Would I do it again? (Laundry chute)

So every so often I like to update you on projects that I’ve done/purchases I’ve made to let you know how they’ve held up and if I like them as much as I thought I would. I’m always curious to hear that so I like to share in case you are wondering too.

I will say…I think and research and plan things to DEATH, so it’s rare that I regret doing anything. This one I’m still not sure about. :)

I shared our completed powder room a couple months ago and I’m so happy with how it turned out:

We have a huge powder room, right? It’s big as far as powder rooms go. We could have made it a full bathroom (it’s near my office which could have been another bedroom), but we went with the half. Anyway, I’m so glad we have a linen closet in this room.

What you didn’t see at that reveal, and many of you have already seen, was the big honkin’ tube inside the closet:

That is something I dreamed about for years and was SO thrilled to get installed. By now you’ve probably read the title of this post and deduced that this is our laundry chute. Smarty. ;) (You can see more about it here.)

What you didn’t see was the horrible, no good, did I mention horrible paint job I started last year. Originally I was going for red walls in this room and thought it may be fun to add a touch of red to the shelves (they needed to be painted anyway):

Ugh. I know. I mean, the photo is horrible but seriously…I KNOW. It was horrible. This one goes in the what was I thinking column.

I was going for white walls and bright red shelves, but somewhere along the way I got lazy and didn’t tape off (WHY?) so the paint got on the walls. And the PVC was always ugly -- initially I tried to get the lettering off the pipe using a method a reader mentioned, but it didn’t work for me. Then I thought, I’ll just paint it! Red! Like the rest of the closet! Brilliant!

Well red doesn’t cover well. Your tip of the day. So I stopped.

Anyway, I fixed it – more on that in a minute.

First up, the main purpose of this post. Would I do the laundry chute again? I’ve thought a lot about this lately and actually, I probably wouldn’t.

There’s a few reasons for this. The biggest – I never do laundry. I just…don’t. My husband does his own and I wait until I am out of clothes to wash my own. I will dig to the bottom of a drawer to find an odd sock before I will do laundry. It’s just my thing. I don’t hate laundry like I used to now that we have an actual laundry room, but I just don’t do it.

It’s my thing.

BUT. Because I don’t do it often, I wait till I can’t wait anymore and then I spend a day washing clothes, so in those instances it is nice to be able to just drop the clothes down the chute. Thing is, you still have to take the basket down to carry them back up when they’re done. So if I’m doing one load here or there I just take the clothes down in the basket because I’m going to have to bring them up in it anyway.

All that being said…our closet is a major disaster right now so I’m on a laundry binge. It’s laundry all the time – and I’ve been using the chute a ton.

Perhaps if we had more kids and more clothes I would use it more? Maybe someday when I’m totally and completely organized (snort) and I keep up with washing the clothes I will find it more helpful.

But for now…I walk the clothes down the stairs as much as I throw them down. I gotta say though – it’s fun. There is pure joy that happens when you throw the clothes down and hear them thump into the laundry basket. It kind of rocks. ;)

So…the chute is staying. Which brings me back to the hideous red linen closet. I finally painted it. The powder room was next on my decluttering rampage and like usual I couldn’t pass up this little DIY that needed to happen.

I used some paint I already had – it was a color called Billowing Clouds that I originally used to paint the powder room years ago. I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on this so I painted the walls and the shelves both the blue color:

Oh, I did prime first that red first, just one coat. Since I was painting the walls it took no time at all. I was able to prime, paint and organize the stuff in here in a couple hours. I’ve put this off for a year, and it took less than two hours. Story of my life!

You may notice the polka dots. ;) Yes, I covered the tube. YES…I obviously have no life. It was just so ugly. I went through a few options in my head for covering it and then remembered I had some contact paper. AND it matched the new paint. It’s like it was meant to be!:

See, I kind of have a life – I didn’t do the bottom part. Honestly it took about 15 minutes to cover it – and the dots make me smile when I open this door. :) I want to get some sticky tiles to put on the floor in there (I didn’t have the hardwoods put in the closet since the cuts would have been so tricky and added to the cost.)

By the way, a few readers wondered if that little bend in the pipe would keep things from going down and it doesn’t at all. Nothing has gotten stuck – even bulky towels and sheets because it’s so slick inside. So as far as laundry chutes go, this is a good one!

After decluttering the stuff in the bins in here I was able to get rid of one (that is a great feeling!). So even though we have half the space in here that we used to, everything still fits great:

And it’s pretty cute, seriously. I say even though other people won’t see a space, if you have to look at it every day it’s your prerogative to make it cute. :)

SO. Overall I do like having the laundry chute, but if I could do it again I would have waited longer before installing it. I think I would have decided that we really didn’t need it after all.

Have you ever done something in your house you are iffy about? Regret any renovations or decisions you made? I don’t know if I regret this one really, I just would have waited to see how things functioned without it.

Bright basement bathroom (done!)

Good Monday to ya! How was your weekend? I was fighting a cold all weekend but managed to fit in two movies and plenty of DIY, so that’s a good one for me. :)

I’m continuing my no-spend August by wrapping up a HUGE project. I love the no-spend idea – not only do I save money when I do this (no impromptu trips to HomeGoods!) but I get a lot done. Stuff I’ve been putting off for months!

Our basement bathroom is one of those projects. It was thisclose to done anyway, and I had everything I needed on hand…so this one is checked off the list! WHOOT.

Let’s look back at how it looked a few months ago:

If you’ve been around for awhile you know we finished our basement last year. We did it slowly so we could pay cash and it took about six months total. The basics are in and everything is coming together beautifully, but there’s still a LOT we want to do down there.

So we had it finished but the basement bathroom was still incomplete, as you can see above. The floors were installed earlier this year, along with the main fixtures – the toilet and vanity. Then I showed you how I installed some storage in the form of DIY floating shelves:

I LOVE those shelves – I’m still so happy with how that came together.

But there were a few things left to do – back when I painted all the doors black in the basement I pooped out and didn’t do the back of the bathroom door. Soooo…I got that done:

Three coats and done!

Back when we had the electrical work done for the basement I knew I wanted two lights above the sink, so we guesstimated where the vanity was going to go. Well the outlet for that room ended up being right in the middle of the sink (right where the mirror went) so the guys came out a few months ago and moved the outlet (and one of the lights) for me.

They patched up the drywall and I just hung the mirror back over it and left it:

So yesterday I sanded it down and touched up that paint and a few other spots in the room. I also caulked the rest of the baseboards down there as well. OK, maybe I wasn’t thisclose to done. ;)

I used the mirror that used to be in our upstairs powder room -- it was shimmery brown so it needed a redo bad. I taped it off to prep for spray paint:

I’ve seen a lot of people not taping off and just using a razor to clean up on mirrors, but with spray paint that’s too messy (for me). So I covered it with newspaper, taped it all down and checked out my spray paint stash to decide on what to do:

I started with the satin nickel color and it was pretty, but when I got it down there it was so…boring. ;) The lights, faucet and mirror were all the same. Then I took it back outside and just went with a basic white – but, duh, that was pretty boring too. I wanted a pop of color on that wall and kept looking to my spray paint to find the right color (not spending money on DIY and all.)

Well I finally found the color I wanted in my regular paints:

It’s the same aubusson blue color I used on this project:

It was PERFECT. And it only took three tries. ;)

The blue brings the color in the towels and shower curtain over to that side of the room:

You can see all the sources for these items in this post (most was from Target).

Originally I planned on using our pedestal sink from upstairs in this space, but when it came time to install it I realized I really wanted something more substantial and something with storage. So I shopped around and found a really inexpensive vanity at Lowe’s that worked perfectly:

It’s really shallow but the sink juts out so it’s still a great size. It’s perfect for this skinny bathroom. (You can find it here online.)

I’m pretty thrilled with how this little space came together! Well…it’s not exactly little -- it’s just long and skinny:

It’s about 11 feet by four feet -- there was no other way to set up the room with the beams in the basement and the rough in plumbing. Also we had to make it this long to incorporate a support column into the wall. When the door is open it goes right near the vanity so there’s actually not much room to spare.

I had a mantra in my head the whole time I was finishing off this space -- “It’s just a basement bathroom.” :) So I went pretty basic with the finishes – the faucet, shower head and lights were all basic, inexpensive finds. We spent a little more on the toilet since this is in the basement – we wanted something that will hold up well (since the plumbing down here has to work against gravity).

Even though we didn’t splurge on much, I think the space turned out beautifully. One thing I don’t regret at all in the building process – I made sure we had a TON of lights in this space. Early on I thought it may be overkill but since I’ve realized it’s a great thing in a room without natural light:

We have a total of five lights in this space – recessed lights in the shower and by the door, the light in the fan and two over the sink. I love the look of the two lights over the sink – I did the same in our upstairs powder room. :)

I do have one more thing to do in here – paint all the trim (baseboards and door trim). But I have to do that in the entire basement so I’m going to wait till I can knock it all out at once. (That will be a fun day. Want to come over and help?)

Here’s a look at the before and after side-by-side – my favorite. ;)

I’d still like to add some art or something to that big wall at some point. I have an idea in mind but for now I’m just thrilled to have this space done! I’m knocking things off the to-do list and it feels so good! I may do these no-spend months more often!! (Although I’m starting to get a HomeGoods itch.)

If you have any questions about this space that I didn’t answer, let me know and I’ll get you info in the comments!

Ikea Hemnes vanity and more

Hello and happy almost Fourth to ya! Do you have any fun plans for the holiday weekend? One thing is a priority for us – Despicable Me 2. We have been waiting YEARS for this and are all so excited. It’s a little ridiculous.

So a couple weeks ago I showed you the finished powder room:

Thank you for all the lovely comments, yet again! And I went back and answered your questions in the comments but I just realized some of them didn’t go through, so I’m going back again today. Or you can ask any questions here too.

I promised a more detailed post on the vanity area and that’s what we have today. I’m thrilled with EVERY part of this room but especially all these pieces. They were all brand new and I love every one.

First up, the vanity – I searched for months for the right one! I knew I wanted something with storage, most importantly. We’ve had a pedestal sink in there all this time and I was ready for something more substantial. It’s a big powder room – it can take it.

I searched both Lowe’s and Home Depot and couldn’t find what I wanted for under $300 (for both the sink and vanity). I found plenty I loved…but most of those were around $400. I had been eyeing the Hemnes vanity from IKEA but didn’t want to make the drive unless I was sure:

 

It’s 31 inches wide and has a ton of storage space. And the vanity and the sink combined were $290. Originally I had planned to find an old dresser and transform it with a sink, but I couldn't find what I wanted. So I met two girlfriends at IKEA and we made a fun day of it – a great excuse to travel for the vanity. ;)

I gotta say, I’m thrilled with it:

The sink is lovely and pretty – but really shallow. Not sure I’d love using it for washing my face in a master bathroom. But I don’t mind it at all for a powder room.

The installation was fairly easy – my Dad had never worked with an IKEA plumbing and overall he thought it went pretty smooth. All of the plumbing is installed in a way so that the drawers can close, at least they’re supposed to. ;)

When all was said and done (and installed exactly how it was supposed to be), the top drawer wouldn’t close because of one of the pipes. So I had to jigsaw out a little notch in the back of the drawer:

Not a big deal. A little annoying, but it just took a few minutes. You don’t really notice it when you open the drawer so no biggie. The GREAT thing about these drawers (other than the cutie stripes) is that they are soft close. Glorious!

I replaced the IKEA hardware with some knobs from Hobby Lobby:

For a hot second I was going to try and paint the vanity, just because I was worried there wouldn't be enough color in there. I’m SO glad I didn’t and just added a pop of color with the knobs. (You can see more about those here.)

The only major problem we had with the sink was that it only has one hole for the faucet installation – you don’t really think of that until you get to the store and realize all but about two of the bathroom faucets are for multiple holes. (Meaning there are more holes already installed in the sink.) I really wanted to reuse the faucet we had on the pedestal but we couldn’t because of that.

Soooo, after a moment of panic, thinking I would have to drive the four hour round trip to IKEA to get a faucet that worked because Lowe’s guy kept telling us they didn’t sell one hole bathroom faucets…I finally spotted one:

It was GORGEOUS. And EXPENSIVE. It was about $90 I think? Ouch, I think I actually winced. But it was between that and one other one they had, both were expensive.

I do love it though, really. I mean, REALLY love it. It’s a Moen (single hole) faucet:

I chose not to use the plate at the bottom – I just liked the simpler look without it.

I especially love that the faucet ended up matching the finish on the new light fixtures exactly:

I mentioned that I had the one light we had in here changed into two lights, and we did use an electrician. I just had the guy who did everything for the basement do it, he’s great and inexpensive and was done in 30 minutes.

If you know much about electrical stuff I guess it’s not that hard, but I’m not ready to take that leap quite yet. ;)

I did find the light fixture online, although this one is in shiny chrome:

There called the Archie Collection and I LOVE love love the vintage vibe of the glass and the pretty arch of the arm.

They are one of my very favorite parts of the room!:

So the last piece of the puzzle was the mirror, and I think I spent as much time looking for that as I did the vanity! For years I knew I wanted an oval mirror here, like we had before – but something simpler and classic. And more than anything I wanted those super cute mirror brackets on each side so that the mirror would tilt.

Like this:

I actually saw on a blog forever ago that you can actually just buy the brackets/pivots separately at Home Depot and use them to hang a regular mirror. Well I searched everywhere for them and they just aren’t there anymore. Bummer dude.

So then I found a mirror at HD that already had them and the price was about $60 – not too bad really. But it was way too small for the room (about 18 inches tall I think) and the pivot things were actually a pain in the patoot. They didn’t allow you to tighten anything, so the mirror was permanently angled down. It wasn’t going to work. (I’m sure a more expensive one would have a way to keep the mirror at a certain angle.)

Sooooo…I took it back to HD and ended up with a pretty, basic oval mirror they had for $40:

I ended up with this one because it’s the only oval mirror that had a cleat on the back – so you don’t see any of the hanging hardware. The one I found at Lowe’s had to use the little mirror brackets to hang it.

I hung it on the actual board and batten trim:

And I think it’s just perfect in there! The size is much better (21 inches tall) and it just works so well in the room – love how it all came together!

OH! And some of you asked where the “S” hook for the towel came from:

I actually got that hook at Anthropologie (one of probably three things I’ve ever purchased from there) about a year ago. I saw it and knew it would be perfect in this room, before I even knew for sure what I was going to do in there. ;)

Looks like they still sell them! You can find them here.

So there you go! All the deets on the vanity area – I hope that helps with any questions you had. Overall I’m thrilled with everything, but again I took forever to find it all so I better be! Geesh.

I’m taking the rest of the week off for the July Fourth holiday, have a lovely weekend and God Bless the USA! :)

DIY nautical oar art

HEY there! Thanks SO much for all the lovely comments on the powder room post! I’m working on answering your questions so stay tuned if I haven’t gotten back to you yet!

I wanted to show you how I made over one of my favorite parts of the room (there are a lot of them) – the boat oar I found at a vintage mart a few months ago:

I first showed it to you in this post and as of a few days ago it still looked like that. :) This little redo seriously took about 20 minutes, and that was with paint drying!

I started out by wiping it down to prep it for paint:

I let it dry and then mixed some white paint (I used my CeCe Caldwell stuff, but regular white paint would do just fine. Flat may work better for this particular look.) with a little bit of water:

I didn’t want the oar to be covered completely – I wanted it to have a “wash” kind of look and this did it:

The nice thing is when it’s watered down a bit it takes even less time to dry. :)

I let it dry about ten minutes, and then used my delicate FrogTape to start marking where I wanted my stripes:

That one was on the handle -- I just searched striped boat oar images and kind of winged the design.

I taped off each section, painted and took the tape off immediately. I did that just because I knew even though the paint was dry to the touch it wasn’t cured and the tape may remove it. I take my tape off right away whenever I do stripes anyway so I get a really sharp line.

I moved on to the wider part and did a little stripe first:

When I pulled off that tape it did pull up a little bit of the paint, but I actually liked the look so I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t want it to look perfect anyway. ;)

Then I made a wider one in the middle:

You can see there that I cut the FrogTape down the middle for skinnier pieces. Since I was working so fast I didn’t want to put the tape down over the red paint I had just done – this allowed me to keep working quickly. :)

I did all the red stripes, hung the oar in the bathroom and then realized I wanted to pull in some of that blue tone in the room. I had it over at the vanity/sink, but everything around the toilet was red.

So I grabbed the blue paint I used on this post (it worked perfectly!) and added a few more skinny stripes:

I gotta be honest…I squealed a little when I saw how it all finished. ;) It was so stinkin’ cute!:

I think adding that little bit of blue was a good call – it ties the whole room together!

To hang it I just nailed a picture hanger thing to the back of the handle at the top.

In the real life you can see much more of the bottom of the oar because you see it from higher up than in the pics:

So that’s how the cutest little oar art came to be! It was super fast and I used paint I already had – the oar itself was $10. Love it!

The room isn’t exactly nautical themed but I think it still works – you don’t need to follow a specific theme to make something you love work in a room!

Thanks again for all the sweet comments my friends! Have a GREAT weekend!

Powder room redo, complete!

Well, the time is here. After ten five three long years, the powder room is finally. done.

It is a GLORIOUS DAY people!! I’m seriously so excited to have this room complete, and I’m even more excited that I LOVE it so!

Let’s go back a little bit first, shall we? Pretty sure this room has been five colors now. I’ve never even shown you the before before, but here’s the before since I’ve been blogging: 

It was in my dramatic days. :) I had a love of all things chocolate brown.

I painted it years back but it was still a mess – holes in the walls, only one coat and the brown was popping through, and then I started the wall treatment forever ago and it sat like this for a while:

And then I got the planking done and things started to come together, but I think a lot of you thought I was losing it a little bit:

Did you see my vision? Or did you think I was losing my mind? Or creating a room that looks “a little bit like a barn” as my SWEET husband said?

Well, he finally sees what I had in my head…now. I admit it doesn’t always come together till the very end. Part of the reason this one took so long is I couldn’t decide on a final vision for it – I had a few ideas over the years but finally last year inspiration really hit, in the form of the Bub’s art:

The whole space was inspired by the beautiful colors in this art – at first I was going to paint the walls a bright red, (as you can see above), but I realized quickly that it was going to be too much.

Instead I went neutral but that’s allowed me to really have fun with color in this space:

By powder room standards this is a big one. Don’t I know it.

Painting all those wood planks made me want to poke my eyes out:

The end result was SO worth it though.

Would I do it again?

It may be too soon to ask. ;)

It’s hard to get good shots of this room with my normal lens so I used a wide angle and it made parts of the photos blurry, sorry about that. But I wanted you to be able to see it as I do (without my contacts in, obviously): 

The room also took a while because I decided last year to continue the wood floors into the room, but waited until it fit in the budget (it ended up costing $300) and the timing worked – we had to pull everything out of the room to have them done:

We went without a toilet for a couple weeks and without a sink for a couple months. A fully functioning bathroom is highly underrated. ;)

I adore the dark floors in there. They really warm up the room, especially against all that white trim. Gah. My favorite! I got that rug from Target about a year ago, maybe two? It’s been a while. I loved the colors in it, and when I realized how well the Bub’s artwork matched I knew my plan was meant to be!

It’s also hard to take pics of this room because there’s so little natural light. So bear with me on these! Here’s a good shot of all of the planking that went on in here:

Remember when I showed you the process and mentioned that I didn’t worry about the seams and lines of the wood planks matching up? Well, the board and batten trim I put over everything is the reason why:

The wood planking I used only came in eight foot lengths, so I knew I’d have to cut them down on that long wall. The b and b look was perfect for hiding all that not-so-good stuff! It’s SO not perfect people, it never is!

You can see a good shot of the wall treatment and the new trim around the doors here:

I’m SO glad I decided to rip out the trim and redo those doors!

Here’s the linen closet door with it’s craftsman trim:

It makes such a difference!! Luscious.

We used to have a pedestal sink in this bathroom:

And I loved the faucet but the sink was not my favorite. I did like it when we moved in because it was different than a regular vanity that I was used to. But eventually I missed having some storage.

So we went with the IKEA bathroom vanity instead – the only major purchase for this room (other than the floors):

The vanity and sink together came in under $300. I shopped all over the place and still found that to be the best deal for the size. I LOVE the sink – it’s so nice to have room for the soap dispenser!

I’ll blog about that whole piece more soon:

The lights are one of my favorite parts of the room – I found them at Home Depot and just thought they were so different. Kind of vintagey, I love them!:

They also match the new faucet perfectly – couldn’t have worked any better!

You can see in this old pic that we used to have one light fixture above the sink:

I always wanted to do two separate lights, I just love that look!

So that we did:

It brought the light down almost a foot and I just like the lighting better this way in here.

You can see in this area how I mixed blues and reds in the room – again pulling from the art and the rug. It’s a combo you wouldn’t think would work just talking about it, but I LOVE how fresh and pretty it is against the white! I think they work great together!

The blue is more of an aqua blue, but I also used a little true aqua in here too – in the knobs I told you about here and the vase on the vanity:

It’s really a candle holder but I think it works even better as a vase. ;)

The towel is that darker blue and the stuff near the toilet pulls in more of the red:

I meant to put those lights on a dimmer before I took pics, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not touching this room again for awhile! Girl needs a break.

You may recognize the boat oar from my last post. ;) It got a little redo and I stinkin’ love it:

So that area about the toilet is hard, don’t you think? I struggle with what to do there – a starburst mirror would be pretty but I already have one mirror on that wall, and do people really want a mirror there? Uh. No.

I almost hung shelves there to fill and decorate, but in the end I wanted it to be simple – I didn’t want a lot of stuff in there. The oar was a perfect fit and it totally makes me smile when I see it. :) (Although I may hang it higher since the toilet paper blocks some of it.)

I really, really adore how it all came together (and I better!!) – it’s so fresh and fun and I really couldn’t be happier. It was a TON of work, not gonna lie. Those planked walls…the installation really isn’t bad, it’s the painting. If I was smart I would have installed it all and then sprayed it before the floors were put in. But oh well…live and learn. I survived. :) 

Here’s a before and after shot – the dark brown we had for years and the light, bright and colorful version we have today:

The total cost was about $1000 for the whole room, which I didn’t think was too bad considering we have hardwoods in there and a new vanity, sink, mirror, faucet, light fixtures and new walls. Oh and that was spread out over a span of about a year, so that helped too.

That’s why I take forever to do all my spaces, don'tcha know? To spread out the costs. ;) (That kind of is true actually. That and I just take forever.)

Anyway, here’s a source list for many of the items and I’ll follow up with more detail on the sink and vanity!

Rug – Target a couple years ago
Frame – Goodwill
Oar – thrift sale
TP holder – HomeGoods last year (I painted it) I just saw some more last week!
Light fixtures – Home Depot
Vanity, sink – IKEA
Faucet – Lowe’s
Mirror – Home Depot
Wood for walls – Lowe’s (see here for how to)

Any other questions? Let me know and I’ll answer them! I did a little happy jig yesterday because this room is finished and I love how it turned out. Can you believe IT’S FINALLY DONE? Sorry for yelling but IT’S FINALLY DONE!!!

Holler.