A little vanity perhaps?

The bathroom make over continues...and continues...and continues.  Matt is back to his 12-20 hour days at work and I have been a couch slug lately (seriously, will it even stop raining and get above 43 degrees?), but decided enough was enough and I needed to get a move on with things.  We also have a whole mess of company coming next weekend too, so the clock was ticking.

The next step was to either replace or redo the bathroom vanity.  We had looked at a bunch of different stores, websites, and even thought about building our own, but when it came down to it, we were flat out running out of steam on this remodel.  Sooo, I used one of favorite hobbies to our advantage....painting.  I decided that the most economical solution would be to paint the vanity.  (Also, our vanity is a really weird size, 41" wide....where most pre made vanities are 39" or 43", so we would need to have it custom made, which = $$$$$ and I like to save all our money for shopping sprees at Target.)  Here are two super old pictures to remind you what the vanity looked like at the beginning of the bathroom project:

And at this time, I would like to make an apology to the Martha Stewart Paint line...in this post I complained about not liking Martha Stewart's paint...but I have determined that I just don't like it for painting walls.  I am in love with her paint for painting furniture.  The thickness of the paint covers furniture like it's no one's business!  One coat into the vanity painting project and I was ready to make out with a paint can.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We picked out a rich and deep chocolate brown color from Martha's line and had a quart of it made using semi-gloss paint.  We brought it home, and like most projects, the paint sat there for about a week before I got off my butt and started redoing the vanity.  I first took off both doors and the hinges (the doors did not have knobs on the outside) and wiped the doors and vanity frame with a damp paper towel.  The finish on the whole thing was kind of coarse to begin with, (and I'm lazy) so I skipped sanding it all down and jumped right into the first coat of the brown paint.  And loved it!  Even one coat in, I was freaking out over how good it looked!

{And yes, it you noticed there is a pregnancy test box under there...

NO we are not pregnant and not trying and will not be for a very long time...

I just freak out once in a while and convince myself I could be, when I'm not.}

Granted, it looks a little rough since it's only the first coat, but are you loving it?!  I think it really pops in the room now too, instead of getting lost with the white trim and white vanity top.  The night I did the first coat, I dragged Matt upstairs the second he walked the door to show it off and he was almost as excited as me about it.  I've done two more coats since and it looks aaaaamazing!  I think I'll do a coat of polyurethane over it all since it will most likely come into contact with water quite frequently.  I just need to pick up the new knobs for the doors and pull thingys for the fake drawers above the doors.  (By the way...fake drawers in a bathroom are the most ridiculously annoying thing ever...where do I put the toothpaste?!  So far, on the counter top.)

So, once we decided to paint the vanity, Matt and I also decided to make a frame for the bathroom mirror to match.  Here's a quick glimpse of the almost completed frame that Matt and I (mostly Matt) built from scratch!

PS....We got our first blog comment ever this week!  Thanks LC for commenting! :)  Also, thank you so much to everyone out there who reads my posts and follows us.  I honestly appreciate every comment, email, and text I get from you all and your support for this blog :)

~S~

"It looks kind of antique-y"

So, remember this sexy little fleshy puke colored piece?

Which I found at Savers here in Madison for only $25.00?  Well, It was high time to do something with it.  It's been sitting in the garage since I brought it home and made Matt unload it from the car.  I bought it to go in the entry way, where the desk from Matt's Grandma Dottie used to be.  When I moved the desk into the living room a couple week ago, all the stuff we had been "storing" (aka unloading and not putting away) on top of and below said desk went into piles on the floor in the entry way.  And they have stayed there over the past couple weeks, even though we have had company and I trip over something almost every morning.  Matt finally complained about the piles last week (yeah, it took that long) so I stopped into our favorite home store and picked out a color for our new entry way table.  I was originally going to paint it white, but quickly realized that Matt's Pig Pen fingerprints would have it turned brown in a week.  I picked the next best thing: Chopstick from Martha Stewart, which is yellowy color.  I had visions of a bright "holy sh*t that's yellow!" color, but since I'm trying to create flooow throughout the house, I thought something less jarring would be better....at least to start with.  (And I'm trying to force something yellow into each room of the house, which I'm hoping will also help with the flooow{and though you may be annoyed with my flooow spelling, I like it, so back off} ).

I started off by wiping down the whole thing with damp paper towels and then removing the drawers, doors, and hardware.  I decided to try and save the hardware by cleaning it up and painting it all some non-fleshy colored color. And it worked and looks great!  Before:

After:

Not too shabby, huh.

Then I lightly sanded the whole table with sandpaper.  All we had was drywall sandpaper, which is probably more rough that normal sandpaper, but it seemed to do the job.  I know I should have probably stripped the entire dresser of the flesh colored paint, but I figured it would work as a sort of primer for the yellow paint.

{Side note....I never ever prime anything.  Which is probably breaking some big rule of designing and painting, but I figure if I'm going to have to do at least two coats of paint, I would rather it all be the same color.  And honestly, I have never ended up regretting this decision.  But to each their own, I promise not to judge if you choose to waste tons of your own valuable time and muscle aches on something as pointless as priming :) }

After sanding everything, I wiped it all down again with a damp paper towel.  Then I popped open the paint can and was a little surprised at how pale the paint looked (I was also in the dimly lit garage at about 7:00pm too) but forged ahead with the first coat.  I was just finishing it up as Matt got home and gave me the post title criticism comment.  And I sort of liked the way it looked, but knew I would end up hating the rusticness (I don't want any fleshy remembrance).  Here's after one coat:

Here's showing the difference between 1 coat (right) and 2 coats (left):

Last Thursday morning before work (I always get really invested in something right before going to work.  I had 30 minutes, so I figured I should use them.  Even though I hadn't even started getting ready) I did a second coat and loved how it was still looking antique-y/cottage esq but not as much as the night before.  I ended up doing one more coat after work Thursday night and also sanded and spray painted the hardware.  I was a little concerned that when I took the hardware off, only the round knobs on the doors came off.  The vertical metal pieces behind the knobs were attached by glue or something (here's the pic again, so you don't have to keep scrolling back up...this is the same picture as above, not an updated one)

I didn't want to pry them off and end up ruining them or ruining the door, so I did the next best thing.  I just painted over them in the new color...we'll see how it looks once it's all put back together.

Here is the finished product, without the doors and drawers put back on....

Now...I'm going to guess correctly that you're thinking "Umm, did you even paint it?  It looks the same."  I thought the same thing when I looked at this picture, but take a look when I compared the new color to the old (before I had painted the front of the doors):

Satisfied?  You may also be thinking that the new color looks a little "rough" on that center non-removable piece, and you again wouldn't be wrong.  I decided to leave the whole thing a little "rough" looking to give it more depth and character than a perfectly painted piece of furniture.  And with a sometimes filthy dirty husband, 2 puppies, and a cat who thinks she can walk on anything, I figured a rougher looking piece of furniture would bode well in our house.  I want to be able to use it and allow people to touch it if need be and not freak out over someone looking at it wrong or leaning against it to put in their shoes.

And here's my little beauty all put together and in place in the entry way!

{The creepy circle on the door is an outside spring wreath}

Here's the table top decor.  I found the frame at Savers this last weekend for $3.99!  It's actually super heavy duty and I thought I would paint it white or dark brown, but ended up keeping it silver.  The white thing is an artichoke or something and I found it at Burlington Coat Factory (of all places) (also last weekend) for $9.99.

And see what I mean about Fiona?  She just can't keep her cute nose out of my business.  She can also see out the front door now too.

I feel like the table kind of blends into the tan walls a bit too much, so I'll paint the entry way sooner rather than later (hopefully).  What do you guys think??

~S~

In case you were wondering....

If you happen to be painting your bathroom and forgot to start painting before you reinstalled your toilet and are now fretting over how to paint in the inaccessible area behind said toilet.....you can do this:

Who knew stretchy trash bags could be so helpful and not just for hauling away garbage. :)  And I actually used this one for hauling away garbage after it's toilet protection job was complete....well, until I paint again this weekend.

~S~

Bathroom Update!

Wow, it has literally been 32 days since I gave you any sort of information about how the bathroom is coming along.  For starters, the floor is done.  I didn't give you a post about doing it because I wasn't there for any of it.  Matt used his last week off from work to finish the bathroom floor.  What a man :)  Go back and read this posting, but imagine Matt doing all the steps on the floor instead of on the walls.  Got it?  Ok.

So, I am one who never buys the little jars of sample paint colors from Home Depot.  I pick a color, sometimes bring the card swatch home and then dive in head first and buy a whole gallon of whatever color I picked out.  This is a-ok about 80% of the time.  The bathroom was not one of those times.  I picked out about 20 samples of different shades of grey paint from the Depot and went over and over them.  But I did not buy a sample jar.  I bought a full gallon of Martha Stewart Living Paint Semi-Gloss in Chinchilla....which I though was the perfect grey.  Not so much.  After putting 2 coats on the walls (and it took for freaking ever.  Our bathroom has about 17 different sized walls/nooks-n-crannies/angles.  And then Matt walks in (I'm the painter in our family) and says, "Ughhh, it looks purple."  And it did...in a light grey kind of way.  I told him was nuts and left it....and now after it being done for about 3 weeks, it definantly looks grey-ish purple.  Here are a couple action shots.  First, with only around the trim painted (one coat):

Then a little more:

And here's with a more accurate idea of the wall color.  And the awful towel hook I installed when we first moved in 2 years ago....can you even see it?

And the NEW fancy (aka normal) towel bar!  Hotchy Motchy :)

Part of me wanted to leave the grey-ish purple (my stubborness) but in the end, the room was looking way too steril for it's own good.  Sooo, we picked out a color we liked at Sherwin Williams and had Home Depot  match it to a less expensive type of paint.  I decided to try Glidden's Semi Gloss this time.  I wasn't 100% impressed with Martha Stewart's paint.  The color was true to it's swatch, but I felt like the paint was kind of thick and hard to put on the walls.  Glidden's was the exact same price as Martha Stewart, so I gave it whirl.  Luckily, Home Depot had Sherwin Williams' colors in their paint database, so they were able to match it without any problems.

I hate hate hate blogs that put up "teasers" without a finished product, but I haven't had a post up in over 10 days....so I'll leave you with the bathroom as it is now.  I'll be painting it the new color hopefully this weekend.

Thanks for sticking with us! :)

~S~

Spray it, don't say it

This is what our kitchen sink sprayer looked like....

Ummm, gross, no?  It actually has better water pressure than the kitchen faucet and with the water turned on all the way, it sprays all over the kitchen.  But, it's very ugly.  So, I picked up this shiny new little number at Home Depot a couple weekends ago...for only $6.79 too.

Looking at the instructions (only 3 steps!) I figured, nice.  This will be an easy 3 minute project.  Yeah, not so much.

Getting the old spraying disconnected from the hose was as simple is twisting the top from the bottom.

Then I had to pull this little "C" shaped piece of metal off of the white plastic part, so the black connecter pice could be slipped off.  This was about a 5 on a 1-10 annoying ratio.  It was on there really tight, but with using a needle nosed pliers, it came off after a couple pulls. (By the way...I am very easily annoyed).

Once the "C" was off, the black piece slipped right off.   The next step was to put the silver piece (identical to the black piece I just pulled off) over the hose, then put the "C" back into place....well the first time I did this I did it in the wrong order, so the silver piece wouldn't fit on, with the "C" already on.  I actually had to call Matt up to get the "C" back onto the hose...he wasn't too happy with me when I realized he had to take it right off and and put it back on again......And then I had him put it on in the wrong spot.....so he had to take it off and put it back on again, again. ( I think he was about a 57 at this point).

BUT, as soon as everything was in its correct place, I just had to twist the new sprayer onto the hose...and spray!  I practiced with it for a couple minutes, just to test it out.  What do you think?

Sick....I should have wiped down the sink ledge before taking this picture : /  But look at that sprayer sparkle!  Here's the group shot.

{I lost the silver cover that went over the big water spout piece...How do you loose that?}

~S~