Girls' bathroom floor: part 2 of 3

The easiest part of the floor was laying the tiles that didn't have to be cut!  I sanded and scraped and sanded some more to make sure the floor was clean and ready for the peel-and-stick tiles we chose.  Why peel-and-stick???  I'm not sure.  I didn't like the ceramic tiles that we had in our last house.  They chipped way too easy.  I wanted something a little more robust in the girl's bathroom, but I'm not crazy about having the real thing (any kind of stone tiles) when they are young.  I just have this fear of them slipping and cracking their head open or breaking an arm.  I think price factored in some and the fact that these look really awesome without being the real thing.  I hope I made the right decision. 

Here's where I left off: 

And here it is about half way finished...I say half way because of the cutting and filling in still left to do.  BUT also the baseboard needs to be added in behind the toilet, the quarter round installed and the toilet put back in. (And again a sideways pic....any suggestions?)

Tile and grout complete and a close up view below that!

 

And here it is DONE!  The quarter round is all new....

So, this tile was really easy.  The grout wasn't bad either.  It could have been done in one day, but I have two constant (sweet) interruptions :-) 

Yeah, the wallpaper is a different phase altogether.  Have you ever read "If you give a mouse a cookie" by Laura Numeroff?  That's me with wallpaper...if there is a little edge, I have to pull it!  I suppose some suggestions for wall color would be good now... 

Part 3 of 3 will be tiling the first section (room 1) of the bathroom.  I'll post when it's complete!

I'm feeling much better....just a cold....and I needed a day off anyway!

Have a great 4th celebration!

Jana

Girls' bathroom floor: Part 1 of 3

 

The bathroom that the girls use is layed out as 1 sink and a closet -> door -> 2nd sink with toilet and tub/shower. 

This post will consist of the redo of the 2nd room flooring (and a little more.)  Last week, I took up the linoleum that was in this section.  Let me back up and start by saying....I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing.  I can be pretty handy, but I've never done a floor.  Fortunately, we live in a time of YouTube and Google and I can find just about anything at all hours for all projects.  There are many before, during and after pictures and I'll caption each one with the explanations. 

View from the hallway into the "foyer" area of the girls suite and into the bathroom.

 

This view is from room 1 looking into room 2...and this is the linoleum that will be replaced!!!

 

Why is this sideways!?  You can tell that linoleum comes off in two layers...the plastic layer is easy...the paper layer requires patience.  Lots of it too!  Thankfully, a friend of Greg's let us borrow a heat gun and a super duper scraper for the paper and glue.  That heat gun was THE key to this project. 

 



 And looky what I found by the potty! :-/ Not happy.  (And I'm definitely not happy that my pics are loading in quacked up directions.)  Doesn't appear to be any moldy areas; mostly just rotten wood.  I bleached all of it anyway, just to be safe.

We weren't lucky enough for the wood rot to be confined to the top layer.  The subfloor was completely rotten.  Both layers had to be replaced. ($$$)

We spent an entire day cutting and sawing....many hours spent making sure everything was perfect.  After all, you don't want the toilet to be unsteady or you may take a spontaneous ride straight to the basement!

After removal of all things black and rotten...Thank GOD that it was beautiful outside Saturday.  The girls played all day and allowed us to get this portion of the project taken care of. 

 

The floor is now ready for the tile to be installed.  It looks like several easy steps, but I'm telling you...prepping a floor that had linoleum was time consuming.  I'd rather peel wallpaper blindfolded and with one arm behind my back.

In addition, the plumbing for the toilet is new.  I now have words in my vocabulary (like flange) that I can now use if you ever want to talk to me about your toilet! 

 

 I have worked myself straight into bed.  I do not envy people who do flooring for a living AT.ALL.  I think this bathroom is going to look awesome!  I'm super excited to see it finished.  For now....I'm finished.  I need a massage and a pedicure :)

Have a wonderful week,
Jana

A shelf and a sneak peek!

Shew.  We took a much needed vacation to Gulf Shores, AL June 8-15th.  We met my sister and her family and my mom and step-father there for the week.  It rained the first 48 hours.  I thought we would all freak out before we saw the sun.  Alas, we had a great trip and got a little tan in the process. 

When we got home, we attacked the house again....full steam ahead.  This post will be Greg's project.  We have a large unfinished basement and we also have a lot of our holiday themed décor in large plastic containers....so he built some shelving for them!  He is very organized.  I'm organized, but when it comes to cleaning out the refrigerator or the pantry....he's the man.  (Really, I just play stupid so he'll do it.)

So, here's the before:

I fuss at him ALL the time for wearing these stupid flip flop things, shower shoes, whatever they are called....on a ladder of all places.  He wears them moving furniture, doing yard work.  You wait, he's going to fall because of them. 

And the after:  It's a good start on getting all of the boxes off the floor, but looks like we'll need a few more sets of these. 

A large portion of the lumber was repurposed.  I think he only had to buy a couple pieces!  The previous owners had built something similar in the very middle of the basement, so he disassembled it and used the larger/stronger pieces in the frame. 

 

 Here's a sneak peek of the master bathroom.  I'm sorry, all I can do is laugh.  I laugh because I just flipping peeled all the wallpaper out of that half bathroom and it was a little harder than I thought it would be.  This paper isn't bad....but there's a LOT of it.  It's also country blue and mauve.  The same colors my mom used when she and Ron built their first house together in 1988.  And it's floral!  The tile.  I can't wait to get a chisel and hammer and go to town on this bathroom.  I anticipate demolition to begin in March of 2014.  In the meantime, if the girls are bored....they get to help peel wallpaper and they love it!  (They are crazy like that.)

 

I hope you have a blessed day.  Any suggestions for color in this Master Bathroom!?  I have an open palate and mind. 

 

Jana

Half Bath Redo

Today's entry is a complete redo (minus replacing the toilet) of the half bath.  I have never taken down wallpaper before and just a heads up....all of the bathrooms have wallpaper.  So by the time I'm finished with this house, I'll be a professional.  :)
Here is the before:

The vanity is solid oak.  It's beautiful, but it's HUGE for a 1/2 bath. 
The top is an outdated cultured marble.

Don't you LOVE this wallpaper????

 Because this room is tiny, I'll have to help with some details so you can envision it.  The light fixture is gold, the faucet is gold and the toilet paper holder is....you guessed it!
I tried the Piranha system sold at Lowe's to remove the wallpaper.  I may have more of an opinion after doing the other two bathrooms.  This wallpaper is foil, which may be why it came off in two layers rather than as a whole sheet.  It wasn't terrible, just time consuming and I kept hearing my high school English teacher say "patience is a virtue." :)

The paint I picked for this room is only on the back wall behind the potty.  The other walls are a lighter shade of the same color...just to keep it from being really dark in a small room.  Here's the reveal and then the story behind it.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm having a hard time inserting a close up above the potty....

• Greg painted the gold fixture in a satin nickel....he also painted the toilet paper holder too.  It's recessed and I'm almost positive they don't make those any more!  We didn't see them in any of the stores, but we didn't look super hard either.  I'm pretty pleased with how the fixture and TP holder both turned out.

• After peeling off the wallpaper, the walls had to be spackled and sanded.  This was crazy time consuming.  I thought the wallpaper would come off and I could just paint.  OH NO....that's not the case.  The walls were primed, which definitely helped, but several areas (especially around the sink) were extremely difficult to get smooth.  I hope you'll never notice, but it's not perfect around the sink alcove.  I spackled and sanded and painted, the spackled and sanded and painted again.  It was obvious that when the house was built, the intention was to keep that vanity in there until the end of the world.

New baseboard and 1/4 round.....Looks SO good....the picture just doesn't do it any justice at all!
(And I'm claiming about 80% of the installation.)

Here are a few pics from the past week. 

I'm pretty sure the side guards were superglued to the wall....They were really hard to remove....
and tore up the sheetrock :(

This was my workspace for a week!

We had to remove the door to get the vanity out....the house was built around this vanity!

Would I do anything different?  YES!  I really wanted a pedestal sink and due to the installation of the pedestal, it's not going to happen.  This is totally fine and the options are wide open.  What I would do different is to research sinks FIRST and then proceed.  For now, you can use the 1/2 bath, but you can't wash your hands!  Searching for a mirror too....

Will post more when it's 100% complete.

Enjoy your day....and give me your feedback?  What kind of sink and mirror would you use!?

Jana

Landscaping Weekend Project

This past weekend, we postponed a trip to see my family in Virginia because both girls started showing signs of a cold.  I wasn't feeling the best on Friday either.  We are all well, but the weather was perfect for some outside work.  I didn't feel like doing much inside...
Greg and I had talked about what we would do with the landscaping and the bottom line is that a large portion just needs to be removed.  It's overgrown and has been unkept for at least a year. 
HINT: to built up your man, buy him a chainsaw.

This is just the beginning and it's just one side, but it's a start...
Before:

This is the view from the front door.

View from the lower driveway toward front door
21 "burning bushes here....21!
AND
10 boxwoods flanking the Japanese maple.

view from lower driveway toward the back garage

view of one REALLY tired guy after cutting down lots of bushes and shrubs...

AFTER: view from lower drive toward front door
That is a non-flowering ligustrum to the bottom right of the window. 
There were 3 and we decided to keep 1.
The row at the right is a project for a different day. 
NO, I don't like all the ground cover....I'm not 100% sure what to do with it b/c it will need some due to the slope.



AFTER: lower driveway toward back garage

Don't judge the job too harshly...we have a semi-clean mess that took 2 days!  I was seriously thinking we'd find a snake den in all those bushes.  It was crazy!  AND there is still so much more to take out.  We do plan to add some color and crossing our fingers the trees will come back healthy.  They were WAY too tall for their variety and caused some clogging in the gutters and were dropping leaves in the AC unit.  Any ideas on flowers/flowering shrubs?  (please don't say knock out roses...we have a ton of those already....future post.) 

 

Dining room update.  The painting is finished, but I'm still unsure about decorating it...so I'm hesitant to add any pics just yet.  AND it needs curtains. 

 
Have a blessed week!
jmh





The Foyer Reveal

I LOVE the foyer.  OK, confession...I'm not 100% done, but I think I'm about 85% done and I can't stand it any longer.  The jury service is not over :-/, but it will be Friday and during the days (weekend mostly) that I don't sit in the courtroom, I'm painting!  The foyer ceiling trim was very time consuming as I was up and down the 10 foot ladder several times, moving the drop cloths, moving the ladder and trying not to spill the paint! AND making sure I didn't fall, but turned out beautifully.  Here's my 3 4 future plans to complete the foyer:

• paint the front door chocolate brown
• add an accent chair and houseplant
• remove/replace the folding doors
• remove/replace the light fixture!!!

Please give me your feedback on the chocolate brown door and the folding door replacement.  I'm thinking a solid French door that's painted to match the front door.  What do YOU think??



Before:

After:

The accent chair will go to the left and what kind of houseplant is robust for one
who doesn't have a green thumb??

 

Your comments and critique are welcome!  Thanks for any input!

 

P.S.  The Dining Room is next!  I have finished painting it!!!

 

jmh

Jury service.

Back in September I received a summons for jury duty.  I quickly wrote a letter asking for a postponement because we had just started homeschooling and I didn't have anyone to help with the girls.  They replied and gave me a new date of May 14th, 2013.  Little did we know that our house would actually sell this time and we would be moving into a new home smack in the middle of trying to wrap up our first year of homeschooling.  We had about 8 days left after closing.  We took off a week to move and then the letter came that my jury service was still May 14th.  I showed up at 9am and by 10:30am, I was listening to opening arguments.  I had been selected.  We finished by lunch the following morning followed by "call the number on the back of your jury ID to see if you need to report tomorrow."  I knew this was an easy, no brainier answer that we would not be needed since we had just heard a case.  There were plenty of other people in the jury pool.  Nope.  After jury selection of 10am to 3pm, I was yet again not chosen to leave.  By 3:30ish, we were listening to opening arguments.  I'm sitting there today thinking...."is this seriously happening again?!"  So all this to say the foyer is almost done!! But progress came to a screeching halt Monday night.  For 2 weeks I'm on call for jury service....a service that should I ever need, I would want to have.  So, I'm doing my duty and hanging in there.  Just a little sad that I can't give a grand picture of my finished foyer :-(