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...