Monday, January 30, 2012

Master Bath

Take you back to 2009. Our master bath had 1 ugly dated sink, 1 toilet in front of the window staring at the shower, pale blue tiles that went up halfway the wall, No mirror, ripped out light fixture, weird wood racks, 1 Gross GROSS GROSS blue tiled shower! Just awful!

We knew everything just had to go. Then we found out the support beams had to go too, so literally everything had to go. Thankfully we had another bathroom we could use.

Let me state again. THANK YOU WES and STEVE for being so handy and awesome! Love yall!! I beyond love my bathroom!

How did we accomplish this jewel...lots of hard work! SO WORTH IT! Here is how we did it:

Shower or Bathtub? I would have loved to have both, but that would have meant losing a closet. The closet won. :-) Def not sharing a closet with Wes (However he did lose half of his so we could make room for the toilet to have some privacy). So since I compromised I wouldn't on the jet spa tub, which I love and adore. It's my little getaway that calms my nerves. WELL worth the $$.

Tile- I knew I wanted something clean. and it had to go with our room color (Blue) since they were connected. So white won, which was a money saver! I majorly love subway tile, so that was our layout. As an avid HGTV watcher a way to throw in "fancy" tiles is through accents. If I had my way and lots of $$ my entire bathroom would have been glass tiles...but I had to settle on a strip. It's so gorgeous!! The floor tile and our vanity counter are Marble. We scored on these in Home Depots discount section. Before you order always check out that section. If it doesn't have enough for your project just ask if there is more in the back...because in our case there was and HELLO SAVINGS!

Lights- All the lights around the sink are from Restoration Hardware. Baller! Well, not really thanks to outlets! :-) The one above is a Sutton and the side sconces are Keller. Total $397 retail...OMG! Thankfully I got 57% off...Yes I only paid $170! SCORE! They give it such a fancy hotel feeling.

Sinks and Faucets- After LOTS and LOTS of research/price stalking. I finally found a dealer that was amazing! The sink typically run about $120 and the faucet about $145. I only paid half! I wanted a vessel sink, but nothing too hip so I went with classic white ceramic. I never knew before our house remodel faucets were SOOOOO dang expensive!

Vanity- This was our hardest thing to find. We needed it to at least be 60 inches and of course when we were moving pipes around in the wall we didn't think that out too well. Which made the vanity shopping EVEN more difficult. We needed something with the doors on the outside and drawers in the middle in a dark wood.....well if anyone has looked for those HELLO EXPENSIVE LADIES! This purchase was coming toward the end of our budget so I REALLY couldn't put it to myself to spend over $500 for it. Which is unheard of!

So HGTV saved the day again. Kitchen cabinets! So that is exactly what we did. Two 36 inch in-stock sink cabinets that we screwed together. We could have bought material to cover the kickboard but I wanted it to be 1 seamless piece so we bought baseboard that I stained to match. My father-in-law made the countertop with trim (that I stained) so we could have a place to lay the tile. I cut and stained the trim work around the backsplash. GO ME! What do you end up with? 1 AWESOME KITCHEN HEIGHT (love not having to bend over far to wash my face) CUSTOM CABINET!!

Mirror- All custom. Sensing a pattern?! Since our vanity is so large that mirror would have been EXPENSIVE. Sense another pattern?! Bathroom reno is expensive! I tried to find one to fit that we could have purchased but that failed miserably since I didn't want to pay an arm and leg for one. So luckly my in-laws had an old mirror that they took down from their house (They had a room with a mirror wall) we got it cut down to size for FREE! Even better! Then my FIL made the frame, which I stained. My staining wasn't up to my par on this one but apparently only I notice the flaws...but I was tired and OVER staining.

Clothes Hamper-This took forever to find too. I wanted something that rolled so I could just roll it up to the garage to load rather than making 3 trips for every load so I wouldn't drop anything. Pain. The back pocket is for my clothes only (Wes isn't allowed to wash my clothes. Men don't understand the concept of not everything goes in the dryer.). The middle pocket is for towels and the front is for everything else. Perfect system. No more clothes on the floor.

So what's left?! Only 2 things!!! YAH!!!! I think I'm about to cross out some things from my "House" post.
1. Hang a cabinet over the toilet. (Which I'm purchasing tomorrow 20% off!)
2. Find floating shelves (Since I obviously have more stuff than Wes I want to keep our counters clear, so I need somewhere to store my makeup and brushes.)

There you have it ladies and gentlemen one awesome bathroom. So blessed!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Photos

Sooo new year new blog layout....one problem. I have uploaded 1GB of pictures. yeah 1GB of photos...therefore....I either have to delete photos or pay for more space or create a new blog. What is a girl to do?!?! So aggravating.

Friday, January 27, 2012

House Remodel

As everyone knows when we purchased our home it was a foreclosure. And man. It was rough! But the size of the home and layout was PERFECT! Not to mention there were hardwoods under all the carpet. And like every homeowner there are things that aren’t perfect and things that still bug me to this day but can you really have a “perfect” home for $60K? I love my home don’t get me wrong and I’m VERY blessed to have it!

I have like 5000 pictures of the process so I thought I would share a few to give a full picture of how we've turned this once scary house into the beauty that it is today. You will be shocked. Still is unreal to me to this day.

My wonderful husband and father-in-law spent from Sept 09-Feb 10 gutting and finishing up the main necessities (including a complete overhaul of the Master Bath and Kitchen, down to the studs.) We still to this day have little projects we need to complete like sanding down the old light fixture holes in the kitchen, paint the kitchen ceiling, install carpet in the remaining closets, hang cabinet over Master Bath toilet, etc. Does everyone have that “honey to do list” that never gets complete?! Hard to get some of the things done with a little one around and when our time off are on different schedules. For our new year’s resolution we are going to complete that little list, because we want to start trying for our #2 sometime late next fall and I don’t want anything minor left on that list. With two kids running around this house it will be impossible to finish that “honey to do list”.

So this is all that needs to get done along with lots would-be-nice/ wishes:

  1. Sand and polish off old fixture holes in kitchen (Spring)
  2. Repaint kitchen ceiling (Summer)
  3. Repaint Master Bathroom (Soon)
  4. Paint Master Bathroom trim/crown molding (Soon)
  5. Hang cabinet in Master Bathroom (Spring)
  6. Finish office closet wall (Spring)
  7. Carpet remaining closets (Summer)
  8. Organize garage (Maybe purchase lower/upper cabinets? For our thousand of tools) (Summer/Fall)
  9. Polish and Paint garage walls (Summer)
  10. Re-roof house ***Meeting next week to decide colors***
  11. Install new gutters ***Meeting next week to decide colors***
  12. Convert sliding glass to window and tear up steps leading to it (Next year)
  13. Install new front door (Fall/Winter) **Painted existing front door and removed security door**
  14. Replace garage overhead lights (DOWN THE ROAD)
  15. Install 2nd set of attic stairs in garage (DOWN THE ROAD)
  16. Replace Hall Bathroom floor and vanity(Next year)
  17. Paint house (Next year)
  18. Replace light fixture by front door (Fall/Winter)
  19. Remove light fixture by sliding glass door (Next year)
  20. Landscape! Landscape! (Hopefully we won’t miss planting season this year)
  21. Tear up sidewalk to front door and Install new (Next year)
  22. Install patio (Summer/Fall)
  23. Tear down deck (Spring/Summer)

Whew! That’s a long list. So I will update when things are complete. Hopefully #10 and 11 will be happening over the next 3 weeks. I think once all of that is done this house will be PERFECT! I love our property and where we live, so it will hard to move this I know especially since we have so many memories, blood, sweat, and tears in it

So now that we are working on the outside comes the hard part. COLORS! I love the colors of my diagonal neighbors on each side. Here is kind of the routes I want to go…all due to change of course….but just ideas.When I was trying to figure out what roof color to go with I started to dabble in paint which lead me into my phases...I have to say I'm kinda in love with Phase 2. Hopefully we will be there soon. (Excuse the bad copy and paste work! :-) Also you might need to click on the picture to read the words.)

 

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Party Prep

Today's post was going to be about the house, but it was raining this AM so I couldn't take a picture...so maybe tomorrow. So I'm dedicating this post to Aiden's party prep.

As everyone knows me and my friend Erica have been planning this since the summer. Gathering ideas from Pinterest and other blogs. From decor, food, etc. So if anyone was wondering how much of an organizing freak I am you can see it here...(Although you wouldn't say that if you saw my living room floor at nights. Terror Aiden comes through disturbs everything, but 90% of the time before bed it's put up.) Oh how I love Excel...

After all is said and done for this party we are spending less than $140. Pretty good! Helped knowing the theme in advance and having craft supplies on hand (Moral don't throw things away.- Reuse, Recycle, Refurbish!) Just make sure you have a spot to store though aka our Office closet. :-)

2.5 weeks away!