Taking Care of Business

Hi Feathers and Fingerprints readers!  I'm sorry for the long absence of posts.  Life got pretty hectic for a while between adding a third child to the family and changing jobs!  I left first grade after 7 years to teach gifted and talented education.  It has been a huge change but I am so glad I took the leap!  

Now that life is starting to settle into a routine again I'm finally getting around to showing you the finishing touches in the hall bathroom project!  To be honest, we spent so much time in the bathroom this summer potty training our 2 year old that I had no interest in blogging about it!

Let me remind you where we started.  You can read more about the reno here, here, and here, and see the last reveal here.

Hall Bathroom Before

Finally we have a shower curtain and towel bar!  The shower curtain came from Home Goods and the towel bar came from Ikea.  I picked up both items while traveling this summer.  Unfortunately, we don't have either store in my home state.  I sure wish Home Goods would come to Oklahoma...

Tree Shower Curtain

The towel bar fits our needs perfectly.  It provides plenty of hooks for towels and swimsuits.  I hung it low enough that the kids can hang their wet items on their own.  And the price was insanely cheap so I'll have no regrets if I want to replace it with something nicer later.

Bathroom Towel Bar Hooks

Next, the mirror got an upgrade.  We reused the original mirror and made a frame from wood trim.  There are many tutorials on the web if you search.  The frame was a cheap and easy way to add character to the room.

Bathroom Framed Mirror

And, because I love the frame around the mirror so much, why not add one around the toilet paper dispenser?  I've never been a fan of the built in toilet paper holder.  I wanted my husband to rip it out and fix the drywall when he was repairing the other walls.  Unfortunately, I forgot to mention it.  Oops.  So, crazy thought, lets fix this eyesore by framing it.  I think it totally worked.

Toilet Paper Dispenser Frame

There you have it!  My finished bathroom!

Thanks to our hard work, creativity, and careful planning, this entire renovation was completed for under $1000.  That's some serious budget DIY! 

What projects do you have going on?

Hall Bathroom Project Reveal!

We worked really hard to complete our hall bathroom renovation in just two weeks! Most of the work was done on the weekends since my husband had a couple of trips out of town for work.  You can see our progress here, here, and here.  

Drum roll please...

BEFORE {Previous Owner Status}

BEFORE RENOVATION {2 weeks ago}

AFTER

The vanity, tub, tiles, and fixtures are all from Lowes.  Ryan and I did all of the demo and construction with some much needed help keeping the kids entertained from my mom and good friend Amanda.  {THANK YOU Grandma Jane and Amanda!!!}  There is still work to be done but as it is now the bathroom is fully functioning!  And fully functioning is good enough for me!  I'm off to enjoy the rest of my spring break!  Here's to hoping it stops raining soon!

Hall Bathroom Project; Days 3 & 4

Our hall bathroom has made quite the transformation!  We spent two days last weekend getting started.  If you missed those posts you can go back to see the before pictures here.  To see pictures of me rocking the tile hammer on day 2 click here.  Construction temporarily stopped while my husband went out of town for work.  He got home on Friday evening and work resumed first thing Saturday morning.

I cut tiles in the front yard all day.  The skies threatened us but luckily the rain held off.  Ryan marked tiles, handed them out the bathroom window to me and I cut them and handed them back.  

We managed to finish the wall tiles and before going to bed I grouted the area behind the vanity.  This allowed us to move the vanity into place before starting the floor tiles on Sunday morning.

Ryan starting arranging the floor tiles first thing Sunday morning.  I stayed in bed as long as possible trying to rest my tired and aching body.  But, there is no such thing as sleeping late in this house!  Before long I was back at the saw cutting floor tiles.  We finished the floor by early afternoon.  I have never been so happy to clean up after a project as I was to clean the tile saw to give it back!  Even after two days of use that saw still scares me a little!!  After we put the kids to bed Sunday night we grouted some more.  

I still have a few things to do before I post the big reveal.  I need to grout the mosaic tiles and the floor trim.  I'd like to frame the mirror, but I can't decide on white paint or dark stain.  What do you think?  You can see a little of our vanity and how dark the wood is in the picture above.  I also need to find some kid friendly towel bars or hooks and we need a new shower curtain rod and a new light fixture.  I've been so focused on getting the bathroom back to working order that I forgot about some of these things!

Hall Bathroom Project; Day 2

Less than two weeks ago we gutted our bathroom.  The floor tiles were putting up a good fight so we took a trip to our local RSC and rented this bad boy.

I put the kids down for a nap and got to work.  And yes, they slept right through it!  I think the loud attic fan saved me.

Did I mention it was 80 degrees and I had to wear long sleeves to protect myself from flying shards of tile?

Here you can see the layer of concrete the previous owners laid on top of the concrete slab.  We still haven't figured out that one...

We moved the new tub into place and fixed the concrete floors.  You can also see the new sheet rock is up.

The new tub is an inch wider than the old tub so the top layer of concrete had to be chiseled back to fit.  Then new concrete filled the gap and leveled the floor.  You can see our new built-in shelf on the right.

This is where the old vanity was.  The floor had to be filled in to accommodate our new longer yet narrower vanity.

Just for fun let me back up and show you what the shower looked like before the sheet rock went up.  There you can see my husband in our master bathroom shower.  His hand is on the shelf we built into the wall in our shower.  We kinda forgot the back tile was glued to the back side of the drywall on the hall bathroom shower...  Oops...

This is the end of a very long day 2.

Here's a sneak peak of some of the new tiles.

Stay tuned!

And Footprints, too!

Six years ago we bought a house.  For six years we dreamed of ripping out this hall bathroom.

I took that picture on a visit before closing.  It still grosses me out.  We hated that tile and vanity so much that we painted it.  We had already gutted the master bathroom and weren't ready to go through that again so soon!

The paint was a great short term solution.  It really brightened the small bathroom.  It just couldn't stand up to the torture of three kids.  It was peeling off the counter and floor.

The bathtub was in pretty good condition, but it had a big chip that was starting to rust.  So it had to go, too.

Last weekend we finally pulled the trigger.  Goodbye ugly vanity!  Goodbye peach and brown tile! 

This is our little helper.  She's wearing googles.  Safety first.

You are probably wondering why the title of this post is Footprints.  Well, to get this...

We had to do lots of this...

Which also left this...

My little Eureka Maxima vacuum has been working overtime.  I can't say enough great things about that vacuum.  It outperformed our shop vac, that's for sure.

Here's another view of our living room during the first day of demo.

We are making major progress and I'll have more updates soon!

The Master Bathroom

Oh, the master bathroom.  This is how it looked the first day we visited the house.  It wasn't technically on the market yet, and I honestly don't know if our realtor gave the sweet old man living there much notice that we were coming to look.

We moved in and tore down one shelf, showing the pretty wallpaper behind it.

Below is the pretty wallpaper hiding behind the cabinet over the toilet.  Later I found out these two layers were not the only layers of paper I would have to remove...

One day I casually asked my husband to fix the dripping bathtub faucet.  Turns out, the dripping faucet was the least of our worries.  We had a water leak in the wall behind the shower.  

Everything was rotten.  

And moldy.

It all had to go.

So my handsome handyman tore everything out.  I explained how I wanted the new bathroom to look and he made it happen!  Many, many trips to Lowes and one trip to the emergency room and things started coming together.  

{Side note: In my husband's defense, the trip to the emergency room was not his fault.  As he was lifting a brand new toilet out of the box it broke and sliced his finger.  There was so much blood everywhere I made him go!  Turns out he didn't need stitches so he probably didn't need to go anyway...}

Finished! Love.

One of these days we'll get around to remodeling the hall bathroom.  {Shudder}

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