I have very much enjoyed my time visiting family and friends during my extended stay in the UK.  But now that time is at an end.  At the end of last week, I flew across the pond back into the arms/paws of my beloveds.

Over the past few days as I become adjusted to my new time zone, I have spent some time perusing the Interwebs searching for some design inspiration.  I like to think of it as a way to kick-start my motivation to get working on our massive house renovation project again.

But my dear blog readers, searching the Internet can be a very dangerous thing.  The endless sources of design and inspiration offer a vast array of possibilities for creating (and recreating) our living spaces. So even when you think you have finished a space, you might get the proverbial itch to change it all over again. The saying goes, it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind (along with a few other things).  But it takes a strong husband not to murder his wife when she says she has “a few small ideas to change things” in their recently renovated bathroom.  Yes, I’m that woman. 

After posting about our newly madeover bathroom, I realized that there were two things that I wasn’t feeling anymore. 

The tile.  And the vanity.  Oh, and not to mention that the glass vessel sink and faucet have to go because they have impossible-to-remove water stains. But that was from before.  It’s not a new thing.  So it doesn’t count.

It’s not that I dislike the tile and the vanity.  It’s just that after perusing the Interwebs, I have found design elements that I like better.  For example, I much prefer the style of these open-base vanities (with a white-and-much-easier-to-keep-clean vessel sink):

And I also seem to be gravitating towards the simple lines of the board and batten look:

While the tile on the walls could easily be covered with the board and batten, the tile on the bathroom floor would be replaced with the wood floors we will be installing (eventually), giving it a seamless look between the living rooms and the bathroom.

So, help a girl out here…. I am not usually so fickle when it comes to design choices.  I am entering new territory wanting to change things up. What do you think?  Am I crazy to want to redo our recently madeover bathroom?  Are you feeling the potential new looks or do you prefer it the way it is now?

I’ve been promising to reveal our downstairs bathroom makeover for months weeks, and now the time is upon us!  The actual bathroom has been complete for a while, but I’ve just procrastinated in writing a post about it (on account of the millions of photos you’re about to see).  So, before I reveal what the bathroom currently looks like, let’s see how it used to look…

Yowza.  This is exactly what we saw on the day we first visited the house.  It’s amazing we didn’t run away screaming, don’t you think?  Fast forward to the day we moved in, with all the clutter removed, the bathroom revealed more of its potential…

Check out the sea-foam green wall paint, shell-shaped cultured marble vanity and green floral themed plastic mirror.  This bathroom was calling out for an update.

Just over a month after we moved in, Rick had demo-ed the bathroom, ripping out the vanity and toilet (which we offered for free on Craigslist and were snapped up within hours).  The wood floors had to come up as well because of the underlying rot…

The plumbing under the toilet was fixed, the missing floor joists were put back in and the sub flooring was reinstalled.  This gave us the basic canvas to start tiling with these large 18″ neutral-colored porcelain tiles… 

Whilst we were working on the walls, we decided to move the light switch closer the the door. 

For some reason, the previous owners had placed the light switch about 20 inches in from the door frame.  Meaning that short people like me had difficulty reaching the switch when entering the bathroom.  Rick removed some drywall and moved the switch much closer to the door.  As an added bonus, he changed the switch so it is now motion activated.  Whenever you enter the bathroom, the light automatically turns on.  After you leave the bathroom, it automatically turns off after about 1 minute.  Now we don’t have to worry about accidentally leaving the light on. Plus, we don’t have to worry about what kinds of germs might be on the light switch from unwashed hands.  So, this switch helps cleanliness and our electricity bill – score!

Next, we transformed a vanity we got for free on Craigslist…

… by painting it brown and installing new brushed chrome hardware, adding a new granite countertop, vessel sink and waterfall faucet.

Then we hit a snag.  A couple of the tiles developed small cracks running along the joint where the cement backerboard pieces met below the tile.  Although all the tiling was finished, we didn’t want to grout before this problem was solved. Solution?  To pull those tiles back up. It was a little disheartening to see all our hardwork being demo-ed again, but knowing that the tile would be set properly sans cracks made it worth it.

Once we tiled, again, we were ready to grout…

…and paint.  We also installed contemporary track lighting and ceiling molding to finish off the space.

A few decorative accessories and the bathroom was ready. And so here we are.  Finally. Here it is. The bathroom reveal…

The photo above shows the view as you enter the bathroom.  Below is a photo showing the opposite corner of the bathroom.

A shot of the madeover vanity:

Let’s see a close-up of that vessel sink and waterfall faucet.  As I mentioned previously, the faucet might eventually be changed to this one on account of the impossible-to-remove water stains on the glass.

Above the toilet are three photos depicting lighthouses on the North Carolina coast…

Opposite the facilities is a small magazine bin, so you can catch up with all your essential reading while you are … cogitating.

And here’s a close-up photo of the painting that adorns that wall.  It was the first gift I bought Rick on my very first trip to the USA.  The image ties in nicely with the lighthouse photos on the opposite wall and the color really pops against the gray-blue walls.

This is the new track lighting we installed to give the bathroom a more contemporary feel – gotta love that we found this on clearance at Lowes a couple of years ago for 10 bucks!  I also really like how the molding gives the whole bathroom a polished look.

So there you have it.  Our bathroom makeover. 

Let’s check out the before and after photos…

Rick and I are thrilled about this bathroom makeover.  The space seems a lot bigger and more contemporary after removing the large outdated vanity, installing tile and updating the paint and accessories. What do you think?  Do you like the transformation?  What’s your favorite part?

As part of our vanity makeover in the downstairs bathroom, we installed this fountain faucet over the glass vessel sink:

However, over the months of use, we’ve ran into one problem.  Water stains.  After we turn the tap off, the few remaining drips have left an indelible stain on the glass. We’ve tried a bunch of things to remove the offending marks, but to little avail (glass cleaner, lime-away, magic eraser). So recently, I’ve been looking into alternatives. I really like the waterfall effect of the existing faucet, so I wanted to find one that mimicked that effect  Just minus the glass.

I’m lovin’ this trough faucet by Pfister.

The open faucet creates this cool waterfall effect.  At 8.25 inches, the spout is high enough to sit above the raised vessel sink.  Plus, it is a single-hole configuration which matches the existing faucet, so swapping them out would be a breeze.  The faucet comes in a range of finishes – chrome and brushed nickel being the most popular. So, unless I can find a way to get rid of the water stains on the existing faucet, this baby might be coming home with me. 

Have you guys got any fab tips for getting rid of water stains?

Ever have one of those days where you seem to be working all the time and not getting anything accomplished?  That’s how it’s been here for the past few weeks. We seem to be working around the house every spare minute we get (when we’re not working for our regular jobs, both in the day time and in the evenings).  However, we still really haven’t finished many projects around the house just recently.  We’ve got several on the go.  For instance, Rick has been working in the garage, trying to organize some of the boxes of stuff we still have left over from moving.  He’s also been working hard replacing the garage door opener (and fixing the banged up garage doors), so that when Winter rolls in, we might actually be able to put the cars in the garage.  The previous owners only installed one garage opener, despite having three working doors, so eventually Rick will be installing two other openers so we can use the full extent of the three-car garage. 

Back in the house, we’ve also been working on getting a few rooms finished.  When Rick first installed the dining room chandelier, it was obvious that it needed lowering over the dining room table.  The light didn’t come with any extension rods, so we’ve been coming up with some creative ways to lower that sucker (more details coming soon).  I’ve also been playing around with paint ideas for changing the Gothic red to something more airy and contemporary.  The wall going into the kitchen (opposite our one replaced window) is currently decorated with about 7 different color patches as we try several different looks for the room.

We’re still working on hanging the header in our upstairs bedroom-turned-library.  The header is up, but we still need to make a few adjustments to some supports before we remove the middle studs.  And lastly, we’re thisclose to finishing (and revealing) our downstairs bathroom makeover.  All that’s left is a few finishing touches – some caulking, some crown moulding, hanging some pictures and so forth.

Maybe it would be easier to focus in one project, rather than tackle several at one time.  I keep telling myself that we are saving time by multi-tasking – every time we go to the DIY store, we can get items for several projects rather than make many trips for individual projects.  That’s the theory anyway.  Do you guys multitask and work on several projects at once, or do you prefer to work on one thing at a time?  Do tell.

I have a good feeling that we will get at least one these projects finished this week.  Stay tuned for details!

Way, way back, many centuries ago,
Not long after the Bible began.
We set out to renovate the downstairs bathroom
And get it done pronto! That was the plan!

Ok, enough with channeling Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (love that musical). It seems like forever ago that we started renovating the downstairs bathroom.  Rick began by pulling out the existing vanity and grungy toilet when I was away in Harvard.  Next, we repaired the rotten sub flooring, made-over the vanity with a new faucet and vessel sink and then laid some new tile. And then … our progress halted. Seized up. We became constipated.  In the metaphorical sense, you understand. Many a month went by with us gazing longingly into the shell that was our bathroom, dreaming of downstairs facilities.

Well, our wait is finally over (ex-lax is key). We now have a working downstairs bathroom, complete with grouted tile and painted walls. But the passage wasn’t always clear (ok, enough with the toilet puns). Before we were able to grout anything, we first had to rip some tile back out.  Yes, you read that correctly. 

From our many trips going into the bathroom to admire our handy tiling work, we had accrued a set of small cracks in two or three of the tiles by the door. With both of us being perfectionists (Rick is the OCD type, I am the “work for 24 hours non-stop to get it right, even though it should only take 2 hours” type), neither of us wanted to grout over the cracked tiles. So, our only option was to bring those babies back up again. A couple of chisels, a hammer, a sledge hammer, a floor scraper (and two type-A personalities) later, we had the three offending tiles out of the way.  As the tile came up, we figured that the cracks were caused from an uneven join where the sheets of backerboard came together.

So with more backerboard laid down and a generous slathering of tile adhesive, we tiled the bathroom.  Again.

A few days later was Labor Day  – a perfect time to grout the tile.  Unfortunately, (ahem) I had to go into work, so Rick had the fun task all to himself. We chose a sanded grout very close to the color of the tile to make the joins look seamless. After mixing the grout with the recommended dose of water, Rick squeegeed it on with a rubber float.  After a 15 minute wait, he began wiping the tile with a damp sponge. Wiping.  Wiping.  Wiping.  Lots of wiping involved in grouting.  In fact, I think the whole process should be renamed wiping, instead of grouting.

We let the grout cure for 24 hours before applying grout sealer – this protects the grout from any stains.  Stains.  Bathroom. ‘Nuff said.  And then, we were *finally* able to set the toilet. And paint the walls a gorgeous slate blue color.

We are so close to finishing our downstairs bathroom renovation.  We still have a few finishing touches to do, such as finishing our vanity makeover, hanging the TP and towel holders, painting the ceiling and putting up some crown molding. Then, some decorative touches, such as some of my black and white photography, will be the piece de resistance to this makeover.  Stay tuned for the final reveal, complete before and after pics – coming soon!  Well, definitely sometime this century.

The house renovations have slowed down a bit lately.  Maybe all that new homeowner vim and vigor has finally run out. Or the money has run out. Or perhaps is just takes two to do the renovation tango.  Renovating can be fun, but it also can be a tough job for two people to do together, let alone on their own-some. My month long excursion to the UK didn’t help our progress. Plus, as soon as I got back to America, Rick had to go on a week-long work trip to Notre Dame university (I tried not take it personally). Yesterday, a good friend noted that I hadn’t posted on the blog for some time, to which I replied that we hadn’t recently finished many projects to blog about.  But it got me thinking about all we have done around the house.  Today marks six months being in our new house.  Six months! Where did the time go? Seeing as I tend to be a ‘glass half empty’ kind of girl, now seems like a good time to think about all the projects we have completed so far:

All carpet has been pulled up

Back yard fence was built

Front and back doors were replaced

Landscape lighting has been installed

Downstairs bathroom was gutted and new tile installed. Bathroom vanity made over with a granite top and vessel sink.

New exterior lights installed

Dining room window replaced

 French doors hung between kitchen and office

Foyer chandelier replaced

Two foyer walls removed and headers installed

Dining room floor painted

Master bedroom ceiling fan installed

Dining room chandelier replaced

Siding removed and rehung

Thermostats switched out

100,000,000 green bugs,  3,000 big-ass spiders, 2 bats, a mole, a lizard, a frog… and a partridge in a pear tree.

Pheww! We’ve been busy! But all this optimism is making me feel all Paula Abdul – I’m much more Simon Cowell-esque (must be a British thing).  If I wear my pessimist hat for a minute, I’d hate to compile a list of all the projects that we have left to do around the house. Wow, that list would be longer than a prize bull’s ba-donk-a-donk. We’ll get there in the end.  That’s what the bull said.

This weekend, we decided to tackle one of the outstanding projects left on our downstairs bathroom renovation. Above the vanity, we are planning on hanging a large silver mirror, topped off by a satin nickel vanity light.  When finished, (probably in the year 2012 at the rate we’re going!), it should look something like this artistic rendition.

In order to install the new light, we need to run electric wires to it,  either creating a separate switch, or splicing the vanity light into the existing wiring for the ceiling light.  We needed to figure out a way to run the wires without making gaping holes in the walls and ceiling.  We needed to think outside of the bathroom box. Literally.

The floor of the library upstairs runs directly over the bathroom. If we pull up the subfloor in the library, we will be able to access the ceiling light wiring and splice the new fixture. From our previous demos in the library, you may remember that the sheetrock walls and flooring have been removed, leaving only studs and subflooring – here’s a reminder pic of what we’ve been living with these past few months.  So it is really not much more of an eyesore/inconvenience/mess maker to temporarily remove the subfloor too. 

Now, in order to get to the subfloor, we first needed to remove the stud framing and the old door way. The wall that runs down the hallway is not a supporting wall, so could be removed with no worries. 

The wall that is adjacent to the foyer is a load-bearing wall, and so cannot be completely removed until a header is put in its place (much like we did with the two foyer walls downstairs here and here). To keep the subfloor sheet in tact, we did need to remove just a couple of the studs on the supporting wall.

Once the walls were out of the way, Rick was able to pry up one of the subfloor sheets. We did find an electrical box for a ceiling fixture, but unfortunately, it was for the wrong light! The hallway ceiling light sits just outside of the bathroom, so at least we knew we were close.  Another subfloor section coming up! 

By the time we sussed out where the bathroom ceiling lighting is, we were quickly losing light (generally not the best idea to be splicing electrics in the waning day light).  Just in case we hadn’t had enough fun for the day, before we laid the flooring back down, we got the fright of our lives. Earlier, I had been cautioning Rick be careful walking on the floor joists – one slip and he would fall right through the ceiling sheetrock into the hard tile floor below. No, Rick didn’t fall through, but one of the dogs almost did! As we had been working upstairs most of the day, the dogs would, from time to time, come and visit us and see what all the noise was about.  They would run up the stairs to the library, inevitably see that there was no flooring, and stop midstep at the top of the stairs.  But not our little T-Rex (who is either really brave, or really stupid…). He ran up the stairs oblivious to the missing floor and plopped straight into the cavity. My heart froze as I hoped the sheetrock would hold … which it did.  Luckily, Rex quickly realized the situation he was in (as judged by his ultra-wide eye balls) and jump out toute-suite. No harm done, just a few skipped heartbeats! So, with dogs rescued from impending doom, we layed the subfloor back down. We’ll deal with the electrics another day.  Stay tuned…

Everyone loves to find a good deal, right? This weekend, we scored on the bargain front, getting a large vanity for the downstairs bathroom free (yes, free!), and getting an uh-mazing deal on a vessel sink, also for the downstairs bathroom.

I’m always looking on Craigslist in the free section to see if they have any deals (check out the previous post about getting a free ride-on lawn mower).  When Rick demo-ed the downstairs bathroom, we offered our own (albeit outdated) vanity, toilet and bathroom mirror for free on Craigslist and just an hour or so later, someone came by and took them off our hands.  I think this is a great win-win situation for everyone – we don’t have to worry about adding to the landfill and others get use out of a still fully functional piece of furniture (I also check my local freecycle).

Everytime we’ve been to the DIY store to get various smaller bits and pieces for the renovation projects, we’ve stopped by and looked at the vanities, comparing sizes, materials and of course, prices.  Our downstairs bathroom is perhaps a little larger than usual, and so the vanity needs to be proportionate in size (read: bigger vanity = more costly). I’ve been keeping an eye on Craigslist in case someone offered a vanity, but you have to keep checking the list often because the best offers are snapped up very quickly. Imagine my excitement when I saw a posting for a free vanity at the perfect size for our bathroom. A few emails later and a quick drive to Stem, NC, we picked up this nice vanity:

Decor-wise, the vanity doesn’t fit with our intended scheme, but structurally it is in great condition.  We will strip the white paint off the wood, and probably stain it a rich cherry or chocolate color. The handles and faucet will be updated, and hopefully we will replace the white cultured-marble top with granite.  Instead of a recessed sink, we will install a vessel sink.  Which leads us nicely to the next bargain we found this weekend…

Walking around Lowes on Sunday morning, once again perusing the vanities section, we stumbled across an amazing deal on a glass vessel sink.  These are the sinks that sit above the counter top, rather than recessed into the vanity. When watching various DIY tv shows, Rick and I have always admired the sophisticated elegance of the vessel sink, but know that they come at a price.  Vessel sinks range anywhere from a couple of hundred bucks into the several thousands. Imagine my excitement when we came across a vessel sink in the clearance section for $25! They had two left at this price, so we quickly bundled both in our cart. Even though we weren’t intending on buying anything for the bathroom that day, we couldn’t pass up on such an amazing deal.  So, we’ll put one of the sinks in the downstairs bathroom, and the other upstairs in the small half-bath we will be creating adjacent to the new loft area.  What a steal!  Hopefully, once the vanity is stained a cherry/chocolate color, the counter top replaced with granite and the fixtures/fittings updated, it might look something like the cabinet above.

Rick and I spent our Easter weekend happily working on various projects around the house.  I spent most of the day finishing off the tiling in the downstairs bathroom.  All of the large wall tiles have now been laid, but I still need to lay the smaller decorative tiles on top (can’t do this until the walls have been painted).  Rick took a break from his project (more on that later) to help me move two electrical outlets. The two and a half rows of large 16″x16″ tiles, topped off by the decorative border came up just a little too high past the light switch and gfci outlet.  The gfci outlet wasnt too bad to relocate – it just required a little sheetrock to be removed, the electrical box to be moved up about 4 inches and the sheetrock re-mudded.  The light switch, however, was a little more time consuming…

I wanted to move the switch closer to the door, in addition to moving it upwards out of the way of the tile (the switch was about 18 inches from the door frame and it was too far away for my short little arms to reach as I entered the room).  In order to move the switch closer to the door frame, we needed to reroute the electrical cable from the original stud to another one (meaning a whole lot of sheetrock to be removed).  Rick had the idea of splicing the electrical cables instead, so only a much smaller portion of sheetrock removal was needed. Rick gave me my first lesson in splicing electrical cables, and I am proud to say that I now know how to wire (and rewire) an electrical outlet! Rick cut up some extra 2×4’s we had lying around and nailed them into the cavity, so that the new sheetrock would have something to adhere to.  After the sheetrock was screwed in place, the hole was taped and mudded.  While that was drying, I continued on with the tiling. When the mud is dry, I’ll sand it down (and reapply more mud if necessary and sand it again).  Next will be painting the walls, followed by the decorative tile being laid.  When all that is done, we can grout the whole bathroom and set the toilet!.  What an exciting day that will be.

 Here’s where we got to on the tiling on late Sunday night.  The floor and the first row of tiles around the circumference of the bathroom are finished.  The back wall of tiles is also done, topped off with the decorative tile and the new blue/grey paint color.  We still need to finish the tiling on the three other walls, grout everything and complete the painting. It looks like we’re going to have to move the light switch and gfci outlet on the walls (the decorative border tile comes up higher than anticipated), so that will mean a little sheetrock removal, replastering  and painting. So, hopefully not too far in the distant future we will have a working bathroom downstairs!