Hall Bathroom

I'm way behind on posting this because we've been finished with this bathroom since my birthday (in October).  Just like the other posts from our house, there are tons of pictures.

This is one of my favorite room transformations that we've done because this room was pretty rough to begin with.  I know I say this in all my house posts, but I'm not really good at taking pictures of rooms and my camera washes things out a bit.  Here's a picture of the color of the bathroom when we bought the house.

These pictures are taken from the hallway.

 Just like our kitchen, the bottom half of the walls were stamped plaster.  Because it was just a painted plaster wall the bath tub looked pretty bad.

And since an older lady lived here there were large handrails.

 There was some nice wallpaper border around the room.

 The floor tiles were rather loose and had yellowed with age.

 Again, every little thing was painted peach.

 Even the trim around the window.

 And it was rather dark in the bathroom at night.  Especially right when you walked in.  Here a shot of the doorway to the hall.

 Here's the only source of light.

 We started out by painting the ceiling and the upper half of the wall.  Then we took out the toilet and sink and things looked pretty bad.

 I wanted to keep the old sink but it needed some cleaning up.  We got a resurfacing paint for the sink which cleaned it up well.  This is the before.

Here it is after.

 After painting, installing three light fixtures, an exhaust fan, new floor tiles, and beadboard here she is:

 The upper half of the wall looks white but is actually a very light gray.  I chose Artic Cotton for the upper half and Slate Pebble for the bottom.  It wasn't really rocket science on how I picked them either.  I just picked out the top and bottom colors of this paint sample card.
                                               
Here's a shot of one of the lights Cory installed.  It really brightens up the room and to me, makes it seems larger.

 Here's a light Cory put in above the shower.

 And the exhaust fan.  Cory is so good. :)

 Here's a shot of the vanity and toilet.  We changed light fixtures.

 Here's the medicine cabinet where you can see the difference of the colors.  The back of the door is still the drabby peach color that once filled the bathroom.

 The linen closet is now all white.

 The bath tub is now patched up and painted with marine paint (paint for boats) so that the water will repel off  of  the walls and protect the plaster.  Eventually we may tile around the tub but this was a cheap fix for now.  Cory worked so hard by spackling all of the cracks and the grooves from the stamped plaster.  He also did a great job at painting multiple coats of marine paint around the tub.

 New shower head.

 No more old lady handrails.

 New toilet paper holder.

 I guess I got influenced by the previous owners decorating style and decided to paint the window the same color as the beadboard.  This may eventually be painted white, but I 'm trying it out for a while.  Does it look too dull this way?

 This next picture show the floor that Cory installed.  My mother-in-law, Jeanne, was so sweet to give us some ceramic tiles she had bought a few years ago and didn't need.  All we had to purchase was the backer board and the grout for the floors.  Thanks Jeanne!

 Here's an un-ironed shower curtain.  It has small gray fleur de lis embroidered on it.

 I made another Roman shade with some mini-blinds.  I couldn't get a good shot of the colors but it's cream, gray, and light blue.

Here's a side-by -side before and after picture.

We still need some artwork and such for the bathroom but it's functional now and not an eyesore anymore. Cory is the true talent here.  He amazes me daily at what he can do. I know his dad would have been so proud of the hard work he has done. I'm so grateful to have him and have truly enjoyed every minute of owning this house with him.  It's been so much fun working on the house and making it our own. I'm very blessed.
Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a merry Christmas!!! God bless you.. :)

Christmas Cheer

I've been waiting for this Christmas for a while.  Not necessarily Christmas 2011, but a Christmas where I was a homeowner.  It was even more fun decorating this year since last year we didn't decorate because we were moving.  I didn't go all out and deck every hall or anything but I did enjoy putting up some of our decorations.  Here's our tree in our still furniture-less living room.

I

I made a new tree topper this year.

 I put the Nativity scene on the mantle this year but I have the perfect place for it whenever we find the piece of furniture I have in mind...maybe next year?

 Our house from outside.

 You can't really tell that we have bows on our wreaths, but we do.  They're just light green.

 I put some faux apples on a fir wreath that I ordered for a school fundraiser.  Since the wreath is real it is a little harder to work with and my apples keep drooping.

I have a few more small items around the house in other rooms but didn't take any photos.

Random story:
The other day while I was buying the green apples for the wreath I thought I was going to see a real life flash mob (if you don't know what that is then check an example out here, here, or here).  I was waiting in line behind a little old lady who was checking out and chatting with the cashier (who was another little old lady). While the cashier was waiting for the old lady to count out her change she began to sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and looked up at me and smiled.  Then before I knew it the little old lady stopped counting her change and started singing as well and smiled at me.  I started looking around waiting for someone else to chime in but they didn't.  I just got serenaded by two older women.  I contemplated joining in but then I realized that they were trying to out sing each other.  It was kind of like watching Divas Live (remember that show?)  The song ended and nobody else witnessed it but me.  They looked at me for approval and I said, "Good job.  You sound really good together."  I think I let them down by not singing.  To make up for it I walked the little old lady out to her car.  The end.

My goal is to one day participate in a flash mob.  I've been talking it up to some of my students.  ;)

Some More Changes

I'm back with some more little changes that we've made in the past few weeks.  

Here's our old porch light.  It wasn't so bad, and I liked the seeded glass(you can't really tell by the picture) but I wasn't crazy about the yellow glow is cast at night.  Also, it didn't provide too much light.

 Here's our new, white, and very bright porch light.  We still have to patch up the wall where the old light was mounted.  We also bought a little device to screw into the light socket that will automatically turn the light on when it gets dark.  You may already know about that product but Cory and I have just discovered it and we thought it was cool.

The next little change was that we FINALLY got curtains for our bedroom.  I searched for a while and finally found some I liked and could afford.

 Here they are closed.

 I found these at Target for $20 a panel, which is on the low end for curtains.  I call these curtains my "look for less" because I had been admiring the curtains in the picture below from Ballard Designs but they were $179 a panel.

 The next change that has been made (and may not be a permanent one) is that we painted the front door blue.

 We went through 3 different shades of blue and finally stayed with this one.  I ordered a number decal for the door as well.  We're eventually going to install a doorknocker when I find the right one. :)  We also decided to take our screen door off for a while since it had been chewed up pretty badly by the squirrels.  We may put it back up someday though.

 I have wanted to put big numbers on my front door ever since I saw this cover of the 1st Blueprint magazine (RIP).

 Another thing that has changed it that our house has been mostly painted on the exterior!  Here's a shot of it before.  Some of the paint had be scraped off.  Also it shows you our house with the white door and the old porch light.

 And here it is now.  We stayed with gray since we knew we liked it already, just went a tad darker.

The last change that I didn't take a picture of is that we now have a doorbell.  We actually bought our doorbell right before Halloween because I wanted to make sure that we heard our trick-or-treaters (we had    TWO).  We just bought a wireless doorbell system since it didn't really require installation and wiring the house.  Eventually we will probably get a wired one but this one will work for now.  For those of you who don't know, a wireless doorbell is just a device that plugs into an outlet and the doorbell is basically a remote control for the device to make a sound.  The kit we bought had two doorbells so we have one at each front door.  We were so pumped about having these doorbells that we would ring them constantly the first day we had them (childish, I know).  That day and night we were working on the hall bathroom and were making frequent trips to the garage for supplies and each time Cory would enter the house he would ring the bell.  This occurred throughout the day and until we were finished working which was about 1:30 AM.  

Fast forward a few days and I hear our doorbell ring for the first time not by Cory or I ringing it, I was happy to go to the door but found out that nobody was there.  This made me worry that our doorbell was faulty.  This happened again the next day but this time when I answered the door I noticed that our neighbor from across the street was letting someone in....then I realized they may have a wireless doorbell system too. When Cory got home that evening I told him about my theory and we tested it.  We rang the doorbell and watched our neighbor go and answer her door.  This is not a huge problem but I totally feel awful for the first night of constant ringing of the doorbell.  Hopefully, they just unplugged their device that night.  Come to think of it, I did see a cop car drive by that night when I was going to and from the garage...I don't think I'll be sharing our situation with them anytime soon. :)