in the past 9 weeks we’ve done all of this demo/prep work:

• torn out: cabinetry, cheap countertops, all the faucets and drains (sinks and tub), heavy cast-iron sinks, horribly oversized mirrors, the not-white toilet, all baseboards in the room, tiles surrounding the garden-style tub, and floor tiles
• fixed things the builder didn’t care enough to do right the first time
• moved the plumbing for both sinks to accomodate the new vanities

and then we started putting things back together, but BETTER! (we can rebuild it; we HAVE the technology!) so we’ve been busy with:

• re-drywalling, puttying, sanding, and painting the walls that needed it
• re-tiling, grouting and sealing the tub-surround, the walls behind the vanities, and the floor
• re-installing baseboards on non-tiled walls
• re-installing faucets in the tub and into the new vanity sinks
• re-caulking everything that needed it
• installing the new vanities
• hanging new mirrors

whew! wanna take a look?

[picture gallery to come when i get home from work find the camera]

the best part: having a fully funcitonal bathroom again.

the worst part: it’s still not technically 100% complete (we have yet to choose a color for the mirror frames and the floor grout lines aren’t completely sealed) but already Hubs has got it in his brain that we need to redo the flooring in the master bedroom.

the “honey-do” list of a homeowner just never ends… what’s on your honey-do list?

• the floor tiles are down
• the floor tiles are mostly grouted
• but they’re not done
• the wall tiles are mostly up
• the final wall tiles are cut to size
• they will still need to be grouted
• the vanities need their faucets installed
• then they need to be moved into place
• and hooked up to plumbing
• and filled with our junk that is currently sitting in laundry baskets in our closet
• the new mirrors need to be hung

and then we’re ready! i think i may wait on any more update photos until the final reveal. hopefully that will be soon, so check back!

• the cabinets, counters, sinks, and faucets are all gone
• the giant frameless mirrors that were above the counters are gone and the wall damage they left behind has been repaired
• the plumbing has shifted up and to the side (as required for the new vanities that are going in)
• all the tiles surrounding the garden-style tub are gone and greenboard has been put up in preparation for re-tiling
• the floor tiles are ALL gone
• the baseboards are all removed
• the toilet has been removed
• the walls behind where the giant mirrors formerly hung have been painted to match the rest of the walls

what we have yet to do is to:

• finish tiling the floor (only the little bits on the edges are left to be cut and adhered!)
• grout the floor
• research, purchase, and install a new toilet (this step is located as high up on the list as we can get it to minimize bathroom down-time)
• cut and install the sill surrounding and supporting the garden tub
• tile the walls surrounding the garden-style tub and the walls behind the vanities
• grout the wall tiles too
• install the faucets in the new vanities (one is done!)
• install the new vanities in their proper places
• paint and hang the new mirrors (we bought these from World Market, but we want to paint them lighter so they won’t be such a bold part of the room)
• re-do the baseboards
• do some touch ups and re-caulking

needless to say, we’ve been busy; and it’s not over yet!

what have you been busy doing?

p.s. check out some progress pictures:

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some of the pictures show the tiles as different colors; that’s only because of lighting. eventually i’ll get one that looks true to color (at least on my computer monitor)

project 1: landscaping

so shortly after taking this photo (as in probably less than 24 hrs later), that palm tree in the corner of the screened in area (center of the pic) was chopped down and taken away. also, all the grassy bits hanging over the back into the pool were ripped out. another palm just like the one pictured was removed from an area just outside of the screen enclosure, too. Hubby was a man on a mission.

but now the mission is on hold.  we’re kind of at a stand-still until the root systems of the two palm trees come out and all the lava rocks get relocated. wop-wop!

project 2: the master bath

Hubby’s side of the bathroom (which used to look like this when we decided to move the towel bars which lead to painting which lead to replacing the light fixtures:)

now looks like this (in mid-demolition):

my sink, the tub plumbing, the shower, and the toilet are all still fully functional. we’re hoping to get the rest of the crappily-lain floor tiles out this weekend. if we’re lucky, and the Little One cooperates, we might demo the tiles surrounding the tub, replace the tub hardware, and then test out the vanity we’re planning on using for Hubby’s new sink/cabinet/counter combo.

and project 3: the front door

we know what configuration we want to get (single door, 2 sidelites), the size we’ll need, and the manufacturer (and dealer) we’d like to use. but we’ve still got to pick out a BUNCH of details before we order it, let alone any deeper into this project.

and thank goodness for that!

how many projects are you working on all at the same time?

We took down the super ugly, plain-jane mirror, changed the lighting fixture and the mirror. Changed out the silver toilet paper holder and the old paper towel holder they had in there with a bronzed towel holder and freshened the paint which ironically is ALMOST the same color that was in there which wasnt intended. I went to Lowes, picked a paint I liked, and voila….almost the same. Weird, but I guess it was meant to be

Take a look at the small, but great progress being made.

The old light fixture in the bathroom

The new light fixture with the old mirror

This is what the wall looked like when I took the paper towel holder down. They didn’t even paint before putting it up, they just painted around it

This was from the toilet paper holder that was there….

So, out came the sanding block and putty

Make sure when you’re filling holes, that you wait for it to dry completely before sanding it again. Also- make sure you sand it enough. For the paper towel holder, when I filled it in, let it dry, then sanded it back down I thought I sanded enough but when I painted over it, you could still see the raised difference, so I re-sanded and then painted over it again and it was perfect.

New mirror and towel holder. Don’t mind the reflection of the mirror off to the left on the wall…

ahhh, much better. Just gotta get the faucet changed, all our sinks have the same type and I can’t stand them. I prefer the two separate levers for hot and cold better.

New mirror

The flooring is next….it’s just a linoleum tile down there now, but we plan to get that going soon, along with replacing the trim, which right now…is odd.

Well, that’s it for now! Next week I will be painting the master bedroom and guestroom I believe..or just the guestroom since my parents are coming for the long July 4th weekend!

So far, this bathroom has only cost about $145. With the tile, trim, and new faucet, it should be about $300 total (guessing right now).

]]> http://chrisawadalla.com/2011/04/26/some-notes-from-kbis-2011/ Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:53:05 +0000 chrisawadalla http://chrisawadalla.com/2011/04/26/some-notes-from-kbis-2011/ http://murraythemonster.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/designer-bathroom-curtains-html/ Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:35:16 +0000 murraythemonster http://murraythemonster.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/designer-bathroom-curtains-html/ It’s a cold and snowy day here in Northern Massachusetts-the kind of day where the local weather person warns against traveling on the roads unless it is absolutely necessary. I was not able to heed this warning, so needless to say, it has been a very stressful day.  And after finally putting my two year old son to bed I am ready to relax;  a glass of wine, a little bit of bubble bath and my favorite novel….this is my sanctuary.

Creating a place in your home where you can unwind and recharge at the end of the day is an important thing you can do to safe guard your health. In this weeks post we’ll take a look at how some talented interior designers have used high-end upholstery fabric and trims to transform ordinary bathrooms into sanctuaries.

As always, if you’d like to contact any of the interior designers whose work is featured in this post, just click on the image to go directly to their site.

“Sanctuary, on a personal level, is where we perform the job of taking care of our soul.”

Christopher Forrest McDowell

the paint went up well, and is looking pretty spiffy after two coats!  here’s the big, beautiful, bright, blue wall above our garden tub (before the light fixtures went up so don’t mind my horribly lit picture):

the light fixtures were actually just about the cheapest ones we could find.  happened to be at Lowe’s.  but being cheapest isn’t always a bad thing. they were also the ones we liked the most that were within our budget!

we even went above and beyond what i thought we’d do, and added a hook for our bathrobes.  now instead of hanging over the door and weighing that down (or being out of easy reach if the door is shut after we get out of the shower) we’ve got our robes handy, and we’ve moved the cheap-o over the door hooks to another room where they may or may not be allowed to stay.

yes, that’s where the broom and dustpan live.  they get more use in here than anywhere else in the house since this is where the cats’ litterbox is (hence the towel over the door to keep it from shutting) and it’s where i cut Hubby’s hair every 2-3 weeks. we don’t mind having them there, in fact we hardly notice them since the door naturally swings open and hides them.

did you notice how the picture above shows how the two blues work together. the light blue is a LOT lighter than the blue we used in our shower/toilet nook, but it’s actually kind of nice that way for late night trips to the bathroom (of which there are many since i’m pregnant). we like how it turned out!

and last, but not least of course, there’s the towel bars. the beginning, the end, the one thing that became many.  this arrangement is SO much more convenient!

don’t mind the painter’s tape on the edge of the vanity.  that’s where Hubs still needs to do another layer of edging. once that’s finished, this bathroom beast will have been completely domesticated! for now…

we love the changes in our bathroom, how about you?

that’s how the story of rearranging and replacing the towel bars in our master bathroom turned into new towel bars, new wall paint, and new light fixtures for our master bathroom.

here’s the scoop:

the towel bars in the 2 full baths of the house are arranged (i think) rather stupidly.  they’re right above one another. (this is actually a shot of the guest bathroom’s towel bars because we’d already ripped ours down by the time i thought to get a picture, but the master’s were arranged exactly the same!)

that meant if hubby is sloppy hanging up his towel, then i couldn’t find the bar to put mine up to dry. sounds like a minor inconvenience, but it’s really annoying to deal with on an almost daily basis. (no, we don’t shower daily. call the hygiene police!) it’s also a rather ugly arrangement. it turns the towels into these massive blocks of mismatching color that take up a huge chunk of wall.

so this moving-of-the-towel-bars project has been on our to-do list pretty much since we moved in. this needs to happen in both bathrooms really, but since the master is the only one used daily, we opted to start there.

but we definitely didn’t end there.

taking down the original towel bars meant we had 4 lovely holes in our drywall.  with a little creative patchwork, those were filled with pieces of drywall left from our shower renovation. (yay for being packrats and saving useably sized scraps!) then the gaps and screws were covered with drywall putty.

the work with the drywall putty was actually more extensive than just filling up gaps and covering screws.  we also filled holes left by the previous owner’s wall hanging decor.

here’s problem #1: drywall putty gets sanded smooth and we have textured walls.

solution: wall texture from a spray can! we got ours at HD, but they don’t have it on their website; here’s another website that shows what we used. hubby tested it out on a piece of cardboard (per package directions, see pic below) and then went to town. it blended rather nicely with what was already there!

but then we ran into problem #2: 4 big ol’ white spots on our solid painted wall!

solution: re-paint!

this is something else that’s been on our to-do list almost since the move-in: paint the master bathroom.  it was this mucky greenish brownish blah that i have a feeling we’ll be seeing enough of when the baby arrives.  we didn’t want to go with anything quite so saturated as the shower/toilet area or most of the walls in our master bedroom, but we liked those colors.  so we decided to go with a lighter version of what’s in the shower/toilet area.  we lightened Behr‘s “Yacht Harbor” to Behr’s “Coastal Mist”.  here’s a side-by-side i built from color swatches on their website:

while prepping for the painting, we came across another project we’ve been putting off, problem #3: cheap, ugly light fixtures!

solution: take ‘em down!  this was pretty easy and made a TON of difference. we filled up the holes left by the wall anchors with drywall putty (awesome stuff) and when they were dry, they got painted too!

taking them down was really only half the solution though, because we have no idea what to put up there when the paint dries!

any suggestions?

sorry for the horrible lighting in this last shot. remember, we took down all the light fixtures in the room to paint!

first, i had a vision.  it came to me right before bed about two nights before my birthday.  i talked to Tom about it, convinced him, and then on my birthday, we went shopping.  if you’ve seen the recent post about how the 9 color circus was transformed into our tranquil office, then you already know we love blue.  we love that color so much, that we decided to use remains from the office job on our shower reno!  (ignore the orange Schluter-Kerdi membrane still visible. we’ve got a row and a half of tiling left to do on the shower):

the blue also continued to the other side of the small pass-through room that houses the shower and the master bathroom’s toilet.  on the “throne” side of the room,  the wall color was a little overpowering. it turned out to be a LOT of blue.  to break it up a little and add a bit of sophistication, we put up some bead-board wainscoting in white ($20) with a simple chair rail ($10) using some paneling glue ($5), as well as a snazzy new toilet paper holder (splurge at $25)!  check it out (chair rail not yet installed):

another way we broke up the blue was to buy some 25 cent picture frames from a local thrift shop (support your local ASPCA!).  we took them home, spray painted the frames white, and made a collage (i explain the process in a spiffy tutorial here).  i would have put in some images of nature that had a lot of good color, but Tom suggested we make a rubbery ducky collage. *sigh* he knows me so well!  i have quite a collection of rubbery duckies, so i immediately jumped at the idea!

we also put back up the nice mirrored cabinet we purchased at IKEA (and can’t find on their website) to serve as our “toilet storage” cabinet to hold the essentials: extra tp and an air freshener.

like i said, it’s still a construction zone, but we figured now’s the best time to paint.  we didn’t have to worry about staying within the lines except for the ceiling and door trim, so that made the paint job a little more fun and a little less stress-inducing.  this close to the holidays, no one should take on ANYTHING that will add to their stress levels.

plus Tom wanted a break from all the tile work.  i guess that gets monotonous after a while; i wouldn’t know, there’s only room for 1 tiling person in that space at any given time.  good for me, but i can’t speak for him.

so that’s how we tied the whole room together with the new blue and white shower tile.  next up: cutting and mounting the chair rail, cutting and mounting the last row and a half of tile, then: grouting!

The cost to install a bathroom sink very much depends on the type and kind of bathroom sink that one may choose to install in their bathroom. While the glass sinks that are available today require very careful handling and may require high installation price, those that are metallic and made from that traditional porcelain require less handling and thus the cost of installation for these is very less. After the buyer has decided that which is the best bathroom sink that will complement the look and attenuate the interior look of the bathroom significantly they can easily find many options for the same in terms of price. What is thus needed is searching carefully so as to find one that can ideally fit in the desired budget of the buyer.

The cost of a hot tub is most often the first thought that may haunt your mind when thinking of installing the same in your home. But, if searched carefully and while negotiating the many options you have, you will easily find the one that can fit in your anticipated budget. There are many other things which you must consider before investing on one such hot tub for your home. The size of the same is a very big thing that must not be overlooked as the same must fit in your bathroom while leaving ample space for other things too. Remember, you can get a great experience while feeling pampered at your very home but without the tension of paying the price as you used to do till now at a spa centre or saloon. Taking spas will truly seem affordable with such hot tubs.