Guest Bathroom: Polishing Up Our $5 Light Fixture

One of the most awesome finds for our guest bathroom project was this $5 light fixture.  We stole grabbed it from a really nice contractor's yard sale, and even though there was a $10 price tag on it, I asked once if they'd take 5 and they did!  Score!

Guest Bathroom: Lay It On Me

It felt like things were snowballing this week in the bathroom-- after getting the room cleaned up and painted, I knew it wouldn't take much longer to do everything else.  And actually, everything in this post took about thirty minutes to do.  Mr. Great Indoors really wanted this one done.

You might remember we were going with this 12x12 vinyl tile from Lowe's.  We bought one tile of this gray slate and another of the beige slate to try it out, and the gray one looked great against the existing fixtures.  And I loved the dimension of it.  It looks deceptively like ceramic tile

Image here

Guest Bathroom: Painting the Town... or the Bathroom

I knew Mr. Great Indoors was ready for the bathroom to be finished when I came home to this yesterday:

Our usual arrangement is that he builds it and I paint it, and boy has he done a lot of building for this project, mostly in the form of floating drywall.  But things are serious if he picks up a paint brush-- and he spent a few hours cutting in around the bathroom yesterday.

Guest Bathroom: Cleanin' Up and Wallpaperin' Down

Wallpaper, you say?!  What ever could she mean, WALLPAPER??  But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

First off, the cleaning up part of the title.  During the almost three weeks that Mr. Great Indoors spent working on the drywall in the guest bathroom, our entire house was covered in a thin film of construction dust.  I did try to keep things generally dusted, but all it took was one minor sanding session on the drywall patches and it all came back.  I felt like Pig Pen most of the time, and with all the construction equipment scattered around, the house also looked like him.

Image here

A Little Teaser

Technical glitches are still holding up any real blog progess, but we are on the precipice (oooh, big word) of finally getting some pretty after pictures! Crossing my fingers that I'll be able to share some fun stuff tomorrow. :-)  Since, by the way, we have company coming in this weekend....

In the meantime, enjoy this little teaser (albeit terrible cell phone) shot of the bathroom with the floor tiles down for a test run.

Technical Difficulties and An Update

Image here

Pardon my lack of post today, but we're experiencing technical difficulties in the Great Indoors household.  Namely that our computer power cord decided to explode (literally) last night before I got pictures uploaded for a post today.  Unfortunately most of my pictures are trapped on the laptop until we're guaranteed power to it again.  Oops!

In the meantime, here's an update about the progress in the guest bathroom.  The new stuff is bold.

• Remove quarter round (which we'll reuse as much as possible), toilet, vinyl, vanity, mirror  (We're keeping the old vinyl down until we finish the big work on the walls)
• Remove wallpaper and repair wall (one wall done, three to go)
• Repair light fixture location
• Repair water-damaged studs and drywall in guest bathroom
• Pick a paint color
• Clean up construction dust!
• Clean up old vinyl adhesive, level floor
• Paint walls
• Lay floor in guest bathroom
• Replace all baseboards and quarter round in guest bathroom
• Fix trim over door
• Paint trim
• Attach vanity legs, paint vanity
• Reinstall vanity
• Reinstall toilet
• Frame the mirror with trim (or we might get crazy and just buy a new mirror... we'll see) Buy a new mirror for the guest bathroom  We've figured out a work-around for now until we find the perfect mirror -- will share!
• Clean up and install new light fixture (more about that soon!)
• Paint crates for shelving
• Install shelving above the toilet
• Make a burlap shower curtain, plus a fabric curtain liner
• Accessorize!  Maybe some DIY wall art
• Repair water-damaged studs and drywall in master bathroom
• Lay floor in master bathroom
• Replace all baseboards and quarter round in master bathroom
• Install pedestal sink in master bathroom

There's still so much to do!!  But we've at least got the room just about to the zero point-- where the repairs are done and we can start in on the FUN STUFF!  Wish us luck!

Guest Bathroom: Overhauling the Vanity

I'm so excited to share our first before and after for the bathroom rehaul!  However, I do have to apologize for being a bad blogger, since I seem to not have taken comprehensive pictures of the whole process.  Oops.

To refresh your memory, here's the vanity in place before we started.  I always hated how both the bathroom vanities in this house were so lowwww.  I felt like I had to bend completely at the waist to wash my face.  Granted, I'm kind of tall (although compared to some members of my family, I feel short at 5'8").  So when I saw Centsational Girl's post about adding legs to her bathroom vanity, I knew it was happening in our guest bathroom.

Celebrating Three Years

Mr. Great Indoors and I celebrate three years of marriage today, and in honor of our anniversary I figured I'd share some of my favorite pre-ceremony/ceremony pictures.  Enjoy!

Something borrowed was a cameo broach from my great-great-aunt on the front of my bouquet (the bouquet included English ivy, another family tribute).  My dress was something new, I borrowed my step-father's handkerchief (you can see it in my hand in the picture as we're leaving the church), and my garter was something blue.

I will forever love the picture of our "Chickamafia," as my mom called it.  We got married in Chickamauga, Georgia, and the official men in our wedding looked like the mafia with their suits and sunglasses.  Appropriate name, no?  From left, Mr. GI's brother who was an usher, groomsman J, my dad, Mr. GI, Mr. GI's dad, groomsman T, and best man H.

Guest Bathroom: Color Choices

It's coming down to the crunch time with the bathroom where I actually have to decide on a color for the walls.  When I was dreaming about this room I chose a darkish blue for the walls.

Guest Bathroom: A Rip Roaring Good Time

You might remember that I dreaded this bathroom remodel from the minute we found out there was painted-over wallpaper we'd have to remove.  I knew it would take time and tedium to remove said wallpaper, especially if the lovely builders of our home didn't do us the favor of preparing the drywall before they installed the wallpaper.  Which they didn't.

Mr. Great Indoors had just about finished repairing the drywall on the back wall of the guest bathroom last week, so it was my turn to tackle the wallpaper.  I took a deep breath and dove in, and I figured I'd share what I learned in the process. I've said it already, but remember we were working in a room where the drywall wasn't prepped before the wallpaper was hung, so those of you lucky enough to have prepared drywall probably won't have to go through the mess we did.  I didn't keep very good track of time doing this project, but it took me three evenings after work to get this done at probably 2-3 hours per session.  So go ahead and count on a full day's work to remove all the wallpaper in a small room.  Oh, and these are not pretty pictures (even the "after" photos), so go ahead and prepare yourself for that. 

Another Window...

I thought it would be fitting on Friday the 13th to post about our latest window mishap.  You already know about our sliding door and the broken French door window insert, and now we can add to that list a car window.  That's right.  One single piece of pea gravel shot a single hole through the driver's side window of one of our cars.  Cue the shatter sound effect.

Guest Bathroom: Goodies So Far

Boy, water damage and drywall are pretty boring.  Why don't we talk about something more fun, like the goodies we've gotten so far for the bathrooms!

Our first purchase, even before we dove in headfirst and discovered *&%# water damage did anything to the bathroom, was a yard sale light fixture.  We love yard sales (I was so excited for yard sale weather that it was even on our spring to do list), and we especially love yard sales in nice neighborhoods.  We really lucked out with this particular yard sale; the newly-built home we happened upon belonged to a contractor who was trying to get rid of items from other home renovations.  (Let me just say that this house was gorgeous.  A little modern for my taste, but I have a feeling I'll be seeing this house in Better Homes & Gardens soon.)  There was tons of stuff we would have loved to take home, but ultimately this light fixture called our names.  Originally marked at $10, but the owner didn't blink an eye when I asked if she'd take $5 instead.  Score!!  Considering most of the full-price fixtures we were looking at were at least $40, we're considering this a steal.  I'm writing a separate post about cleaning it up and installing it (once we get that far...).  One shade looks a little wonky in this picture, but it just wasn't screwed on right when we bought it.

Guest Bathroom: Drywall, Oh Drywall

I've always said (usually from reading another DIY blog) that I never wanted to have anything to do with drywall.  Hanging, mudding, floating, or any of those other drywall terms.  Well, incidentally, I have the best husband in the world-- our guest bathroom has needed extensive drywall repairs so far and he has done every bit of it.  Can I get a round of applause for my handy, handsome, husband??  My schedule last week kept me from helping much, but I have since gotten my hands dirty (wallpaper, oh wallpaper.... more about that next week).

So the last chapter of our bathroom reno left us with gaping holes in both bathroom walls, both from our janky light fixture and the mildew issue shared by both bathrooms.  Oh yeah, then there's the wallpaper that was slapped right on top of the unprepared drywall (it sounds like felony assault, huh?).

Let's start with the wall above the vanity.  You'll notice two things here:  (a) the hole where our Hollywood light strip used to be and (b) the bare spot where our mirror used to be.  The old light strip was actually held on by CAULK if you can believe it, so Mr. GI had to do some brainstorming to figure out a solution for our new light fixture.  (Funny enough, Young House Love was dealing with a light fixture problem of their own at about the same time!)

One Year!

 

Image here

It's hard for me to believe I've been doing this blogging thing for a year now.  So hard, in fact, that I actually missed my blog birthday last Thursday.  It's been a blast so far being able to share our adventures with you (you can read most of our first-year projects here or check out our project page), becoming a little bit Internet Famous, and meeting new friends along the way!

Happy first birthday, little blog of mine!  While we're at it, how many of you have started new blogs in the last year?  Veterans, any tips for me?  And what do y'all want to see more of in the second year?

Guest Bathroom: More Than We Bargained For

So I alluded last week to the fact that we (a) had already started the bathroom rehaul and (b) might have found ourselves in a little deeper than we meant to be. We spent the afternoon last Monday shopping around for supplies, brainstorming, and getting excited about the new bathroom we'd have soon.  It all started so innocently, with Mr. Great Indoors taking out the baseboard in the guest bathroom.

Day 1 PLAN:

Remove baseboards to prep for flooring installation

Install light fixture

Sounds simple enough, right?

Day 1 ACTUAL:

Remove baseboards

Discover water damage on baseboard behind the toilet

Rip out dry wall in guest bathroom

Rip up vinyl in guest bathroom to find moisture underneath

See water damage goes through to the other side of the wall (i.e., the master bathroom)

Rip out dry wall in master bathroom

Take a breather before we burn down the house

Attempt to install light fixture

Discover old light fixture was held onto wall by caulk.  That's right:  caulk.  There's actually a gaping hole in the wall that prevents us from hanging the light fixture we bought over the weekend.

Call it a night before anything rash happens

Springing Around the House!

Despite the bathroom posts this week, I know I've been MIA for the last few months (Seven posts in the past three months?  Despicable.).  My work schedule has been absolutely nuts, and I haven't had much spare time to do anything.  But finally I had some time to be in the house in the past week, which I guess was obvious since we've started the bathroom.

So what better to do with a few spare minutes last week than spring decorating?  :-)

Guest Bathroom: The Before

I shared my dream for the guest bathroom the other day, and now it's time to show you how it's starting, particularly since I only had one measly before picture in the last post.

Here's the view from the main hallway.

Guest Bathroom: The Dream

I think I've mentioned a few times how ready I was to overhaul  the guest bathroom, and I even made it one of my 2012 resolutions for the house.  We've done touch-ups in just about every room in the house, but this bathroom has stayed basically the way we found it three years ago.  Which, by the way, was with painted-over wallpaper.  I just hadn't gotten up the guts to deal with that wallpaper, so it stayed.