The bathtub is white!

One of the worse parts of the bathroom (after the half painted floors) was the baby blue bathtub. For some reason I never got a full picture of the tub in all it's baby blue wonder....but here is the best I have of a before, seen in the mirror:

The tub was the same color as the painted tiles surrounding the tub, except the paint was coming off in a few spots, showing the white underneath. 

We started the process using the Citristrip that we used for the floors.  That got us to this:

And then to this after a few more coats:

In other words, the Citristrip was just NOT working well enough.  So we decided to bust out the toxic heavy duty stripper.  That didn't get us much further.  Then we decided to use the paint stripping sander we had borrowed from my parents.  After a few hours (thanks Dad and Josh!) we finally got to this:

Imagine that...a WHITE bathtub! We are thinking we will have someone come in to refinish it since its not in the best condition, and also get some new tub hardware.  The next step is figuring out what to do with the blue tile surrounding it.  We want to figure out something that won't be a long and complicated project, but also won't break the bank...



We have a bed!

Finally, after over a month in the house, we set up our bed last Thursday.  It felt SO great to finally be off the mattress on the floor, I didn't realize how big of a difference the bed made.  Believe me, it is much more comfortable!  We also got new sheets which match perfectly with our walls and with the picture that will soon be up above the bed.

And, we have a dresser that actually matches our bed!

We are still waiting for the last of the closet parts to come in so we can finish moving all of our clothes into the bedroom.  We also still need curtains/blinds, which will hopefully be coming this week.  But, the most important part of the bedroom is finally done!

Bedroom Floors are DONE

We officially have finished hardwood floors in our bedroom!  After we ripped up the carpet we knew they wouldn't need much work, but we did want to do something to make sure they would stay in good shape.  We ended up sanding them once (much thanks to George for all the help!) and doing 3 coats of polyurthane.  It was super fast and super easy--according to Josh, I didn't help with this one.  Now all we need to do is put the trim back around the bottom of the wall and we will be set to move the bed and dressers in.  Here's a look at the process...

I'll hopefully have the final completed bedroom post up in a few days!

Pirates Coast and Hidden Lagoon...

Our bathroom is painted!!  One less room of gross grey/blue paint!  Picking the colors for the bathroom was  a little more complicated than the bedroom.  The newly uncovered tile is tan, the vanity cupboards are dark brown, and the counters are navy.  And then, all of the awesome new towels we got for the wedding are seafoam green and grey.  Since we decided we are not going to tile right away, I had to try to find a color that would work with the colors already there, but also go with the towels and the color scheme we want eventually.  I ended up settling on a color that was a few shades lighter than the green towels, which just happened to be Pirates Coast from Valspar.  Of course that got an immediate approval from Josh (as I mentioned before, he picks colors based on their name).  Once we got it on the walls, it ended up being a lot lighter than we expected, really it was almost white with a slight blueish-green tint.  Since it was so close to white, we decided we would do the trim a darker shade.  A few shades darker ended up being Hidden Lagoon, and what better color to go with Pirates Coast than that!

Here is the bathroom before the new paint:

 

And for good measure a close up of behind the toliet:

 And here are the afters plus my new over the toilet cabinet (ignore the mess...we are still in the middle of a few last projects in there!)

We also decided to do an accent "wall" with the trim color since there wasn't a lot of trim:

Oh how I love paint!  Here are a few close ups of the details we added too:

Now if only the bathtub situation was figured out....

New Toilet!

Ok, so maybe this is a weird thing to write about, but I just had to share the exciting news of our new toilet.  Josh's mom bought us new toilets for both of the bathrooms over Christmas and we finally got one of them put in the main bathroom.  I never knew how big of a difference a nice toilet makes, but believe me, it does!  And not just a difference for the intended use, but it also just makes the bathroom in general look fresher and more modern.  So here's the before and after:

Of course the clean tiles and fresh paint on the wall add to the improvements!

Taking a Break

So I have to appolgize for the delay in posting.  I blame part of it on the fact that we have been right in the middle of about 5 projects for about 2 weeks now and I just kept thinking I wanted to wait until we finished to post.  But I also have to blame a little bit on me being lazy.  I think for a few days I was kind of on a bit of a home improvement strike and needed to just take some time off after a few weeks of working on projects with every bit of spare time.  But, we are back and so very close to finishing both the main bathroom and our bedroom.  So in the next few days I will be posting more, I promise.  So stay posted for some exciting updates!

Getting Rid of the Painted Bathroom Floors

One of the biggest questions I have asked since we moved in is, "Who in the world paints tiled floors?"  Apparently some previous owner thought this was a great idea, so they did just that.  To make it worse, both bathroom floors were painted baby blue (to match the baby blue shower and tub maybe?) and then to make it even worse, the previous owner was in a wheelchair, which caused the paint to get all scratched up so that the tile showed through in some spots. 

Here's a good view of the main bathroom floor when we moved in:

After some discussion, we decided we would wait to re-tile the floor for a while, and in the mean time, just remove the paint.  Of course the tile underneath does not match the grey and seafoam green towels and shower curtain I got for the wedding, but I think we can make it work until we are ready to take the time (and money) to replace the tile.  Even though it's not exactly what I would pick for myself, the tile underneath is actually in good condition.

We bought a huge thing of Citristrip:

The instructions say to wait 30 minutes and then brush off the paint.  After one coat and an hour, then another coat and an hour and not much luck removing the paint with either a scraper or a copper scrubber, we decided to really pile it on and let it sit over night.  I woke up in the morning to a bunch of bubbly paint:

I used a paint scraper and most of it came up pretty easily.  To get the rest up I used a copper scrubber, and repeated with one more coat of Citristrip and more scrubbing.  It was not an easy job, but now the baby blue paint is gone for the most part!  All that is left is a little bit in the cracks, we are going to try a grout stripper next and hopefully that will be the end of it.

Here is the before and after:

And a close up of the tile, not the best thing ever, but SO much better than chipping baby blue paint!

Goodbye Dirty Walls

The bedroom is all painted!  One room down, eight rooms and a hallway to go.  Every wall in the house was painted a very light blue/grey color (or maybe they were supposed to be white and just really dirty) and on top of that, they hadn't been washed in forever.  And by forever I mean it is literally possible that they had never been washed...

We decided to stick with the green/brown color scheme to match our comforter and the few accessories we were planning to keep.  Since the furniture and our huge print from Ikea are all dark, we wanted to go with a lighter color for the walls.  We finally settled on Olive 3 from the Laura Ashley Home collection, although this barely got approved by Josh since he didn't like the name.  We decided to do a bright white trim to make eveything look extra clean.

Here is the before:

And here are some afters!

We also got this awesome light from Lowes:

Way better than the generic globe with ceiling fan (see before picture).  Even better, it perfectly matches our bed and the dresser we plan to get.

So here's what's left for the bedroom:

1. Finish floors (to be done this week, hopefully)
2. Install closet
3. Move furniture in
4. Accessorize (rugs, window coverings, etc)

Hopefully by next week we can be moved in!



Hidden Treasures

When we looked at the house for the first time, we knew if we bought it one of the first things we would need would be new floors.  The whole house (except for the kitchen) is covered in awful carpet. 

Our first thought was that we would try to put in bamboo floors as soon as possible, but after lifting up a corner of the carpet we discovered that underneath was what appeared to be brand new oak floors, so for now all we need to do is rip up the carpet and put a coat of finish on.  Since we are trying to take things one room at a time, the first room to be carpet free was the bedroom.  We started in the closet since we weren’t sure how well the process would go.  We pulled from the corner and were happy to find that with the exception of the tack strip around the edge and a few staples around the edge of the wall and edge of each piece of padding, there wasn’t anything else holding the carpet to the floor.  After pulling it up, we used a razor blade to cut out the whole piece covering the closet floor and that was it.  Good bye carpet, hello beautiful hardwood floors! 

Josh set to work getting rid of the tack strip, which after a little practice using the crowbar, a hammer and a piece of cardboard to protect the floor, ended up being a relatively quick task.  After cutting the carpet into about 3 foot wide strips and ripping that and the padding up, I went around with pliers and pulled out all the staples.  Overall it probably took less than an hour and we now have hardwood floors!  We are going to clean them and put a coat of varnish on before we move everything back in.  The room is thisclose to being finished and I can’t wait!!

The Magic of White Paint

The cupboards and closets in the house were not a pretty sight when we moved in.  Even after scrubbing with everything from dust remover to Clorox bleach they were still covered with black scuff marks and other mysterious stains.  Not to mention, they were also all lined with a gorgeous wood grain paper. 

Here's some before pictures of the pantry/bar cupboard.  The rest looked the same or even worse.

 I finally decided the best solution would be to paint them all.  After ripping off enough shelf liner to cover a parking lot, I removed all the shelves and set them up in my work room (aka the front living room-much warmer than the garage and much easier than the basement!).  One thing I discovered is that the broken down cardboard boxes from the move made perfect “drop cloths” for this project since they don’t slip around or bunch up the way sheets do. 

Here are some comparison pictures.  I can't believe how big of a difference one coat of paint makes!

After a fresh coat of white ceiling paint on all the shelves and inside the cupboards/closets I ended up with wonderful, fresh and most importantly CLEAN storage areas!

Tackling the Closet

The first project we decided to do in the bedroom was convert the closet.  On one of our first of many trips to Lowes we ended up in the closet organizing aisle and fell in love with the wood closet systems from Allen Roth.

The first step was removing the faux wall that separated the two doors so we would have a wide open closet.  We started by taking off the doors, and then it was time for some fun--punching through the drywall. I even got a good punch in J .  

Next we had to remove the studs, which we (and by we I mean Josh) did with a hacksaw.  After the wall and all the shelving inside was gone, it was time for the hardest part.  The wall had left a 4”x18” hole in the top part of the frame which Josh had to patch with drywall.  After about 17 times of alternating filling with drywall mud and tape and sanding it was finally ready to be painted.  When the painting is finished and we rip up the carpet we will install our closet kit.  The only question left is whether to add doors, a curtian or nothing…what do you guys think?

I'll leave you with a little before and after: