What a man, what a man

Yesterday was mine and Matt's 3 year anniversary (cue awwwww) and Monday night after my soccer game, I came home sweaty and exhausted to find a great surprise.  Matt had been on-call all day (at home) and worked on the bathroom!  He managed to take it from looking pretty good, but not done, to looking GREAT and almost done. 

I had finished painting the vanity doors last week and had picked up two knobs for the doors this last weekend at Home Depot (we also picked up a nail gun and air compressor, both on sale for $69.99 each).  Matt put on the knobs and reinstalled the doors, without even hinting that he had done it, that rascal. :)  He also reattached all the baseboards  (minus one, that we can't find anywhere...) and attached the mirror frame to the mirror!  Happy anniversary to me :)  Here are some pictures, so you check out the amazingness that is Mr. Kendall (witrh a little help from me too):

We made the frame for the existing mirror using trim sold at Home Depot.  We bought 3 pieces (it came a white color) and then Matt used his Miter Saw (from Mark and Janet aka the in-laws for Christmas) to cut the pieces to size and at 45 degree angles.  Once cut, we used Liquid Nails to conect the four corners.  And since we did not have a nail gun at the time, we used a staple gun to attach the four corners from the backside of the frame. (Yeah, we're a bit hillbilly like that)  It actually worked and held up nicely.  Once the Liqud Nails dried, I painted 3 coats of the Marth Stwerart paint we had picked out over the wood.  We also bought, painted, and attached the 4 squares in each corner of the frame.  I like to think it gives it a little somethin' somethin' extra.  Though it looks different in the above pictures, the frame and vanity are the same color.

Here's a before and after to get a better idea of how much more awesome the new sink area looks.

Before:

And After:

If you're extremely observant, you may have also noticed the new sink faucet!  I'll post about that ordeal tomorrow...or later today maybe.  Here's another new thing we added (which you may have noticed on the back of the door above):



Cute, huh?!  I found them at Pottery Barn.

With all these little things being done...we are sooo close to being 100% finished!  I will be painting the walls (man, how many times have I already said that?...) THIS WEEK and also painting all the trim and baseboards.  Since our wonderful house has crooked walls galore, I have some serious caulking to do around all the baseboards.  And find that missing baseboard....  I know, you're super jealous of the fun times ahead, right? :)

~S~

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~