The BATHROOMS are DONE!!!

This has been a long awaited post, I'll tell you that much! So, the bathrooms are done!!! Let's hear a little shout out! I know you've all been anxiously awaiting this post. Well, now the wait is over. Lol.

So, in typical blogger fashion, let's look at some before pictures. 

I'm kind of embarrassed that the bathrooms ever looked this way, but oh well. :)

So, a very boring, ugly, bathroom. You can't see it well in the picture, but the walls were really bad. They needed to be retextured. The cabinets were kind of old looking, with really ugly hardware. The faucet was so disgusting. No matter how much I cleaned it, it still looked dirty. The counter was a faux marble, kind of creamy color, with a crack in the basin.

This is the old light fixture, I remembered as we were putting in the new one, that I needed a before picture. So I had Dan hold it up, so you could see it. I really think this was the original fixture from when the house was built in the 70's. 

Horrible placement of a towel rack. 

The towel rack should have gone on this wall.

Ugly mini blinds.

Someone thought it would be a good idea to continue the tile up on the wall.

I've been wanting to redo our bathrooms for years, seriously, years. In order to get this done, it required a lot of sacrifice, time and HARD WORK!!!

Here is our new master bathroom!!!!

We retextured the walls, painted them, glazed the counter top, put in a new light fixture, faucet and hardware on the vanity, painted the vanity, put up board and batten and framed the mirror.

Here is the shower curtain I made. I actually found this material last summer and as soon as I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for the bathroom. We already had the shower rod, but it was brown. I bought a can of brushed nickel spray paint and painted it. I got the shower hooks at Target. 

We added towel hooks, which I love!

Here they are all by themselves. I got them at Lowes, for about $2.30 each.

The side wall. We actually still need to frame the window, but I'm sick of waiting to show off the bathrooms, so I'll update this picture later. :)

We framed the door frame. Our bathroom is small, and impossible to get a straight on shot of the door. I made the top piece overhang a bit on purpose. I really like it.

I still need to put something up on this wall.

Here is the framed mirror. All I did here was cut pieces of MDF wood, which is what we used for all the trim in the bathroom. A 8'x4' sheet is only $20 at Lowes. You can get a lot out of that. 

(do you like me trying to not be in the mirror, but failing?)

I measured the mirror and thought I had it right. However, make sure to account for the inches you will lose on the shorter sides. I had Dan cut the pieces. We were almost done, when I realized my mistake and we had to cut a few more inches off the two small side pieces. So, we took some liquid nails and glued the bottom piece and the two side pieces. We first left the mirror on the wall and used painters tape to hold it in place. Well, after a half hour, the tape wasn't enough to hold it in place. We took the mirror off and got clamps to hold it in place. 

Here the top piece is just laying on the mirror, I was checking to see if it would fit. 

Then we put the mirror back. The mirror is held onto the wall, by two clear plastic claw like pieces. Since, we were framing the mirror, I wanted to still have the option to take the mirror off the wall, should we ever have to. So, I decided to put the top piece on with magnets. There are very small, yet, very powerful magnets you can buy. Dan uses them all the time with his Warhammer models. We ordered some of those. They are smaller than a dime, but can hold up 12 lbs of weight. Dan hollowed out the back of the piece of wood, so it would fit around the clear plastic claw holders, put the magets on the back of the wood using apoxy, then added nails to the wall, so the magnets would stick to them. And it worked! And it was all my idea...haha. :)

Breakdown of the costs for this bathroom:
Soap dispenser: Goodwill purchase $2 or $3 dollars.
White lotion dispenser: Target clearance, $2.34
Silver picture frame: $2, yardsale find.
Light fixture: Lowes, $60-70. (don't remember exactly)
Faucet: Lowes, $86
Towel hooks, Lowes, $7 for all three.
Vanity hardware: Lowes, 86 cents each, x4=2.95
Brushed nickel spray paint: $3, at walmart.
Blue hand towel: Target clearance, $2.34
Shower hooks: Target, $12.
White bath mat: Target clearance, $3.48
Small blue wash cloth: Target clearance, $1.98
Large blue bath mat: JC Penny sale, plus coupon, $15.
Blue paint: Walmart, $15
White paint: Walmart, $30 (had to buy two, but was used for other bathroom)
MDF wood: $40 (bought two, but used for other bathroom).
Reglaze counter: $71
Retexturing supplies and equipment: $100 (but for both bathrooms)


Total: $359 (I halved the price for MDF, paint and retexturing stuff in the total)

On to the hall bathroom.

The before. 

Again, ugly walls. This bathroom, had wallpaper on it, someone tried tearing it off in places, then painted over it. So you could see where it was torn, where the wall paper was, etc. It was really bad.

Extremely ugly light fixture.

The vanity wasn't too bad, but I'm not a fan of the wood color. Plus, it had ugly hardware.

Faux marble countertop, ugly faucet.

A cute little redhead. 

We kept her. :)

Really ugly towel racks.

Now, the AFTER!

We framed the mirror, glazed the countertop, new faucet, light fixture, painted the vanity, retextured the walls. Pretty much did the same thing that we did with the master bathroom.

I ended up keeping the original hardware and just spray painting it with the brushed nickel paint. It saved me about $30. I would have liked new hardware, but I didn't feel like shelling out the money for it.

Sorry, the lighting is so bad here.

It was a big job to retexture the walls. We did that over Thanksgiving break. These bathrooms have been months and months in the making! :)

I'm still working on the wall decor, as you can see. I just need to decide what to put in the frames. The center piece was actually in our bedroom, painted red. After I got the damask shower curtain, I realized that this piece matched it perfectly! I was debating between painting it white or black. If it was white, I could have glazed it and it would have looked awesome. However, since the bottom half of the wall is already white, I wanted some contrast, so I chose black.

Beautiful board and batten!

I had to caulk all of these seams. That was a big job too. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. And it really makes the wood look nice and all put together.

Again, horrible lighting, sorry.

Better shot.

I found this bathmat at Big Lots. I was so excited, because it matched the purple walls, perfectly! And it was only $4. Originally 5, but I found a stain on it that you can barely see, so I got it for cheaper!

I love this faucet. 

Still not sure if the Lotion looks good or not. I may take it off.

This is above the toilet. My mom gave me this a few years ago and I had it hanging in our hallway, but it matched the bathrooms, so I moved it in here.

The bathroom again.

We need to frame the window here too. And if you'll notice, There are a few pieces of trim that need to go by the toilet, but we have a few issues there. So it will happen. 

My lovely damask shower curtain.

I would do a cost breakdown, but it's getting late! So, it's pretty similar to the other bathroom.
Now, the best part is about to come...we actually only spent about $50-75 of Dan's regular income! Yes, I'm not lying or exaggerating!


Last summer, I babysat my friend's little boy a lot. I put that money aside and made it the bathroom fund. I sold stuff on craigslist and put it in the bathroom fund. I redeemed my MyPoints points for Lowes gift cards (and made Dan do the same! Haha). We got visa gift cards for doing health evaluations through our insurance. I used those to buy stuff for the bathrooms. I used gift cards I got for my birthday. Recently, I started selling stuff through facebook selling groups, and used that money for bathroom stuff. I found a lot of stuff on clearance and at discount stores like Ross and Big Lots. Heavenly Father truly blessed me to do this cheaply and for very little cost to us. Dan didn't really want to do the bathrooms. He likes them now, of course, but he didn't want to pay for it or do the work. Of course he helped me with the big stuff like retexturing the walls, installing light fixtures and faucets, and the nailing the trim, but I did everything else. Hours and hours of painting, caulking, sewing, priming, more painting, etc. It's been a LOT of hard work and effort. But I'm so happy with the results. They aren't perfect, there are little flaws here and there, but compared to what they used to look like, I'm ecstatic with how they look now!

Got Grass?

Wow, so it's been a while since I blogged and blogger changed their format! I think it's better, but will take some getting used to. 

Anyways, things are happening around the 'ol homestead. Last summer, we put a bit of grass in our dirt filled backyard. We didn't really plan ahead, it was kind of a spur of the moment decision. Well, things worked out for us to get a sprinkler system and add more grass in the backyard. We really should have done the sprinkler system first to begin with, but oh well.

So on Monday and Tuesday of last week, we got the sprinkler system installed. 

Then on Saturday, we did the sod. We were lucky enough to get four missionaries to come out and help us. Even better, one of the elders, just happened to have a TON of experience laying sod. He just went right in there and seriously took over and pretty much laid all the sod himself. I was in charge of the hose and making sure the ground was wet before laying the sod and everyone else brought the sod from the front of the house and laid it down and the one elder put it in place. It was pretty crazy, we got it all laid in an hour! We had some leftover sod, so we ended up digging out some dead patches in the backyard and front yard and putting in the new sod. That actually took longer than actually laying down the sod. The missionaries were great, they worked so hard. We were so appreciative of all their hard work. We fed them lunch, and that was about all we could do for them. 

Before, ugly dirt.

We had to dig out some old sod that we took from the side of our house two years ago, in hopes to get some kind of grass back here. It wasn't that great and turned into a bunch of weeds, rather than grass. So, we had to take that out before the sprinklers were installed.

We had to loosen the dirt in a lot of other areas, to assure that the sod would take root. That was a lot of hard work. Then, we had to even it out as much as possible, so that sod wouldn't be all bumpy and uneven.

The beautiful, new sod!

I love it!

Nice...

The flash makes it look lighter here, than it really is. 

It's so nice to have a more normal backyard. We didn't do the whole backyard, because that would have been much too expensive. But a little over half of it, is now all nice and green. We are planning on adding some kind of stone or brick around the edge of the grass, to give it a more finished look.

 And I'm so excited because the sod was delivered on pallets and we get to keep the pallets! I'm so excited to make some pallet furniture out of it! This is what I'm thinking:

A nice bench for the patio. 

Some planter boxes. These would be so easy to make!

Hopefully, this summer we'll be able to make these and make our patio look a little nicer. :)

Gallery Wall and Clock

A few months ago, I won a $25 gift code to an online vinyl store. You all know how much I love vinyl. I got two things and only paid $7. One of the things I got was this saying, Families are Forever. I decided I was going to make a gallery wall of pictures and put the vinyl in the middle.

I laid out the picture frames on the floor to to see how I liked the arrangement.

Next, I traced the frames on paper, then put the paper up to see how it all looked. There was no way I was going to put up a bunch of frames and then realized I didn't like it. It's a good thing I did the paper first, because I realized, I needed it to be longer. I added another piece of paper on the top and bottom row.

And then the paper stayed there for a while, like a few months. That's the thing with me. I'll start a project and seriously, it will take months and months to finish. That's what you do when you have two kids at home with you and you have limited time to work on stuff. ;)

Here, I have some frames up, and some paper. Lol.

However, the day has arrived, that I finally bit the bullet and just got it done. I was tired of staring at paper on my walls.

Technically, it's not done because there's an empty frame and one of the other frames, I need to take out a picture. Details...details...

I really like how it turned out. I wish it didn't line up with the piano so much, but oh well.

I had some frames already, two I made, and the other ones I got a thrift stores for really cheap and just spray painted them black. I wanted to put the vinyl on a plaque type thing, so I could move it easily, if I ever decided to change this, but it was just taking too long to find one and I wanted this project done! I'm actually glad I didn't put it on a plaque, because I think it gives a nice contrast on the wall with the frames.

My family room is in need of a major redo. I'm done with red. I'm done with the decor being all cluttered. I need some more color. I'm hoping to be able to remedy this situation soon. But knowing me it will be another 6 months before this happens. :)

Here is the clock I got. I just got the face of the clock in vinyl. I bought the round wood piece at Lowes. I then spray painted it white and took a paper towel and dabbed the brown paint on, to make it look antiqued. This was an annoying project, because I kept trying to lighten it and adding other colors, then would have to go over it again because it didn't turn out the way I wanted. So I'm not 100% pleased with it, but overall it turned out. It's a little darker than pictured.

It has yet to be hung up. Lol. It's been done for over a month. I need to add hooks to the back of it. It's fairly heavy, so I need the drywall anchors. However, when it does go up, above where it is now, I think it will look great! Haha...

Help! I need decoration advice!

Hello there, my good friends!

Well, I feel that a great hurdle has been overcome. I, FINALLY, after months and months of putting it off, filled in the nail holes in the bathrooms and sealed up the sides of the mdf trim. I can now finish painting some of the trim and caulk the seams. I'm hoping to do that tomorrow, but we shall see.

I have a little dilemma. I need to start decorating the bathrooms, now that they're pretty much done. I've made shower curtains for both, but that's about it, as far as decor goes.

I got this frame last summer at a garage sale for $2. I love how it's silver and ties in with the bathroom. There was a picture of lilies or something in it.

Sorry, for the dim lighting.

I love the little beads/balls that border it and the matte border thingy.

Not too shabby for 2 bucks!

I just don't know what to put in it. I don't know if I should find a pretty picture, or a quote, or what? Or use my cricut machine to cut out an image?

Here is a better view.

Again, the lighting is really bad, so the color is off. It's a pale blue, on the walls.

And you get a sneak peak at the bathrooms! :)

I am going to paint the matte board, probably white, but could do another color. It's currently cream, right now.

Any suggestions? Ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! :)

New Shower Curtain and Hooks.

Alex-he LOVES books now. I'm so glad, because I was getting a little worried. A few months ago he didn't really have the attention span for them, but now he loves to sit on the couch with me and look at books. I can tell him, Alex, let's go sit on the couch and read books and he'll trot on over to the couch and know what we're going to do. It's so precious. He knows more animal sounds and is getting better at trying to say more words. I'm trying to be consistent with him about asking him to say words all the time. He likes to point to things and have me tell him what it is.

I really love him so much. He's so sweet and precious. His new thing is to point out Anna. He'll look at me and point to Anna and say, Nana, nana, nana. And keep repeating it until I confirm, and say, Yes, that's Anna. He seriously does it all day. Today he did it at the grocery store with other people.

Some times in the morning she'll still be in her room, while I'm getting him breakfast and he'll say, Nana. And I know he's wondering where she is. He really likes her and her companionship. Sure they still fight and stuff, but it's so nice to see how they get a long and have fun with each other.

Here we are reading some books together.

So I've been working on a few glazing projects lately. My favorite one is some shower hooks that I did for our hall bathroom. The bathrooms are slowly coming along. We FINALLY got rest of the trim up, minus a few pieces here and there. I just need to cover up nail holes and paint more, but my motivation is waning. Lol.

However, I did make a shower curtain. I decided on some black damask. I found some shower hooks at Ross for only $4! (and the rod for only $5).

This is what the looked like.

I loved how they had a matching pattern to the damask.

They were kind of a bronzey brown. I spray painted them white.

I then put glaze on the front and sides and wiped most of it off on the front.

I just LOVE how it just makes the detail pop out.

Here is the shower curtain when I first made it. I added the black to the bottom, but then realized that you couldn't really see the shower hooks very well.

If you look up close, you kind of can, but it just blends in with the curtain.

So luckily, I still had some black material, that was actually leftover from Dan's Halloween costume.

I added a strip to the top.

Now, you can see the shower hooks!

I'm really pleased with how it turned out and how much the glazing helped it.

I did have a mess up though when I was cutting off some extra material after I sewed the top black strip. I ended up cutting some of the shower curtain! Aaahh! I need to fix it, but luckily, you can't really see it unless you know it's there. There's always something....lol.

My new tv stand

A couple of weeks ago, we got a new tv stand. Our old one wasn't very tall and Alex kept climbing up on it, so it was time to get a different one. I originally wanted one that was taller and not so wide. I knew I would be getting a used one and painting it. I started checking craigslist every day, but didn't see anything. One day, I had to run some errands and ended up stopping by a Goodwill. I saw a dresser that would work as a tv stand. I really liked it, but it was longer than what I wanted. And I wanted to make the decision with Dan. So I didn't get it. I then went to Salvation Army, nothing. Then, I stopped at another thrift store, American Way, and lo and behold, there was the exact same dresser there! And it was half the price of the one at Goodwill. I figured it must be a sign! Lol. I mean, really, what are the chances you find the EXACT same dresser at two different thrift stores on the same day?

I took a picture of it and sent it to Dan's phone. He was working though. I knew he would be on his lunch break soon, but he never texted me back. So, I left. A few hours later, he texted me and said he liked it. So basically, he came home, I got the van all ready-took out the car seats, laid the seats down, put down a blanket, etc. I figured if it wasn't at American Way, it would probably be a Goodwill. So I drove to American Way, and it was gone! Bummer, because it was only $30.

I went to Goodwill and it was still there. I bought it, but it wouldn't fit in the van, so I took home the drawers and this one came with a really large mirror (the other one didn't). And the one at Goodwill was in a little better shape then the other one. Dan went back the next night with rope to close the back door of the van and got it home.

Here is the before.

It's not the best quality, sorry. And there is a board of some type on top of it.

It's just your typical, 70's kind of furniture. However, it's a solid piece of furniture. Not like the junk they make today. And it has a TON of storage, which is why I really wanted to get it. I got it for $60.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. My friend Tara, recently painted a dresser this really pretty blue color. So, I copied her and got the same paint color! *thanks Tara* :)

One of the blogs I follow, All Things Thrifty does A LOT of glazing furniture. I've always wanted to try it out. Here is an example of what she does and what glazing is. *click to enlarge, you can see so much more detail.

You buy mixing glaze and add paint to it. You paint it in the crevices of the furniture, then wipe it off and it stays in the nooks, crannies, ridges of the furniture and really makes the detail pop.

So that was my plan with this dresser. This dresser didn't have as many places for the glaze to stay, like the example, I showed you.

Here is the dresser, all primed and ready to be painted.

Here she is, all painted and purdy. :)

Here is a before picture one of the doors. This is pre-glaze.

And the color is off. I could never really get a picture of the dresser with the true blue that it is.

Here is the door, after the glaze.

Can you see the difference the glaze makes? See how you can see the detail better?

(Please say yes, or it was all in vain...)

I also added glaze on the top and bottom. Do you see the dark lines?

Here is another before

(along with the flash making the blue look off)

Here, the left door is glazed and the right one is not. Can you see the difference between the two doors? It's not the best picture, sorry.

Here is a shot of it all done. I used the original hardware and spray painted it black. I think it looks really nice.

Another shot of the glazed drawers.

It's one of those projects that looks so much better in person. I hope the picture enlarges, so you can see more of the detail.

I thought glazing was going to be really easy. And technically, it was, but it was just very time consuming. This seriously, took me hours and hours to do. I didn't want a messy glaze look, where it kind of looks dirty. In the example, I showed you, she did that and it looks great, but I didn't think it would go well with this project. So, it was hard to wipe the glaze clean. Plus, the crevices on this dresser weren't very deep, so I had to be careful not to wipe all the glaze off of the crevice, but still try and get it off, on the other parts where I didn't want it to be. I had to reglaze a lot of spots.

Overall, I'm very pleased with how it turned out and am looking forward to glazing more things. Now, I just have to redo the colors in my family room, since the blue doesn't match some of the stuff I have in there. Honestly, the arrangement of my family room bugs me a lot, but there's not a lot I can do about it. I am going to try and work on improving it and make it look nicer.

*the overall cost for this was about $100, after buying spray primer, paint and glaze. Not too shabby, considering something like this would be more than triple that amount in a store.

Catch up and handmade picture frame

So it's been about a 100 years since I last posted. Ooops! I really do enjoy blogging. Lately, life has been really busy and I've been doing a bajeelion home projects. I've been working a lot on our bathrooms, and as of recently, a TV stand. And honestly, after the kids go to bed, I just want to relax and use that time to get stuff done.

Some quick updates.

The bathrooms are ALMOST finished. I just need to prime some more boards to put up and fill in the nail holes and really that's it. It's been too cold lately to prime and when it was warm, I was priming the tv stand. And truthfully, I'm kind of burnt out on the bathrooms. But I can't wait to post pictures of them. They look soooo much better now.

Anna is potty trained! Has been for almost 3 months now. It's definitely had its ups and downs, but hallelujah, she's trained!

Alex is getting bigger and bigger and into more and more trouble every day. He's a climbing machine and seriously goes from getting into one thing to getting into the next thing. It's hard when she has to go to the bathroom during the day. I don't want to close the door on him, because I don't want him to cry/get into trouble while we're in there. However, when he's in there, he's trying to climb in the tub, stick his hand in the toilet, open all the drawers, get stuff out, etc. I'm just trying to rush Anna along, which rarely happens with a 3 year old. Lol.

Here's my little stinker in the bathtub.

(excuse the ugly bathtub, we're planning on redoing it)

He's so smart though. He can make about six animal sounds (moo, ruff, meow, bzzz, quack, baaa), says cracker, hi, nana (banana), car (gah), go, he said Jesus on Sunday at church. He said it almost perfectly three times and now will just say the first part. I think that's pretty good for an almost 15 month old. He can also blow kisses, by putting his hand over his mouth and removing it, like he's blowing a kiss. So cute...

So, I've been kind of working on a picture wall for above our piano. I got a deeply discounted vinyl sign that says, Families Are Forever. I'm working on putting frames in a rectangle shape and putting the vinyl in the middle. This project is sloooowly coming along. I had some frames already, bought two almost brand new ones at the thrift store and decided I didn't like two of the ones I already had. I've had some leftover trim for a couple of years now, that I've always wanted to make a picture frame out of. So I finally got around to it!

It was so easy to make. It took some time with the glueing, but other than that, it was easy peasy.

I forgot to take a before picture. But I basically had 4 pieces of trim, about 8-10 inches long. I wanted a rectangle shaped frame. I cut two pieces the same length and two other pieces the same length. I used what is called a miter saw. What's cool about this thing, is it lets you cut wood at an angle. All you do is lay your wood in the middle, and there are slits that your saw goes through, so you're automatically, cutting at a 45 degree angle. Make sense? If not, just know that it helps you cut wood at an angle.

I was then left with four pieces of wood with angles that would match up and make a frame.

I now needed to glue them together with wood glue. I talked to my father in law about the best way to go about doing this and he suggested laying the frame on the table, with wax paper underneath and pressing the corners as close together as possible and then clamping them down to let the glue dry. It worked. Since, the miter saw didn't make every angle, completely perfect, there were a few gaps between the corners. I just filled those in with putty and painted over them.

I then spray painted it black and there you go, a brand new frame, for practically free!

I don't think this is the picture that will go in it, I just put it in there to see how it would look with a picture. I need to make another one of these, but larger, to fit an 8x10 picture. That is what is holding me back on finishing this project. Hopefully, next week I can get around to it.