Half Bath
Tone It Down
As mentioned earlier today, we’ve gotten lots of sound advice from readers on our half bathroom. On a side note, we promise this will be one of our last posts on this bathroom for awhile. We get it – enough already right? Just humor us this one last time. This is a nod to you guys.
Some of the feedback has been that our towels and our toilet library were a bit much for the cool beachy room. We’ll admit we suspected this beforehand but thought we play it safe so much that we should just go with our gut. Well our gut is a little too bold and yellow. We’ve found that you all agree with us.
Now, some have gone so far as to say that our bright Ikat patterned towels are a bit too much. Well, honestly, we don’t care. And we mean that in the we value your opinion and are so happy you bother to even read our blog and let us know what you think kinda way. And we’re pickin’ up what your puttin’ down for sure. But the wife loves them and so they stay. If we’re ever showing this house to potential buyers (gasp!) in the future, we can easily throw in some plain white towels to water the whole room down.
A lot of the comments we’ve received about the need to tone it down were well thought out and well, right. So we’ve followed the advice and done just that – except for the Ikat towel thing. Did I mention the wife loves them?
All we did was bring in a bright white hand towel which we bought at Home Goods for $3.99, in place of our too bright yellow towel. Yes, we had to go buy a white towel. That’s how color happy we are around this place. We don’t even own white towels.
We also took away the library, or as one reader put it “whatever that is on your toilet.” Words no one ever wants to hear. So we’ve cooled it down with our simple shell from Heather Garrett Home, purchased here in Durham. We have to admit that we had to fight the urge to bulk it back up with a basket or something. But so far simple is better.
For now we’ve also moved the little pot, which was a lot of fun out and replaced it with a small tube of hand lotion. More practical and less clutter. We likey.
What do you guys think? Was it wise to tone it down a bit? We think so. Any other tips or ideas out there. This is exactly why we post and share these things to get feedback - good and bad! Let ‘er rip.
How’s It Hangin’?
Just yesterday we posted images of our finished half bathroom. If you keep scrolling you’ll see all the images we posted.
We’ve gotten lots of great comments from readers via e-mail, Facebook and on Rate my Space. We’ve even gotten some great advice on balancing out the bright colors, which we will post all about if we make changes soon.
One of many questions we’ve been asked is “hey, what’s that hanging on your wall?”
So we thought we’d go in for a close-up and also show you how we easily made sure the three frames were balanced and equally spaced.
As you can see the framed items are postcards. Real postcards that we’ve received in the mail throughout the years, that we’ve saved and framed.
Going through the collection of cards to choose just six was pretty tough. We had about a dozen from Costa Rica from when Chad spent a few months there before medical school started so we had to narrow them down to just one.
We also had some with funny stories about “majestic” pandas from the Washington, DC Zoo, Chewbacca, and about how hot Matt LeBlanc was when spotted at a Las Vegas swimming pool. How you doin’?
Chewbacca made it onto the wall, Dr. Drake Ramoray did not.
The frames came from Michael’s and are “floating” frames, meaning the photos or postcards in our case, are pressed between two pieces of glass rather than surrounded by a mat. We just attached them to the glass with a small piece of double-sided tape.
Even though you can’t see this when they are hanging, it’s kind of a neat effect because you can flip the frames over and see the other side of each postcard.
The behind-the-scenes story of these frames – waitm scratch that. Everything on this blog is behind the scenes isn’t it? After all it’s just about random stuff we do around the house…
Okay, so what we did (that’s better) was buy 4 of these frames from Michael’s for $16.99 each. We weren’t quite sure if we would need three or four to properly fill out the wall space and we wanted to be on the safe side. Besides, Michael’s is right next door to Home Goods and Target (our homes away from home) so a trip to return an unused frame wouldn’t be a hassle at all. And that’s exactly what we need to do now. It turns out three was the perfect number. Which is great because I like things in odd numbers. Does that make me odd too?
Here is how we knew three was the magic number, without even hanging a frame.
First we found an old roll of wrapping paper and cut out three rectangles the exact size of our frames. You could also use old sales papers or coupon mailers, we just didn’t have any on hand at the time.
Then we just spaced them out with a ruler and taped them up.
Three looked good so we stopped there and put our fourth frame in the car to be returned on our next trip to the mecca that is our Home Goods/Michaels/Target/Petco Shopping Center.
The third step was to find the middle point of each cut-out, add a nail, and remove the paper.
And that my friends is your super-easy photo hanging tip of the day.
Hey, if you hang those frames and they won’t stay straight on the wall, try this tip to keep them in place. Anyone else out there with some tricks to share?
Our New Loo: Nothing Like We Planned
Way back when, in the dark ages of our blogging days, we posted this mood board to visually describe what I was envisioning for our half bathroom update.
We mentioned in one of the weekend’s posts that we didn’t come close to matching all of these items in our new bathroom. Here’s how we crossed them all off our list:
- The fantastic Lotus wallpaper from Farrow & Ball was too large of a pattern to look fantastic on our crooked bathroom walls. In fact our walls are a whole inch shorter at the top of the wall than at the point in the wall where we would begin papering. We were too afraid to drop almost $100 on paper that was going to look forever wonky and cause me to either rip it down immediately or forever boycott what is now my favorite bathroom. That’s not fair to me or to the new toilet which I love so much. So instead we used the leftover paint from our kitchen update, costing zero dollars to finish the room.
- Ah the Sofia Pottery Barn towel. My sister hated it. I liked it and had every intention of purchasing it until we found some much more bold, graphic and modern hand towels from Furbish Studio in Raleigh. Days later they were monogrammed, unreturnable and Sofia was still living at the Barn.
- We decided to repair our old rusty sink so no new faucet was required.
- Instead of adding a large potted plant in a room with no windows, we opted for a small indoor cactus beside the sink (which will get trips outside from time to time for a little dose of sun) and some small, and free, branches from our yard inside the lantern which now hangs from the ceiling.
- Again, saving some beans, we just repaired our wall sink and added a skirt (see the how-to details here) for a whole new look, keeping the vintage charm of the original.
- I love garden stools, and am still checking out Craigslist to find one on the cheap for elsewhere in the casa. But for this half bathroom project I settled on at $8 stool from TROSA, and painted it Million Dollar Red from Benjamin Moore instead of purchasing a $100 garden stool online.
- The Home Goods lantern, well you guys know we already had one of those and just hung it from the ceiling for some interest. Read more about that here.
By our own actions, the room looks completely different than planned. It’s bolder, brighter and a little more worldly we’ll say, with framed post cards hanging on the walls and even some travel books – you know in case anyone every accidentally locks themselves in there.
Just for fun here’s the before shot. Light grey walls, a small and old mirror, rusty unworking sink and runny toilet. The towel bar was also annoyingly too big for a small hand towel.
The only piece I hated to lose was the vintage glass shelf above the sink. It may find a home elsewhere in the casa soon. Not a bad powder room but, just like our kitchen, not very reflective of our bright and colorful style.
Here are the after shots, the many-months-after shots. We think the room looks brighter because of the larger mirror to reflect light and the bright whte paint job on more than half of the walls. Like any powder room, it was pretty difficult to photograph with crazy angles, but you all get the idea.
Here is a quick run down of all the projects included in the room. Every one of which was DIY – I have the dried caulk and paint on my jeans to prove it.
- Install of a new toilet, for free by the way!
- Repaired our leaky sink and made a skirt to hide the ugliness underneath.
- Hung lots of DIY trimwork and crown molding
- Painted that trimwork a gloss white and the top half of the wall Gentle Tide by Glidden.
- Hung a lantern from the ceiling.
- Replaced the mirror with a Home Goods find.
- Painted a thrift store stool bright red.
- Added fun accessories like our shell from Heather Garrett Home here in Durham as well as our framed postcards on the wall.
It’s a tiny room that has come a long way. We left all the bright colors for the accessories like the stool, towels and books, so they are easily interchanged in case we decide to go for a more muted look down the road.
What do you guys think? Of course we also posted it all on HGTV’s Rate My Space too, we love hearing ideas from the DIY crowd.
We Drilled a Hole in the Ceiling
It was for a good reason though.
Our finished half bathroom design is much different than the plan we started out with.
Only one item on our mood board actually made it into our finished bathroom – and that was the lantern (number 7), which we had already purchased from Home Goods before making the board.
Originally we planned to just set it in the floor besides our freshly painted red stool. But that ended up being a little more milk maid than cool garage sale find. In addition, the teeny half bath did not have an overhead light fixture and had an empty corner.
So what better way to keep the eye moving around the room than to hang our lantern from the ceiling in that empty corner?
Triangle True Value had a pack two ceiling hooks on sale for $2.00 (marked down from $4), but they were bronze – so we spray painted them white before installing them. That’s how cheap we are.
In the same trip to Triangle True Value we also picked up three feet of rope to use for hanging the lantern. We tied it in a simple knot and then hung it from the ceiling.
The final result is pretty fun and an unexpected touch for a powder room.
The rest of the half bathroom has really come together over the past few days, so we’ll be back with the final images soon. One more room checked of our list in decorating the casa.
Christmas In… Almost July
Nearly six months ago we were given a pretty awesome Christmas gift by my parents, revisit our post about that trip home for the holidays here. This came on the heels of our DIY crown molding install for the newly updated kitchen. Lets just say we had one late night trip to the Home Depot tool rental department too many.
So my parents gave us an air compressor and nail gun set for Christmas. I felt like the kid that finally got that bike on Christmas morning. It really was all mine. It looks even more powerful outside of the box.
And even more and more powerful with a certain little lady holding it.
My mom, and Bob Villa would be proud. The compressor took a couple of noisy minutes to fully fill up before using, but once it was ready to go the noise ended and the nail gun attachment worked like a dream. This model also comes with an attachment that allows you to fill up basketballs and sports equipment as well as a tire attachment which is pretty awesome.
You can see by the picture that we’re finishing up the last real “project” in our teeny half bathroom. Just a little crown molding. Here’s what the first piece looks like all nail gunned up. Three more to go, plus the paint and caulk.
Still as we’ve said many times for this room – it’s a work in progress. But give us a week or so and we’ll have all the fantastic after photos up for public consumption. It’s already coming together so well that it has quickly become my favorite room of the house – Chad keeps catching me standing in the doorway just looking at it. He doesn’t judge me.
P.S. We got another rug to try too. Wish us luck. What have you guys been up to this week? Any other ladies out there wielding power tools and grunting around the house? Just me?
On The Prowl
[Insert whispering British voiceover here.] “Our two stealth hunters move steadily through the brush in search of one small furry bath accessory.”
Okay, okay, enough of that, but you get the idea.We’re on the hunt.
On the hunt for the perfect rug for our half bathroom.
The entire space, all 48 square feet of it, is really coming together with our burlap sink skirt, bargain mirror from Home Goods, monogrammed towels and freshly painted stool. All of these items put together cost us less than the $128 faucet we ended up returning after deciding to keep the sink we have.
Here’s the breakdown:
- supplies for sink skirt, $15.00
- mirror, $ 27.00
- towels, with monogramming, $32.00
- stool from TROSA, $8.00
Total: $82.00
Now we’re looking to be equally as thrifty in choosing our rug.
We started with this round little guy from Tar-jay. He was only $9.99 but he was w-a-y too bright and way too small for the room, at only 24″ in diameter.
So he was returned the next day. Then we moved on to Home Goods, conveniently located next door to Target in our area. But no luck. We looked at several red-ish rugs that were within our budget – set at “cheap.” But in the end we decided that a red rug right next to a red stool might be too much red and red. Makes sense right?
As of today we’re still rugless, or at least rug-we-want-less. For now our floor is covered with a small rug that we picked up on our honeymoon in Mexico. Chad is okay with keeping it in the half bath but I’ve decided that we’re going to keep looking for a replacement. I think the birds, as cute as they are, are a bit busy for the floor of the little bathroom and especially clash with our Ikat towels.
Crate and Barrel is our next stop, you know, because we may not have mentioned that it’s practically next door now [insert fist pump here]. Wish us luck! Maybe a bolder yellow? Maybe a bright white, shaggy version? What do you guys think?
