Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inspiration. Show all posts

5.13.2013

Powder Room Ideas

Like everything in our house, our downstairs powder room is pretty beat up.  When we bought the house the powder room had a lovely fleur de lis motif, with a wall of 12"x12" stick-on mirrors.  In my initial fit of destruction, I removed the mirrors and fleur de lis fixtures, leaving it looking even more damaged than originally. 
 
The bathroom during our final walk through.  Please excuse the gross toilet - Matt took the photo and didn't think to close the lid first!

I don't know if you can tell in the above photo, but the back of the toilet stuck out about 4" from the wall before we removed it.  After we took it out I measured the rough in and saw that it was 14", instead of the typical 12".  So we ordered a 14" rough in toilet so it should sit closer to the wall, and not make you feel like you're sitting in the middle of a room. 

We will also be getting a new sink, because I "accidentally" chipped the vanity top when I was trying to pry it off.  Luckily we were able to save the melamine from the vanity base, and are re-using it as shelving.  We ended up getting a square top pedestal sink.

Here is my inspiration for our new and improved powder room

source: http://www.houzz.com/
I love the grasscloth wallpaper with the beadboard around the bottom.  I think it makes the room look bright and sophisticated.  The brighness is especially important in our case because we don't have a window in that room.  

Right now we have the wallpaper and floor installed, and I've been working on the beadboard and trim.  It's frustrating because none of the walls are even, but caulk is my friend and I'm pushing through.  I'm really hoping to have this done in the next couple of weeks. 

12.11.2011

Back to Renovation

So after living in the house for 7 months, and sleeping in the guest room, we have finally started renovations on the master bedroom!  I am very excited.  As you might remember, there is a master half bath which we disassembled during our initial run-through of the house. 

There were at least 5 different shelves on the wall, a very old medicine cabinet, and a cheap looking vanity with no storage space.  We basically ripped everything out and started fresh.  As part of our contract, the seller had to install a new toilet, which is the only thing that stayed in the room. Unfortunately I can't really find any good photos of the bathroom before we ripped everything out, but it was a mess.

I spent a long time spackling, sanding and sponging down this room.  Probably more than any other space in the house.  But looking at it again, I am realizing that I'll need to spackle and sponge again.  Sigh.

Anyway, here are our plans for the master half:


New vanity.  Obviously we needed one, and we bought this one months ago.  It's narrow, because there's not much available space, and we don't want to feel smushed, but the sink extends a little bit, so that we don't lose sink space.
MagickWoods vanity from Lowes
New light fixture.  My dad installed a new wall fixture, but now we have the problem of the exposed j-box in the ceiling.  So we bought a new ceiling fixture, which gives off more of a gentle glow, that we will have in addition to the wall fixture.  It saves us the annoyance of trying to close up the ceiling or wall. 




New medicine cabinet.  Another item that we bought months ago and has been waiting patiently to be installed.

We have also been talking about re-doing the tile on the floor and tiling up the wall behind the sink.  We bought some samples of tile that we may be using.


We would like to keep the tiles light because it's a small room, and we want to make it look open and light.  I still want some color, though, so we decided that we would use a lighter tile on the floor and colored tiles on the wall.  The wall color will be a lighter shade of the color we chose for the bedroom.

Sample on the bedroom wall.
Floor tile options.
Wall tile options.
After looking at the floor tiles we decided that we really like the octagonal porcelain tiles.  I love that they're a little bit different.  We weren't so sure about which wall tiles to choose.  We eliminated the darker one right away, because they were too brown.




After taking at closer look at the tiles, we still weren't sure which to choose.  So we went to the ultimate deciding factor: the price tag!  The smaller 5/8" tiles were $10.98/sf, and the larger 1" tiles were $4.97.  Ding ding ding, we have a winner!  The wall is 24sf, which means the larger tiles will be about $120, and we will be saving $143 by going with the cheaper tile.  The floor tile is $2.54/sf, so it will be approximately $46 total.

So we'll be starting the demo of the floor shortly, and I'm excited to get started on another project!  It feels like all we've done in the past few months is put up trim.  I also can't wait to get the master bedroom finished so we can finally move in!

7.22.2011

7 Things I Found on Pinterest

If you haven't heard of it, Pinterest is a website that lets you organize pictures on different "boards", and share them with people.  It's such a great place to get inspiration and share photos and images with other people.  These are 7 things I love on Pinterest today:

1. I love the combination of dark wood cabinets and lighter floors.  And you know I'm a sucker for bookshelves in the kitchen.


2. This is a great way to store snacks inside a pantry door. 

3. I love the aqua subway tile in this shower!  Just the perfect amount of color in a pristine white bathroom. 


4. This would be amazing storage for our office, once we get Matt's clothes out of there.  I need to find a way to be more organized!

5. I have no idea how, but I'm going to make these chocolate strawberry footballs this season.  They are so cute, and they look delicious.

6. I love Star Wars, and this poster is reall cool.

7. I've been to Dublin, but I need to go back to Ireland and see this some day.  Beautiful.

5.13.2011

I love shelves.

I do.  Especially in kitchens.  Lucky for me (well, planned by me, haha) we're going to have a bunch!  You've probably already seen the skeleton of the new base shelves that Matt and his dad put in last weekend (post is here).  I've also mentioned in passing that we're converting the tiny kitchen pantry to a tiny built-in bookcase.  We'll also be adding upper shelves in the kitchen. 

Here are some awesome kitchens with open shelving:
 The baskets on the lower shelves are so cute.

 The pictures on the shelves are such a cool touch

I love the white cabinets and white dishes

I love the green door and green dishes.

These photos have been my inspiration for me.  Hopefully our kitchen will turn out half as lovely as these did!