Love, love, love it!

Two posts in one day... I'm on a roll! Actually, I'm just too excited to wait to share the finishing touches (minus a "no slam" toilet lid) to the hallway bathroom.

I had ordered an extra long 96" shower curtain and had plans to raise the shower curtain as soon as it arrived. Well, about an hour after my last post the curtain was delivered! I was a little anxious because I wasn't sure that the colors would mesh well. After all, I had purchased it online (extra long shower curtains are rarely available in stores... especially a 96" one) and you can never be too sure about what's going to be showing up on your doorstep. I aimed at not being too "matchy-matchy" for fear of being too boring so the colors are similar- but not the same. And thankfully, what arrived is PERFECT!

Here's what the bathroom now looks like with the new "high-rise" shower curtain:Why did I choose to raise the shower curtain? Well, I understand that it isn't everyone's cup-o-tea, but I have to say that I feel like it adds some dramatic height and a shot of luxury to the room. I really wanted this bathroom to be relaxing with a hotel feel (since this acts as a guest bath when we have them) and also wanted it to be a place for me to unwind (this is our only bathroom with a tub and I love me some bubble baths).

Here's a shot of the curtain with the wall color and new chocolate towels that I snagged:
See what I mean? The blue on the curtain is a bit darker while the browns are a bit lighter. It all still pulls together without being too bland. I also love the simple pattern on the curtain... it's not so busy that it hurts your eyes!

Here are a few other details that I added to complete the transformation:This votive wall sconce has been in my possession for a while- in fact it used to be black. But I got spray-paint-happy and painted it silver a few months ago but couldn't figure out where I wanted it. Problem solved- placing it over the towel rack balances out that giant void of wall space while at the same time contributing to the spa feel :)These are what will be our guest towels (as soon as we get our next guests) which I snagged on the cheap at Kohls ($4 each for over-sized towels? Yes please!).

Side-note: When I bought these I totally imagined how Monica Geller I felt. Anyone else remember the episode where the guys are quizzed on how many towel categories she has? Well, I only have four... so I guess I'm not as OCD as she was. Anyhow, off of my towel tangent and back to the bathroom reveal.I picked up this fun little "one-of-a-kind" dish at a fun shop in Long Beach. I take off my rings when I wash my hands (I hate the feel of water under them) but always felt freaked out about just putting them on the counter. What if they fell down the drain? Problem solved. I bought three of these dishes in different colors: one for each bathroom and one for by the kitchen sink.Last but not least is this little doozy. This has actually been in our bathroom for a few months now. My parents bought us this as a fun gift for Christmas- a kitty toilet flusher! Fun huh?

So that's the bathroom reveal! With the exception of a bath mat and a new toilet lid this room is DONE!

Fountain Mist

That's the name of the paint that I finally settled on! Phew- I went through a lot of different ideas when it came to paint. I went from greens to grays to blues and I finally settled on a brighter version of anything that I had originally looked at.

Why the change of heart? Well, paint is the least expensive way to update or upgrade any space in your home and I though that I could take a leap of faith and do something a little outside of my comfort zone. If all else fails and it looks terrible- I could just spend $20 on another gallon of paint and redo it again. Luckily, that won't be necessary! :)

Here's a reminder of what the bathroom looked like before I painted:
BLAH! Everything is white- but so was everything in this house when we moved in. But I'm sure it's better to be working with a blank slate than if we had bought a house with horrific (and hard to cover) paint colors and crazy decorating.

Here's what it looked like after I started painting all the nooks and crannies. I had to remove the medicine cabinet to get into the nook between the cabinet and the mirror. I just couldn't get my 1.5" angled brush back there without making a mess.
Also, notice that I didn't tape anything off. This might explain how this process took me two days to do two coats but I couldn't be happier with the results. When I was doing the rest of the house I taped everything off only to find that some paint still managed to bleed under there anyway.... so this way took longer but I think I'll be sticking with this technique with any future painting projects.

But, without further ado- here is the big reveal of our new beautiful bathroom:
I did my little happy dance when it was all completed and put back together- much like I did after I finished the vanity. Oh, we can't forget a close up of our new beautiful light fixture:Bye bye inexpensive, energy hog, make-up lighting! I LOVE our new fixture! So classy!

The bathroom still isn't completely done yet though. I ordered a new 96" extra long shower curtain and I plan on raising the shower curtain bar all the way up to the ceiling when it arrives. I'm still on the hunt for some inexpensive but still nice bathroom mats to go with the new decor. Who would have thought that bath mats would be so pricey! But they are! I also want to replace the toilet seat with one of those new "no-slam" toilet seats. I won't bother with posting pictures of that venture though- I really doubt anyone is interested in seeing me replace a toilet lid.

The Vanity Calamity...

It's over people. I have finished. The project that started with an abrupt crash and burn has been resurrected and the results are awesome- if I do say so myself ;)

A couple of weeks ago I had attempted to sand down and stain our hallway bathroom vanity.... and it did not work out so well (as I wrote about in a previous post). So after sitting on the idea for a while I decided to paint it. I picked out a rich coffee color (Roasted Coffee by Valspar to be exact) and set to work over the weekend.

Here's a reminder of what the vanity looked like on move-in day:
This is what all of the wood looked like throughout our house... the kitchen, both bathroom vanities and the hallway cabinets. We just wanted to update it all and make it more bold with rich color.

Here's a "during" shot of the cabinets....
And finally, here's the after with the new hardware put on:
Before, none of the cabinets in the house had any hardware on it except for the hinges (which aren't pretty). Slowly but surely I hope to fix this. Without hardware, I'm always hurting myself and breaking/bending fingernails when I try to pull the drawers open! Ouch.

Here's a close-up of the purdy new hardware I got complete with new brushed nickel hinges to replace the old, ugly brass ones:
I think it looks so awesome! It really is amazing what a coat of paint can do. I've already slapped up the swatch of the same color in the master bathroom to see if I can use the same paint on that vanity! But I have to be careful not to get ahead of myself. I want to finish one project before I move on- that way I don't have a bunch of half finished projects around the house.

That being said, next weekend I hope to get the bathroom walls painted.... then all that's left is putting up the new light fixture (which has been sitting behind our couch in a box for a few weeks now) and raise the shower curtain.

(Note to self: buy extra long shower curtain).

Thank Goodness Paint Swatches Are Free....

... because I've been smuggling a boat-load of them out of Home Depot and Lowe's.

What's the reason for my most recent trip to the paint departments? Well, aside from the fact that I still have not decided on a hallway bathroom/laundry room/master bathroom paint color (they will all probably be the same color) I've decided to paint- not stain- the bathroom vanity.

Here's how I came to that decision. First of all- last I posted I said my staining days were probably over. That statement was probably made more out of my defeat for that particular project but I'm still not over the burn of the less than stellar results from that undertaking. I decided that I wanted to give it one more shot and see if it was even possible for me to get the junk off that I applied. So I bust out my power sander and got to work. Thankfully, and to my complete surprise, it didn't take much elbow grease or sand paper to get it all off. The down side is that with wood cabinets like ours, the stain really sinks into the wood grain- leaving us with this:
The door on the left shows what it looked like before my staining debacle while the one on the right shows what I'm working with after sanding it down... again. I didn't think it was that big of a deal because, after all, if I was planning on slapping on another layer of dark stain it would just cover it right up.

New problem. Turns out the veneer on our cabinets is pretty thin. So after sanding down everything I had completely gone through some parts of the veneer entirely leaving this:
The problem with this is that with the veneer gone the stain will soak in differently and unevenly. So staining is now completely off the table.

New solution- enter paint swatches. People paint their vanities white all the time and it looks amazing. So why can't I paint it a deep, rich brown? After all, it worked out on our kitchen cabinets. So I slapped these babies up to look at them for the next day or two and hopefully I can begin painting this weekend. I've already narrowed it down to six paint colors- I immediately tossed two of them once I got them in the room- leaving me with these options:
I also picked up some new paint colors for the wall. After my recent epiphany that I'm sticking with safe (and not fun) color and design schemes I thought that maybe I should try to spice things up a bit. So I got these new swatches:
I am already proud of myself for picking these new brighter colors! I'm really liking the look of them too :) I haven't completely tossed my old swatches though... these ones are still up in the laundry room:

If the hallway bathroom turns out amazing with a bright color maybe I'll even work up the courage to get different colors for the master bathroom and laundry room!

A Splash of Color

To say that I like things to coordinate is an understatement. My obsessive compulsive tendencies result in my getting irritated if things clash too much or just don't match. And when it comes to decorating our house I've developed an anxiety about just taking a risk and buying things for our place.

Here's my dilemma- our living room is so well coordinated (minus the bookshelf and tv stand which are two different colors- I'll get to that one day) that now I'm bored! See below picture to see what I mean:

It looks nice- but that's not my issue. The sandy walls, the brown couch, the cream carpet, the beige rug.... where's the color!? I'm getting so bored of looking at the same boring color- and it's everywhere! I've wanted to get some pretty throw pillows, maybe another rug, just something to spice the space up. Problem, I'm afraid of doing anything too bold!

My solution- start small. Worse comes to worse I have to make a return to the store to get something I like better. Here's what I ended up snagging:I'll be the first one to say that this is a minor upgrade at best. The room still needs some work, some color, some flair, possibly some more pattern? But my point is that I'm taking baby steps toward a more interesting color pallet.

Pat on the back for me :) Plus, these plush throw pillows were on the cheap at Kohls. $13.00 each marked down from $33 each plus I got to use $20 Kohls cash. So at least my baby steps didn't throw us into the deep end :)

P.S. Rascal jumped into my "after" pictures to stalk some doves outside.

The Money Pit

Since becoming official homeowners on June 9th of last year, Thomas and I have taken on the role of student when it comes to our house. The whole thing is one giant learning experience. One of the biggest lessons that we've learned? That having a home is tough, having a pool is tougher. That pool has been a headache from day one.

Here's a little reminder of what it looked like when we got possession of the house:
Here we were thinking, "Awesome, our first house has a POOL!" How great! Plus, we live in the desert, it's totally necessary! Well, that was then..... we feel differently now. We have fought tooth and nail to keep this pool from continually turning green to no avail. We tried taking care of it ourselves. We tried having a professional pool guy come and get us started with a monster shock treatment. Nope. It still turned green.

All those chemicals aren't cheap either. Added bonus: with the heat here in Phoenix, the chemicals burn off super quick so we were constantly dumping more and more chemicals in there to the point where our whole yard stunk of chlorine. We were continually burning (literally) through our chemical supply. I've also learned through all of this that I can't stand pool supply stores. Seriously, I revert to being a whiney little kid when we have to go. I avoid it at all costs.

After many, many, many trips to test the water at the pool supply shop we finally figured out that we needed to drain the pool and get an acid wash. Our algae problem was just too severe. Here's what it looked like after the pool was drained:

YUCK! It looked 10x worse without the nasty water in it. Next thing we found out when we had the pool drained? We don't just have algae- we have black algae. What is black algae? Well, it's like death for a pool! Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it's bad. It doesn't go away with a simple acid wash (which is diluted). The pool peeps we hired had to make an acid paste and slap it on anywhere in the pool that had those black patches so that it could really sink in and kill it. Not only that- but the guy said that our algae problem was so bad that he had to do two acid washes because one just didn't cut it. Thankfully I was visibly upset when he told me this so he didn't add any extra charges. Yay for being an emotional girl!

When the washes were done though, our pool still looked like this:See the splotchy imperfection? So our pool dude informed me that our pool used to look beautiful and perfect and a deep aqua blue like our neighbors pool. But because of years of neglect our pool now looks like this. How do we fix this? With a $4,000 pool resurfacing :( The water works started again, but the pool dude couldn't help me this time with a cost break because he doesn't resurface pools. Obviously we don't have the cash to go ahead and deal with the problem now.

The good news is that we should be able to maintain the pool as is (no green muck) with chlorine until we can get it resurfaced. Another downside: since we do have the black algae issue and he couldn't guarantee that it was totally gone (it burrows under the plaster- the little jerks!) we have to keep our pool with at least a 5% chlorine level and even higher in the summer which is similar to what public pools do instead of the regular 2% otherwise recommended.

So after two days of the acid wash and refilling the pool we have started saving for our pool to be resurfaced. Luckily we were told that we should be able to hold out for 2 years before it becomes totally necessary. And with the pool refilled you can't really tell how uneven the plaster is. This is what it looks like as of right now:A million times better and many lessons learned.

The Bathroom Boo-Boo

Okay- so I'm not about to sit here and profess that I am the perfect diy-er. Nope, completely the opposite. I am taking it all as it comes and learning from my experiences. I am super new to this whole thing. Furthermore, just because I was able to master one project does not necessarily mean that I will be able to conquer a similar project. Case in point- staining the bathroom vanity.
I thought that through my trials and tribulations that I encountered while re-finishing a yard sale dresser meant that I had the staining process down. Not so :( In fact, I may be so bold as to say that my staining days are over.

As I mentioned in a previous post- I wanted to start working in the hallway bathroom. Specifically I wanted to "remodel it without remodeling it" and working with/updating what we have in there. My vanity solution? Take the light and bright birch vanity and transform it into a rich and bold mahogany vanity with new brushed nickel door hardware. I spent this past weekend removing the doors and drawer fronts and sanding off all of the old veneer to guarantee a smooth application of the stain. After hours and hours of using our power sander I followed up with using our newly acquired handheld Dremel to get in all the nooks and crannies of the cabinets. (Don't know what a Dremel is? Think a hardcore heavy duty version of what they use on your finger nails when you get your nails done.) After mucho mucho sanding- I ended up with this:Looks good right? Looks like I did a pretty darn thorough job getting all that old polyeurathane off to ensure a smooth and even coat of stain, right? Well, maybe it looks that way.... but... well let me just further explain how the whole thing went down.

After spending forever sanding these puppies down and looking like I had just walked out of a fight with a dust storm (yes, I was that covered with saw dust) I wiped off the excess dust from the doors and applied a coat of a pre-stain wood conditioner. This product is supposed to ensure what I had been working so hard to accomplish- even application of the stain. Let me tell you- if the staining process went as smoothly as the pre-stain conditioning process, I would be writing an entirely different blog entry right now. Oh, this is where the happy part of the story ends. With my desire to make this process more efficient I obtained a stain that combined the staining of the wood with the sealing of the wood. Yes, I bought a stain that had the polyeurathane mixed in with it. Tisk tisk. That was a mistake. With the polyeurathane mixed in already it created a sticky glue-like application. Not the best thing when your trying to achieve a uniform look. Let me just say now, if you are looking to do some stain work in the future: DO NOT GET THE STAIN WITH THE POLYEURATHANE MIXED IN! GET THEM IN TWO SEPARATE CANS TO BE APPLIED AT DIFFERENT TIMES!!!

This is what the first coat looked like:
Alright, it didn't apply evenly and it isn't even close to being as rich of a color as indicated on the can and the samples provided at the store. But the can says that you can apply up to four coats to achieve a uniform look or a deeper color. What the can doesn't say is that with each additional coat of stain you are fighting against the stickiness of it all which makes application that much more difficult.

Here's coat #2:Umm... it's starting to look messier! Not more even. Definitely deeper in color but it's harder to cover up inconsistencies when the color is so deep! "Well, I thought, the can says up to four coats. Maybe it gets better." WRONG!

Coat #3:
OH. MY. GOSH. I am not a happy camper. Not only did I just spend my entire weekend working on this but it would take me FOREVER to get this stuff back off. Painting over it would have been an option if the polyeurathane was not mixed in. But since it is- it would be like painting over latex paint... it'll just peel right off.

Thomas had to console me when I sat in our backyard holding my head in my hands and unleashing my tears of defeat. "It doesn't look that bad," he said. But that's not the point. It's not about how far down the spectrum of bad it is. It isn't supposed to look bad at all! Not even a little bit :( The whole point of a diy project is to do something for your home that saves you money, gives you a feeling of accomplishment, and looks just as amazing as if you had paid someone an arm and a leg to do it for you. That is not what happened here.

But I'm not ashamed. I made a mistake. I tried to take a shortcut when I should have stuck with a process had worked for me before. I'm still planning on doing a lot of work on this house. My diy days are not over! I may have lost this battle- but I haven't lost the war! Am I getting too crazy here? Seriously, what war?

Anyway, I am looking into having someone come out and give us some estimates on refinishing the cabinets for us- the right way. With just a small vanity- it shouldn't break the bank, or my spirit. No more tears will be shed over a badly stained cabinet. And fortunately I only started on the doors. The base of the vanity is still untouched and will look like this for a while until I can figure out a way to finish the project.

The Bathroom Brainstorm

So, my first official big time project that I would like to tackle this year is...... the hallway bathroom. This is the bathroom that I use the most (I like the tub) and the smaller space makes for a cozier feel than our master bathroom. On top of everything else, when we have company this is the bathroom that is used. So it only makes sense that I would choose to tackle this bathroom before any other minor reno I may want to do anywhere else in the house.

Here's a reminder of what it looked like on move-in day back in June '10. It's a narrow little bathroom so the first shot is taken from the shower and the second shot is taken from the doorway (just to get you situated).
I wanted this room to look like a complete remodel without having to completely remodel it. New paint, new shower curtain, new cabinet hardware, new light fixture, new accessories.... in other words new! Using our newly acquired Home Depot gift cards (one of our awesome Christmas present from my 'rents) we are now on the lookout for a light fixture.

We have the paint color selected (as seen below) and since I'm going to have to take everything off of the walls anyway I thought we should try to find our new light fixture before I even get started with painting. Seems like a waste of energy to put a fixture back up after painting when we wanna eventually give it the heave-ho anyway. (Sidenote: this paint swatch is not true to life. Try as I did, I just couldn't get an accurate picture of the color.... but think sorta minty. The color shown below it is kind of wasabi-esque... so a shade lighter than wasabi I guess! The color is actually called "Wind Breeze")
Here's the light fixture we're working with now. It's a crazy energy puller- not efficient like we would like. And with us now living in the desert, efficiency is essential. It's not aesthetically pleasing and we don't particularly care for the Hollywood make-up chair style. These houses were built quick and cheap- and this fixture is a perfect example of cheap. They were selling these puppies at the stores for about $20-30 brand new. We want to find something that's inexpensive but doesn't look as cheap as it may actually be. (P.S. Like how we have two different types of bulbs in there? We didn't want to buy more junky light bulbs so we've just been working with what we could find in the house already.)
After I removed the shower doors a couple of weeks ago, I took a step back to really get an idea of what we would like. Bathrooms can be super traditional or crazy modern. We tend to lean a little bit more on the contemporary side of the spectrum and decided that it would be okay to have a little bit more fun with the bathroom. So we went out to look for lighting ideas. We scavenged the likes of Home Depot, Lowe's, and The Great Indoors. Here are some of the styles we kind of liked.The one on the bottom is the one that we liked the most. But before we actually purchase any sort of fixture I have to remove the old one to see what exactly we're working with back there. Also, before we take the plunge and buy from the store I've gotta do my research and see if I can wrangle up a better deal online.

Stay tuned :)

P.S. We're still on the fence about what we want to do with the vanity- paint, stain, or leave it alone.