Evolution of a Bathroom

As some of you may recall, way back in September, I got started on painting our upstairs bathroom. Here I am getting everything primed. . .

and it's pretty much just been sitting like that ever since. Though I did manage to finally finish painting the sink cabinet several weeks ago, Dan and I got so sidetracked with other projects that I never got around to actually getting back to working on the bathroom!

In the last couple of weeks, we've been working to finish up more bathroom projects, including installing the towel bars we purchased, repainting the grate for the heating vent, and finally getting new wall paint up.

Here's some photos to take you on a little journey of the evolution of our upstairs bath, ending with the work I got done over the weekend.

This what the bathroom looked like just before we moved in, when I swore to Dan that I would never, ever be able to use this bathroom without gutting the whole thing and starting over (it's hard to understand since I have spared you close-ups of the shower and toilet, but trust me, it was scary).

Luckily, Dan did an incredible job getting it all cleaned up. For several weeks the purpose of the bathroom was merely functional, meaning I grabbed the closest towels I could find and put up our old shower curtain even though it clashed horribly in the room. We were also pushing around those boxes on the floor for heaven knows how long. And we were still plagued by the awful yellowy paint.

I finally got the cabinet sanded and repainted and we gave it some new hardware.


After that, we finally got around to replacing/removing the old towel bars, random pieces of former towel bars, and the broken toilet paper roll that was SO annoying, resulting in the roll falling off all the time!

Old, gold, tarnished, paint-covered towel bar. Things were so hectic for a while that I didn't even bother looking for a hand towel and just put a dish towel in here!

I believe this used to be part of a towel bar. Once the rest of the towel bar disappeared, I'm not sure what its purpose was supposed to be.

The unattached toilet paper holder!

Finally I got a new shower curtain and got the bathroom walls primed, but the room sat like this for weeks. And the doors continued to be an unprimed yellowy color.


One of the biggest holdups was that I knew I wanted to paint the wall opposite the sink a color, but I couldn't find the right one. I tried several samples but none of them seemed right. Thanks to a suggestion from my Aunt Kathy and my mom, we decided to give brown a try, and I think it's definitely a winner!




The brown is a nice complement to our turquoise towels and our turqoise-ish floors, and it adds a nice earthy element to all of the watery elements in the room. In the photos here, the room looks pretty busy, but in actuality it feels pretty nice and fresh and open. And new. And clean. And definitely improved!

Thanksgiving Cheer

I hope you all had a wonderful, joyful holiday! I'm so sorry for the delay in posting. I try very hard to post regularly, but to be honest, we haven't had much going on with the house recently. We've finally reached the point where we've slowed down a bit. . . but don't worry, there's still lots more to come!

Before Thanksgiving, we didn't have much on the agenda, though we did finish up some touches in the living room, including moving boxes out and getting things unpacked (hello there, pillows and photos!). One project that Dan did tackle was painting our coffee table. This table has been with me since my roommate Sherronna and I bought it used in 2001, and though it's served us well over the years, it felt outdated and was in need of repairs. Before putting down money for a new one, we decided to see if we could bring the old one back to life with a fresh coat of paint. Dan took care of the repairs with wood glue (the legs don't fall off anymore--yay!), and here he is at work on the painting project:

Yes, that's right. . . we painted it red! We decided to make a slightly bold move with this table and see how it goes, figuring that, if it doesn't work out, we're out some time and $12 for the paint. Here's the "new" table in its new home in our living room:

We're actually really happy with the way it turned out, though I'm still working on how to make it work in the room. My planned color scheme for this room is actually reds-browns-oranges-greens, but without the brown and orange in place right now to balance things out, the line it's walking is a little too close to a Christmas theme! I think I'll be able to mitigate that with some other elements I plan to add to the room, but if it doesn't work out, then we'll revisit the table (because there is no way in hell I'm revisiting the wall color after how much time we spent on it--ha ha!--and I do really love our walls). I feel pretty confident that it will all come together in the end, and for now I love the punch and character that our little red table adds to the room!

In other news, we had our first official friend visit on Monday (hooray!) when our friends Allison and Paul came to visit (with a delicious bottle of housewarming wine in tow!). We've had some friends pop in here and there, but this was our first official friend get-together in our new place.
Here we are visiting in our newly improved living room!


And, of course, in the spirit of firsts this week, we had our first Thanksgiving in our house. It was just Dan and I for a cozy little holiday in our new place. Here's a peek into our first official holiday meal in our new house!

Homemade mushroom gravy cooking on the stove

We tried a new dish this year: roasted brussels sprouts and grapes with thyme, toasted walnuts, olive oil, and a hint of balsamic vinegar--so good! Here it is on its way into the oven.

Carving the Tofurkey!

Delicious!

In continuing holiday cheer, we had a visit from our friends John and Barb and their daughter Evelyn earlier today. John was one of our wonderful friends who helped us move in, and it was his first time back since then, so he's one of the few people who has seen firsthand how far we've come. Unfortunately, I fell down on the job and did not get a picture during their visit, but here is a picture of the cute housewarming gift they brought to help us add some holiday cheer to our new place!

It's been so lovely to have friends and family grace our house and really help make it feel more like a home.

Over the holiday weekend, we've had some projects in the works involving bookshelves, the upstairs bathroom, a trip to IKEA, and loads of paint. Stay tuned for more photos and updates!

The Final Flooring Flourish

Whew! We had one busy weekend! On Friday night, Dan and I worked on more painting, including finishing up painting the stairwell in preparation for our carpet installation. We finally have the nice white we were looking for in the stairwell and have said goodbye to more horrible yellowy paint!

On Saturday morning, Dan and I went to work on our somewhat neglected yard. We raked up a ton of leaves, got the hedges trimmed, mowed the lawn, pulled apart a rotting planter, and got most of the ivy out from under our back deck. And, thanks to the benefits of having a small yard, we got it all done in an hour and a half, which was nice. It was also a beautiful day to be outside, so no complaints here!

While we were hard at work outside on Saturday morning, the carpet installers were hard at work inside replacing the carpet! We've really been looking forward to this, not only so we can get rid of the last of the green flooring but also so my germophobic self can start walking around the house without shoes or socks on! Here's a before photo of our carpet stairs (we let the paint drip freely on them, but they were looking pretty wretched and dingy even before that):


And here's the after!
With the new carpet, we finally feel like we have crossed a threshold, making the house really feel like ours. . . the old carpet felt like the last big remnant of the previous owners, and it is now gone forever. Now, when we look around, we see more and more of ourselves in the place where we live, which feels awesome. And it also means that, for now, we are done with all major flooring projects. Whew!

In a final effort to get the living room finished, we spent a ton of time this weekend painting. There are a lot of edges and trim in this room, so we had to do a lot of work with the paintbrush. Please pardon me while I take a moment to brag and mention that I did all of the edge work in this room cutting in the with the brush--no tape, no tools. Not too shabby considering that, about three months ago, I'd never painted at all!

With the new carpet and the painting completed, the living room and dining room are basically done for now. This means that we can start completely unpacking these rooms, get settled in, and hopefully have a nice space for Thanksgiving dining and relaxation!

Dad's Visit and More!

Over the weekend Dan and I were happy to play host to my dad for a visit! Naturally, being the engineer that he is, he spent a lot of time inspecting the house and shining a flashlight into all sorts of nooks and crannies. As usually happens when anyone takes a closer look, there were some things about the house that baffled him. . . hopefully this will not lead to him tossing and turning in the night trying to sort out the mysteries of our place!

Fortunately, we had some fun with Dad while he was visiting, too. We didn't get any pictures of his house inspections, but we did get some photos from our drive through Lancaster County!

Dan and I had a lovely weekend visiting. . . and got a much-needed break from house projects. We have made small progress on a few things since my last post. For starters, I finally got around to getting things a bit cleared away and organized in the basement. We had everything neatly put away until we had the leak during Irene, which resulted in us throwing things as quickly as possible away from the water and leaving our basement looking like this:

I spent just a couple hours on Saturday getting the basement stuff sorted and vacuuming, making it possible for us to walk through without tripping. We can finally see open space!


In more significant news, our new carpet for the stairs will be delivered and installed this Saturday--hooray! In preparation, Dan got the stairwell primed and the trim painted so we don't have to worry about dripping paint on the new carpet. As he was getting ready to put the color on the walls, we learned a valuable lesson about painting: you really do have to get samples and see them in your house before you commit. Way back in September, we were picking a neutral whitish color for the walls and picked out one in the store. In every other instance of choosing paint colors, I have brought samples home and tested them, but we figured that, with it being so close to white, we would be safe and went ahead and bought a gallon. Unfortunately, in our stairwell it looks much more beige than we planned! Oops!

Tonight we are looking at paint chips I picked up today to pick the white that will be the color for our stairwell, upstairs hallway, and probably also one neutral wall in our kitchen. Who knew that white could come in so many different shades? (And these were only about 25% of them!)

In more news, this morning we had someone come to give us an estimate for scraping and painting our outside windows. That will pretty much wrap up all the big projects until spring, unless we decide to also get the brick repointed (we're still deciding whether that's a priority for our budget right now). I'm looking forward to temporarily putting the big projects behind us (unless something unexpected comes up, of course!) and setting in for winter and the holidays!