From Shabby to Chic

Well, it seems like I am taking on more and more projects around the house!  We are so close to being "done" with the things that we want to do right now that I can taste it!  More news to come about the big hole in our wall, which is now nicely painted and looking fabulous, if I do say so myself.

Anywho, this post is all about how I refurbished our UGLY vanity in the upstairs guest bathroom.  See it was straight up out of the 80's-when this house was built.  I wasn't crazy about the wood, or the counter top, or the sink faucet for that matter.  So, I decided to re-do the vanity and just buy a new faucet instead of replacing the whole thing-which costs a lot of dinero $$$-so booo to that.

This is how the shabby vanity looked before I got started (note, those are still the ugly floors, so you know this picture is a little bit dated)...

I know what you're thinking...why in the world would you want to paint and cover up that lovely wood-baha NOT!  So, I got started right away.  First I took off the two doors and all the hardware-except the toilet paper holder bolts.  Why?  Because I'm lazy-don't judge.  After everything was removed, I lightly sanded the whole vanity, including doors, with my palm sander-every girl needs one, seriously- I. LOVE. MINE.  After the sanding I wiped all the dust away and put 2 coats of primer.  Some people only use 1 coat of primer, but I find that it makes the paint easier and requires less applications if the primer is a little thicker.  Some might disagree, but I didn't see anybody offering to help me complete this task-so my thinking is clearly correct.  After the primer dried, I added a coat of paint-like so...

  The color looks super yellow in the pictures, but the bottom picture is actually more accurate.  This might be because I just snap these pictures with my iPhone...so much for the new iPhone having the 'best' camera like they advertise.  I definitely need another form of camera.  Oh well.

Then the fun part began.  I got out my palm sander, again, and just sanded the freshly painted vanity.  I sanded and distressed the thing to death.  I kept putting the doors side be side to make sure that I had them 'aged' in different spots, so it didn't match exactly.  I mean, what old stuff has marks in the exact same place?  Then I rubbed some old stain that we had left from the home office transformation on the doors and vanity.  I would rub it on, then use another cloth to rub it off.  I kept repeating this until I thought it looked 'aged' enough.  When I was done, I just attached all the hardware again and BAM-new vanity.

I like to refer to this bathroom as shabby chic room because I think the shower curtain kinda gives off that vibe-hence the reason I wanted a distressed/aged looking vanity.

There are lots of other things going on at our house...Brad went out of town for a weekend, and in that short amount of time I managed to repaint the downstairs, started to repaint the trim downstairs, bought a vintage stereo to house our cable box, and all sorts of other fun things.  More pictures and posts to come soon!  I'd be dangerous if he was gone a whole week.....(insert evil laugh)

Wide open spaces

When Brad and I bought our house, one of the first things that we wanted to do was to knock a big hole in the wall that divided the living room from the kitchen.  When working with a small space, openings in walls seems to make the rooms seem bigger and brighter.  So, with this in mind, we called our AMAZING contractor to come over and take a look at  knocking a hole in the wall.  John is the best.  Period.  When we were buying our house and when all the ugliness happened with our first house, he was the one who talked to our lawyer, inspected the houses, and made sure that the house we were buying was safe and a good investment-he did this all expecting and refusing to take any sort of monetary compensation.  We would trust John with our lives.  He is-simply put-an amazing man.  He even takes care of our dog while they are working on the house-he'll let her out, make sure she has water, and play with her.  Talk about pampering!  So needless to say, we will NEVER use anybody but John.  He's the man.

After John came over to house, listened to me give a detailed explanation of how I wanted the wall to look-hey, I'm anal, what can I say?-they got to work.  I came home yesterday to a ray of light from the kitchen window shining through to the living room.  Success.  It. Looks. Awesome.

Before-closed off and small looking...

After...hello light, hello openness, hello awesomeness...

More pictures to come as they finish the project.  So excited!!

You learn the most from the things you do wrong...

Well, this weekend started off with a Saturday morning trip to the local tile store, Stovers, and Knox Rail Salvage to check out their selection of flooring, tiles, and other things that all DIY projects require.  After deciding to simply give our 2 guest bathrooms a 'facelift' instead of completely re-doing them (my idea-I mean they NEVER get used...I'd rather spend the big bucks on the master bath, which gets used EVERYDAY) we decided that giving the floors a new look wouldn't be such a bad idea.  After Brad and his friend decided they could do the  job, we bought some peel and stick tiles (sounds classy, I know-but they actually look much nicer than what you are probably thinking), beer, and decided to cut loose.  

Here is what the downstairs bathroom floor looked like pre-tile...

I know what you're thinking, sexy flooring.  And yes that is a beer on the counter.  Maybe that was the cause of the eventual demise of the flooring?  More to come  about that later in the post.

So, the boys got started, doing an excellent job, taking out the toilet, not making a big mess, and just chugging right along-in terms of the progress and their drinks.  Here are some of the 'action' shots of the work.

Prettyyyyyyyyyy

Getting there...

And finally, the after shot...too bad it was short-lived.  

The bathroom looked great, and I could almost see the finished product with crisp new white trim, instead of that awful wood stuff that we still have lingering around the house in certain rooms, a fresh painted vanity, and updated faucet.  

We got up on Sunday and went out on another home improvement store run to buy the new faucet.  We were extremely excited for this quick, inexpensive transformation! When we got home to install the newly purchased faucet, I left Brad to do this on his own, and I headed out for a brisk 20 mile run.  When I got back in the car after my run, Brad informed me that when he went to get under the sink to replace the faucet, he noticed that water was coming up from the floor... meaning we had a leak and a big problem.  See, the beauty of a self-adhesive tile is that you just stick it down, but the other side of that is, it cannot have ANY moisture on it for 5 days after installing it-so needless to say, our little water bubbles that were locked underneath were a big oh sh*t sign.  Poor Brad had to rip up all his handy work.  He watched hours of work come out in a matter of minutes.  

So, now the floor looks like the 'pre' picture again.  Bummer.  The moral of the story is, make sure the toilet is sealed once you put it back in place.  Man, we really thought it was and definitely did LOTS of flushes throughout the evening to make sure, but I guess it just wasn't sealed perfectly...who knows.  Hell, now that we have the floor out of there, it doesn't seem to be leaking at all...maybe the new wax ring that we had to install formed to the seal?  Your guess is as good as mine.  BUT the silver lining is that Brad wasn't super crazy about how the tile looked against the hardwood (didn't really care-I thought it looked good), so we will get to pick something that he thinks 'goes' better against the hardwood-as if he is a resident expert in picking things that 'go' together. Ha.  That made me laugh.  

The good news, is that we did the same floor to the upstairs bathroom, and it is great.  No leaks, no water, no moisture.  Apparently this toilet decided to cooperate.  I am in the process of refinishing the vanity in this bathroom, so please disregard the poorly primed vanity and lack of doors.  More to come about that project once I actually finish it...eeeek!  Soon...I swear, along with all the pictures I have yet to post of the house....

Before

 During-Note the toilet in the tub and the presence of beer...yet again-many hours after the first in the downstairs bathroom...maybe they got better with the volume that was consumed?

 Probably should've painted behind the toilet, where we couldn't reach when we re-painted the bathroom...nah

 After...so pretty, such a difference!

Once again, like the vanity downstairs, this one is getting a fresh coat of paint on the vanity and on that awful wood junk trim.  Since I think the curtain in here is kinda shabby chic, I am going to antique the vanity once I paint it.  Meaning, I am going to sand my newly painted vanity and rub stain on it to make it look old.  This bathroom also got a new faucet, which is not installed yet.  Brad was pretty pissed, irate, furious tired after his discovery of the moisture in the downstairs bath, that he was done for the day with any sort of home improvement projects around the house.  Can't say I blame him.  

So, there you have it.  You live and you learn.  Sh*t happens, or in our case, sh*t water happens to your floor sometimes, and you've just gotta roll with the punches.  We are learning as we go, and next time we will be damn sure that there is not a leak anywhere!  Hopefully we can rope Brad's flooring partner in crime to come and finish the bathroom floor again-I have a feeling it will take the promise of beer and pizza.  I can handle that.