Quick Bathroom Update

 We have...

A BLANK SLATE!

Besides the wallpaper gone and paint on the walls, the biggest difference is in lighting.  

Kids' / Guest Bathroom Plans - A Mood Board

 One of the rooms in our house that's been majorly neglected is the kids' bathroom, which is also the guest room when family/friends come visit.  It was wallpaper laden when we moved in...

and that, coupled with a cheap plastic shower curtain, worn cream trim, and some horrible orangey light bulbs made it look like it was part of an 80's time capsule.

 

Not in mint condition though because the tile grout was (and still is) stained and the paint on the cabinets started peeling off long before we moved in.  But, those are exactly the kinds of rooms we like, right?  

Righty-o.

We got as far as getting the wallpaper off, hanging a much better shower curtain, and attempting to remove the popcorn ceilings (they're oil-based-painted on and going nowhere...womp womp) but that's about it.  

Then she sat and sat and sat.  Very much used by the kids but very much neglected.  We looked away when water got splashed on the drywall from showers but we can't push it off much longer.  We've got to get that drywall sealed and painted before worse things happen.  And while we're at that, might as well take it to the next level and touch up a few other things.  Snowball effect.   

So, now that the painting of the living room is behind us (tutorial on painting paneling coming soon!), I'm moving my energies into this room for a (hopefully) quick makeover.  This is only the start though - Phase Uno.  Also known as mostly using what we've got to squeeze in a makeover that costs less than $100.

Here's the plan:

Living Room Update + Some Fireplace Ideas

Whew!  After a whirlwind romance with primer and paint, we are FINALLY done painting the living room.  Ok, so there a few spots that need to be touched up like where I accidentally got some trim paint on the ceiling but they're not noticeable to anyone but me so I'm going to push them off like a lazy person.  I need a break from touching paint brushes and rollers to any part of this room.  ;)  It was a doozy of a project that required lots of painting after lots of bedtimes because of oil-based paint fumes but hip hip hooray.  We're over that mountain.

I took this a few weeks before we started priming:

So. Much. Wood.  Not even our modern-era furniture can make a dent in those aesthetics.  Instead of the furniture pulling the room more towards 2020, the room pulled the furniture back towards the disco age.  💃

Sometimes I feel bad for even wanting to paint over stained wood in great condition but, in this case, we're both so glad we did.  It's like a completely different room!

Lights & Registers

Sounds exciting, right?  Ok, maybe not that exciting but I'll tell you what is exciting...we finished painting the living room and kitchen ceilings this past weekend!  There are two more (tedious) things left to do on the old to-do list and then...well, then we just make another to-do list with more stuff on it like deep clean the couch, hang stuff on the walls, and recover the chairs...but cheer with us because the big stuff is almost DONE!

In honor of the ceilings being painted and finally done (because that was a j.o.b.), let's talk about two things on it that make quite the difference - our new lights and our *new* ceilings registers.

Lights first.  When we bought this house, there was a big fan in the middle of the living room.  

Not only was it old and ugly (although it did have caning embedded in the blades and that is making a comeback...), but it hung so low we had to walk around it if we were carrying anything that rose above our own heads (like a child, for instance), lest the thing we were carrying knock into the glass covers on the light bulbs.  Within days of closing on the house, Anthony had it down.  Unfortunately, that fan was the only light source in the room though so we knew we'd eventually have to put in lights.  Well, eventually came a few months ago and we decided on staggering some recessed lights throughout the room.  Anthony knows electrical but we have a friend who is an electrician and knows way more than Anthony, so we paid him to come put in some lights for us.  We found out from him that, because of the way our joists run in comparison to the beams in the room, we wouldn't be able to put in traditional recessed lights.  There was only a moment of that let-down/what-are-we-going-to-do-we-don't-want-bulky-lights-in-here feeling though because our friend showed up with these LED lights* and we had ourselves a solved problemo.  I've never been one to get super excited about can lights but these, they were/are exciting.  Not only are they going to last us a very long time (thanks LED) but they're super slim so you can put them in places the bigger can lights can't venture.

  

Oh, and they have three Kelvin settings - so you can set them to warmer light all the way to cooler light with the flick of a switch.  Cool, right?  ;)  Awesome, I knew I wasn't the only one to get a kick out of these things.

We went back and forth with how many we should install but we ended up going with four lights - two in between the second and fourth spaces between beams - and they are just perfecto.  Plus, we had them installed on a dimmer switch so they can be dimmed.  It feels so fancy.  We also had our friend do the wiring in the attic for us to install two more of the same recessed lights in a smaller size over the peninsula in the kitchen.  With the vent hood there, pendants seemed like they'd be too much so these are the perfect solution.

Lights.  Check.  Onto the vents...which sounds way less exciting but they come with a tutorial so hold onto your horses... 

Living Room & Kitchen Update

Last week, instead of typing on the old keypad here, we were spending our free moments knocking out some major (well, sorta major) progress in the living room, kitchen, and breakfast nook area - it's all one big room now thanks to a wall getting taken out.  

We still have yet to actually paint but we did spend a few nights after the kids went to bed priming.  The ceilings had to be primed along with the trim and the walls...it was quite a feat.  Not only did they need to be primed, but we had to use oil-based primer (the worst!) to knock out that smoker smell once and for all and because the wood paneling required it.  I'll write a whole post on why and how to paint wood paneling when we are all done and that will have all the details and explanations.  Until then, hows about a little update?

Warning, I did not clean up my house for you.  I just snapped these in-progress shots real quick like when the sun was shining.  I know you don't mind.  ;)

Starting at the beginning (for the biggest shock factor, of course), here's what the room looked like right after we closed: 

I know that, if you've been reading for awhile, you've probably seen this before a million times so I apologize, but nevertheless, a quick recap is always fun, no?

Now, things are a heck of a lot whiter and a heck of a lot brighter: