Half Bath - After!

I am back with a recap of the updates and the after pictures of our master bathroom/half bath.

Once the bead board was hung Joe finished the project by cutting and installing the chair rail and baseboards. We are so happy with how this look came together. I’d recommend the bead board to anyone trying to dress up a small bathroom. It really helped to make this small bathroom feel larger.

Wall color is the same that we used in the revamped kitchen – Behr’s Garden Wall.

Flooring:

Instead of installing ceramic tile in this bathroom we researched some of the newer options with laminate tile. We ended up purchasing this 14x14 tile from Tile and Stone Warehouse in Merriam, KS. It’s purchased by the box and runs about $3.00/square foot. The great thing about this product is that it just peels and sticks to your existing flooring or subfloor. It’s thicker than your basic vynil tile so it has a higher end look.

New faucet & hardware:

In this room I wanted to go with the oil-rubbed bronze finish that we have through out the rest of the house. We purchased the new towel ring and TP holder from Home Depot. The new faucet is a Pegasus brand one that I found on the clearance rack at Home Depot for $30! What a steal!

Light fixture & Medicine Cabinet:

Purchased this at a local freight close-out place for $45! Love the timeless look of it. Much better lighting than the crummy 1950s fixture we had before. Originally I had wanted to hang a more decorative mirror in here but we ended up going with a standard style mirrored cabinet with a beveled edge. It fits perfectly between the light and chair rail.

Overall we’re really pleased with the new bathroom. Here are some pictures!

 

The Half Bath Makeover - Part 1

Over the last 3 weeks we have been renovating our ½ bathroom. This bathroom is off of our master bedroom. This odd little space used to be shared with our full bathroom via  a small accordion style door. When we remodeled the full bathroom (future post) we filled in that door.

We envisioned an upscale, clean, and classic look for this bathroom since it is attached to our bedroom.

Here is a mood board I put together with the finishes and color palette I had in mind.

Here are some before pictures. Note the plastic walls, and dated fixtures. Unfortunately, I don’t have great before pictures but this bathroom also had a dated vanity and cheap-0 linoleum flooring.

Progress:

-First Joe demo’d the space by taking down the wall coverings and removing the flooring, sink, and toilet.

-Next Joe hung a new piece of sheetrock to fill in the opening left by the former door.

-My first project was to sand down the walls. I used a circular sander on the finished parts and another sander “paint eater” to get the old adhesive.

- Next up was The Bead board. This took us much longer than we thought it would. Grandma Megan offered to keep Collin overnight so that we could work on the house. We figured we’d stay up later and knock out the bead board and trim in the bathroom. Umm…that took a lot longer than we expected. We ended up working till almost 4 AM! It wasn’t that it was difficult to cut the pieces  - it just took a while to get the smaller pieces to fit and then to make sure we had the holes cut out in the right spots for the plumbing, air vents and electrical..Fun times. 

Here are a couple pics from after the bead board.

Funny Story – This room has a pocket door. To make the job  a bit easier Joe had been using the air nail gun to nail in the bead board and the nails that you use with it are kind of long. Well we finally got to the last bit of wall and glued and nailed that sucker up to the wall. As I was standing there “helping” I said – “ I just had a bad thought. What if we just nailed the pocket door in?” We did. J Luckily we thought of it before the Liquid Nails had dried at all and Joe was able to pull out the nails that were in. It was funny to pull out the door and see the nice little row of nail holes in it. Live and learn we say!

Next update will include pictures of the floor, trim work, painted walls and installed sink and toilet!

Our Kitchen - The After!

Well I am finally back with a kitchen update. Over the last month we’ve been SUPER busy pulling the house together to get it on the market. I’m happy to report that as of Sunday, the house is listed! Now we're just praying for showings and an interested buyer!

You may remember from my previous post that we were making some progress in the kitchen and now we are finished!

The biggest project was getting and installing new countertops. We decided to purchase new Formica countertops in a dark grey color - Mineral Jet. You might wonder why we didn’t get granite – and the reason is that for the price we wanted to get for our home it just didn’t make financial sense. We also realize that whomever buys our house down the road may want to gut the kitchen and start new and in that case the countertops would go to waste.

We purchased the counters from Lowes. I’d give them a B+. Since we wanted to save money on the installation we just measured and ordered from Lowes and then had them delivered. Because of the length of the longer countertop it required more than 1 miter and Joe and I were not told that up front. So there is an extra seam in the counter that we were not expecting. Now that it’s installed it’s not very noticeable – but we were frustrated in the process.

To save money Joe and his dad (Tim) installed the counters. We’re not sure if it was worth the savings, considering it took the better part of a weekend to get them in. Tim is always helping us with projects at our house and once again, I know we couldn’t have done it without him!

You can’t help but notice our shiny new stainless-look appliances. SO much better than the old white ones we had.

Here are the after pics!

Here is the new breakfast area. Before I used this space for a desk – but that’s not very buyer friendly. You’ll also notice the great trim job that Joe did on our back door.

 

 

I’ve also included before and after pictures of the adjoining dining room. Before this room was the same color off-white as the kitchen wall. It also sported a lovely 1970s box light. We replaced this with a brushed nickel chandelier. I think it looks much homier now!

Before:

 

From this view you can see how our spiral staircase is situated in this room. It leads to our finished portion of the basement.

And there you have it! Our kitchen makeover. We're both enjoying the kitchen a LOT more the last week. It's nice to have a space you don't mind standing in to cook and clean dishes. Although - it is really hard to keep it spotless all of the time for showings!