Some COLOR in the mud room

Hey all! Thanks for making me feel like a normal person yesterday. I am not alone!!

I’ve been making progress on the mud room lately and I’m getting SO excited about this space. Remember when I painted the room white a few weeks ago? Still love it – but I have started craving just a BIT of color. I haven’t decided on the exact color for the beadboard just yet but I know the direction I’m going.

My plan all along has been to add some color to the door to the garage so I started with that. I may kick myself for it later for doing it before the other color but it came together so well I just couldn’t resist.

And with the trim taken off around the door it was much easier to paint – I could make a little bit of a mess and it would be covered. :)

A year or so ago I started using the back of our door as a command center of sorts – but honestly, it hasn’t worked that great:

I have a small calendar on here that I used to put all our appointments on, but we haven’t used it in a year. I clip coupons on the door thinking I’ll grab them on the way out and I don’t – I ignore them and remember I need them when I’m actually at the store. So there’s that.

I have a smaller version of this in mind down the road for this room, but for now I just took it all down.

Before the smaller calendar I had a larger one and it left a mess on the door:

SO pretty. :)

I started by scrubbing off what I could (most of it didn’t budge) and then cleaned the door really well.

Now, if you’re going to paint a door you want to do one of two things first. Either check to see if it’s oil or latex paint that’s already on there (I explain how to do that here) or you can just prime it.

I usually just prime because it gives you a nice clean surface to start off with anyway. This door is a slick steel door so I knew the paint would do better over a primed surface.

You’ll want a heavy duty primer for the job. I use the little quart sizes I get at True Value:

This stuff is great and is truly odorless – I really don’t smell anything, which is huge for this type of primer! It’s usually really stinky.

I usually have this tinted, just because I’m typically painting a color when I use it. In the past I’ve had it tinted gray and it works great, but I forgot to do that this time.

I did one coat but went over a few spots more than once:

And then it was time to figure out what color to use! I raided my paint stash first to see if I had anything that would work. And I’ll BE, guess what I found? It was (nearly) PERFECT.

I pulled out the rug I’m planning on using in the room (but not as a rug, more on that later) and realized this blue True Value color I already had was just lovely with it:

It’s called Ticker Tape, how cute is that? You can see it in it’s true form (at least on the computer) by searching the name here – so pretty.

You may recognize it from the samples I had painted on my walls for months years:

OK, you probably don’t recognize it because it was painted over the blinding yellow. But it was the color on the left. Or the right? Not sure. I think the left. I was considering it as a color for the whole room years back.

I knew when I started painting it on that it was going to be so pretty:

I would call it a very saturated aqua I guess? Not sure. The more I look at it completed the more it leans blue.

To paint both the primer and the paint on the door I used foam rollers (you can find them here online) and a small, angled brush:

And I use a specific system I told you about here:

It works great!

I was so happy with the paint too, it went on SO well. I even used the brush to paint the raised panels in the door, which I never do (because I can see the paint strokes). I always use the foam roller for those areas.

After the first coat I gave it a quick sanding, just to knock down any texture from the roller. And when I say quick sanding, I mean like two minutes and done. I hate sanding. I only had to do one more coat after that, so two total, which is impressive for a color over white.

I wanted the door to be fun and colorful and it is!: 

Oh yeah, there’s the spray painted knob I told you about. :)

It’s not an exact match to that rug but it’s close enough, and they won’t be right next to each other anyway:

I was going to wait until the new floors are installed to do the door trim, but that got pushed back to later this month so my zero patience won out and I installed it all:

I made a few minor changes to how I do the DIY craftsman trim around the doors which I’ll tell you more about soon. OHHHMG. Love them.

Here’s the before and after over the utility closet:

It all needs about four coats of paint (oh happy day!) but it’s a step in the right direction.

I also started continuing the beadboard on that door wall:

I didn’t go too far with it because I’m deciding on the bench dimensions first.

The room still looks like a bit of hot mess right now but it’s getting there – I always like to share the process along the way because man, it takes time to do this stuff! It sure doesn’t happen overnight.

I should just make a to do list for this room and knock them off on here, right? But so far I’ve pulled down all the trim and installed new stuff, painted the walls and now the door. Next up will be the flooring, finishing the beadboard, more trim, then the part I’m most excited about – building a wall of built ins and a bench! It won’t be done till next year but it’s coming along.

Do you love a painted door? You know I love the black doors and that’s on my to do list elsewhere in the house. I do like having one that’s more fun and playful and the mud room is a great spot for it.

 

I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own, I would have done this project anyway and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

Cheater crown molding

Progress people!! It’s happening in the powder room! WHOOT!

I know I said I wasn’t going to show you much more before the reveal. I lied. :)

I don’t know if I’ve told you about the crown molding in this room before, but I thought it was post-worthy, because it makes installing crown SO easy.

I think I have written about it, maybe? I don’t know, remember it’s been five years.

Anyhoo, last I left you I was showing you the new paint color, and in this pic especially you can see how craptastic the crown molding looked:

Spell check doesn’t recognize craptastic. WHY?

I had installed the crown years ago and then never finished it. I know! I’m surprised too!

(That would be sarcasm if you’re new here.)

I installed the primed molding and then put one coat of paint on the cheater pieces (that I’ll tell you more about in a minute) and that was it – no more paint, no caulk:

I did fill the nail holes at least – but the putty was still on there, I didn’t even sand off the excess. ;)

Soooo. It was time to fix that. I started off giving it all one coat everywhere but the bottom. I was able to cut in on the top of the crown because of that lovely gap, but the bottom (that looked the worst because of all the painting I’ve done over the years) needed to be taped off with my trusty FrogTape:

I used the yellow delicate kind because I had painted recently and because I just really like that version – it’s a bit thinner so it’s really easy to work with.

Everything got two coats and it looked SO much better. But crown still doesn't look just right till you get rid of all the gaps:

I still have these gaps in my office too, two years later and I still haven’t gotten up there to caulk all of it. Cause it’s about the most fun evah…can you blame me??

I used the little tool I told you about here to caulk and it worked great along the bottom and at the ceiling.

So now, the good stuff – I found these corner crown pieces years and years ago, before I knew how to cut crown molding:

Even if you know how to cut crown you know it’s still a major pain in the patoot, so these are AWESOME. They are just wood pieces you use on the outside corners (like above), and the inside corners:

So instead of learning how to cut the angles just right, (I showed you how to do that here) or if you don’t have a compound miter saw – this is the stuff for you. You just nail it in and then the actual crown only needs straight cuts that butt up against them.

I love the little architectural flair they give a room! They are kind of expensive, so now that I know how to cut crown I don’t use them anymore. If you just have a square room they wouldn’t be that bad because the inside corner pieces are cheaper.

Painting and caulking crown is one of those things I put off, but when it’s done I can’t believe the difference it makes. Here’s the before:

And the after – bright white and look Ma! No gaps!:

You’ll notice the wood planks have been painted too, halleluiah! Now I feel like I’m really in the home stretch! Just need to finish painting the door trim and baseboards, get the other trim up over the planks, hang a mirror and then I can decorate it a little!

Have you mastered the crown molding cut? Or have you tried these cheater pieces? Someday I’ll have crown in every room of our house – I absolutely love it. And if you can install it yourself the cost isn’t bad at all!

Worse before it gets better?

OK people. I’m on a mission. A mission to complete the two bathrooms I’ve been putting off forever around here. EONS! I’m making great progress in the basement bathroom and showed you the latest on that one here.

At least that one is functional. The upstairs bathroom is only halfway so – it’s been a couple months since we’ve had a sink in there and that’s because of all of the parts of the room that needed to happen first.

I’ve gotten SO much done over the past couple of weeks – I’m so thrilled! But the room doesn’t look much better…yet. ;) I keep telling myself that it always seems to get worse before it gets better.

Let’s hope anyway.

I was laughing to myself in the car earlier this week thinking about this project because it is truly laughable how long it’s taken me. I am not kidding when I say it’s been in an unfinished state for about three years now. For awhile it was because I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do…and then it was just because it’s been a really labor intensive space and there’s only one me and now…well, I’m just TIRED. :)

You may remember years back I had had enough of the brown walls and started painting over them, but only one coat. I figured why do all the walls when I knew I was going to do a wood treatment over most of them? You know…three years later?:

Whatever. Who’s counting? :)

I actually started installing the wood on the back wall about a year ago. It’s sat like this – one wall done and a few pieces on another wall -- for all this time:

Then because we got the new floors put in, I had to get the wall behind the toilet and sink done fast, and I showed you how I did that here.

What I don’t think I’ve shown you is the wall color I tried out. Last summer I was playing around with the idea of using a red color above the wood treatment – and I actually did like it:

(Ignore the halfway done door trim.)

But it was really bold and I’m just not feeling the red in this little space. And I used to have some red accents in the nearby family room and I’m phasing those out, so I didn’t feel like it will flow well:

Good thing I only tried it out on a couple little walls, yes? ;)

See? I told you…it’s a hot mess. Yes, our visitors see this every time they come over. I aim to impress.

You can see there that I finally got all the wood up – it actually didn’t take long at all, maybe a couple hours total to finish it up.

What took FOREVER was the priming. I used an oil-based primer to make sure none of the knots come through later on. OH my goodness. Forever! Painting paneling or beadboard is no joke.

I seriously think I may hire out the next two coats of white paint. Did I mention I’m tired?? :)

I was so thrilled with my progress though! I showed my Sis when she came by, expecting a few props. But mostly she just gave it the stink eye and was all…but it’s not DONE, right?

No sister. It’s not. Thanks.

I can’t say I blame her for the stinky eyes thought – it really doesn’t look all that much better right now. The planks don’t match up on all the walls (when I’m done you’ll see why that won’t matter), the primer does the wood no favors, and I still have a bunch of boards to install to hide all the ugly parts.

But I power on!! I got the baseboards installed:

And the new vanity about a third of the way assembled:

Dad is coming to help me hook the sink back up today and he doesn’t know yet that he’ll be helping me finish up that vanity too. ;) It would be the bees knees to have a working sink in there by the weekend!

It doesn’t look like much now, I know. OK…it still looks like a bit of a disaster. But I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, finally. It’s getting there:

At a turtle’s pace…but it is. I’ll show you the wall color next week and hopefully plenty more progress too! I’m on a mission! WHOO!

I know most don’t take three years to do the tiniest of rooms, but please tell me I’m not the only one who doesn’t makeover a room in weeks? Or months? Years.

DIY floating shelves (bathroom progress)

Hello there and happy MONDAY!! It’s feeling like one to me today. ;)

So you remember that one time when I started two bathroom renovations and took for-absolutely-freaking-EVER to get them done?

Yeah. Well, it’s time to get them done. I’ve set a rule for myself – no gardening or outside projects till the bathrooms are DONE. I may cheat a little only because I am just one person and DANG it takes a long time to finish it all up.

The basement bathroom has come up from nothing, and I have only really showed you the tile so far here. Other than that the big stuff had been installed – the sink, toilet and shower. But the room sat half painted for months.

I was determined to get this bathroom done last week and I almost got there. Just a couple more projects to finish up and I’m moving on! WHOO!

This is how the space looked up till last week – you can’t see that the wall to the left is half way painted but just imagine it. It was pretty:

Since I hadn’t installed baseboards yet I just had to tape off the shower and light fixtures with my loverly Frogtape in preparation for paint. I’ve gotten pretty good at cutting in on the ceiling so that saves a lot of time.

I finished up the paint (I listed all the paint colors for the basement here) and realized again that you can’t even tell the difference between any of the colors – I could have just painted the whole basement the same color. But OH WELL. It’s done. :)

I installed all the baseboards and quarter round:

It looks like poo there but just wait till you see the power of caulk and filler. ;) Wish I could use some caulk and filler.

Once I got the trim done it was time to address the little nook next to the shower. Yes, the shower is tiny. When it came time to decide what we were doing we realized the space would only allow for a couple shower inserts (I had originally planned on tiling the shower but didn’t for cost and time reasons). The size that worked best was this shower – and it is small.

But I have to keep reminding myself this is a basement bathroom – we will hardly EVER use this shower. Some guests might, but even that will be rare. So I would rather have some storage than a big shower we’ll never use.

So storage it was – I had the guys frame out a little spot in the empty space by the shower. All along my plan has been to put some shelves in there, and I finally got it done!

I started by adding supports – I just used scrap wood from the garage every 18 inches or so:

I was going to add a support along the back but realized it wouldn’t be needed since the space is so narrow. I only installed these with a nail gun – on our library built ins and the pantry redo I used long screws, but I knew this wouldn’t be holding a ton of weight so the nails were easier and faster.

I had a piece of 1 by 12 I cut down to use as the shelf, but it was just a smidge too small:

I ended up finding more scrap wood in the garage, took it to Lowe’s and had it cut just a bit wider than the other wood, and it worked pretty well – I stained them before I installed (for once! Are you proud of me?):

I used the dark Kona color I used here as well. Love it.

I just nailed the shelves down into the supports:

I made sure I had the right thickness of wood for the fronts before I started – I wanted it to cover the top shelf, the supports, and an extra board I installed underneath to give it a finished look:

I actually had most of that front trim too – I only had to buy one small piece to finish it up.

I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! It’s a great use of an awkward little spot:

Let’s talk about that shower curtain shall we? I went through my normal Goldilocks routine to find that one (the one I LOVE).

I started with this one, but the blue tone was off with the walls:

I really loved this one and the colors were perfect:

I’m trying to go with a slightly funkier vibe in the basement and I thought that was fun. But I wasn’t crazy about it when I got it up – too graphic for this little space I think?

And then I found the one that was just right. It had a bird on it:

And there. you. go.

Since the shelves only cost my $3 for a small piece of trim (BOOYAH!), I had fun gathering a few new accessories for this spot, at Tarjay of course (all Threshold items):

I LOVE EXTRA STORAGE! Are you with me??

Here’s my little secret – I only had so much scrap wood so I didn’t even put the bottom piece on the two lower shelves:

You’d have to be sitting on the floor looking under them to notice so I’m not worried about it. Does it need to be perfect? NO.

I love having a little spot for the trash can too:

It’s the little things. ;)

Oh yeah – I told you caulk and filler make a world of difference:

Oh my, they are my BFFS. For real.

I adore how the shower curtain looks in here and ties in the blues and greens and even the dark wood tone:

I’m SO glad to have this space (almost) done. I’ll show you the whole room soon, but for now I want to look back to see how far I’ve come:

This was back in January I think?

And here’s a finished spot that makes me super happy!:

It’s a skinny little bathroom but it is turning out so pretty and functional. Love!!