall up on the wall that had crumbled during demolition so that our new beadboard would have something to nail into and our walls would all be even. We measured the width of the existing plaster and then ran to Lowe's to get some drywall in the same width. After cutting down to size with a jigsaw to cut out the plumbing holes and a circular saw to trim the sides, Stuart screwed it into the wall and we once again had 4 walls. You can see the bottom corner of the drywall in the picture below (sorry, no pictures other than this one of the drywall portion of this project).

Up next on the list was tile installation. We ordered a 1" hexagon carrara marble mosaic tile from Amazon.com for around $9/sq ft. Since our bathroom was 20 sq feet, we ordered 21 sq feet of tile and came out just under $200 for the flooring. Neither Stuart nor I have any experience in tile installation, so we educated ourselves by talking to the floor guy at Lowe's and watching online videos. The tile we selected was held together by mesh and each sheet of tile was 1 sq ft. This was a very user friendly tile because the pieces were so small that we could snip the mesh if we needed to trim the tile around the toilet, air vent, etc as opposed to needing to have our tile cut. We did have some pieces of the tile cut to fit around the edges of the bathroom, but otherwise we didn't need to cut it at all. To get started, I laid out the tile in the space to be sure we had ordered enough and snipped tile from the mesh to leave an opening for the toilet plumbing and air vent. Based on the tile we selected, we used a mortar recommended by our Lowe's guy. I mixed the mortar and spread it one tile sheet at a time. I laid each sheet starting by the bathroom door and worked my way into the corner that houses the toilet, since that would be the most forgiving area once the toilet was reinstalled and covered much of the space underneath. After laying the tile in the mortar, we laid the marble threshold piece between the bathroom floor and hallway hardwoods.

 

(close up of post mortar, pre-grouted tile)

After waiting 24 hours per the instructions on the mortar, I mixed the white nonsanded grout with polymer for the tile. I am proud to say that I laid the mortar and grout all while Stuart was out of town (!!!), so I confidently say that anyone can do this with a little patience and the right supplies. Once the grout had dried for 24 hours, I sealed the floors with a sealent recommended by our Lowe's guy. I don't have a close up of the tile after it was grouted, but take the picture above and imagine the space between the tiles filled in with white grout.

Next up for the bathroom project was hanging the beadboard on all the walls. Our walls are not square, so after a lot of measuring at the top and bottom of where the beadboard would hang, we cut the beadboard to size using a circular saw (and a jigsaw for the plumbing holes). We hung each piece with finishing nails and a little nail finisher tool. Next up was measuring, cutting, and hanging the chair rail, baseboard, and shoe molding. We didn't use any fancy tool for this, just a neat piece of plastic and a saw that my dad bought for us last year that gives you the option of cutting various angles. Below are some pictures of the beadboard and trim before filling the nail holes, caulking, and painting everything high gloss white--pretty rough!

After puttying/caulking/and painting everything from the chair rail down a high gloss white, we hung the new towel bar and toilet paper holder. Then, Stuart and I watched more online clips and learned how to reinstall our toilet. I must say, I was very proud of my sweet husband for figuring this out and replacing some parts on our toilet. We decided to just reinstall our old toilet because a.) we figured that no matter what toilet we installed, it would ultimately just be a toilet and serve it's same purpose while looking similar to pretty much any new toilet and b.) we could dress it up with a new oil rubbed bronze handle and make it shine with a good Clorox scrub.

So this is where we are now. We still need to:

• install the sink (we have bought a new sink and are waiting on our new sink hardware to come in)
• install a new light fixture (our electrician is coming on Friday to install a wall switch--up until now the light has turned on/off with a little pull!)
• paint the wall above the chair railing (we are painting a light gray)
• paint the trim and medicine cabinet above the chair railing (high gloss white, what else?)
• add handtowels, artwork, etc.

We still have a lot to do, but I'd say we have come a long way from this:

To this:

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.