Powder Room Walls

Time to do the walls. I have always loved paneling and I thought this would be the perfect space to add some paneling and character to. The walls were already damaged from the water being on it, and it is a small area so a perfect place to learn how! I found some tutorials online and we decided we liked the one from The House of Smiths the best. (click on the name to see the tutorial.)  

Time to get started!

Baseboard time. I choose a 6" squared top board.

As with most homes, the walls in this house are not 100% straight, so that is always a challenge. 

Time to start paneling. We had home depot cut the boards into 6" "strips" for us. 

Boards warp, and with the walls being a little off in some places, it was so hard to space them exactly the same. We used a penny-wide gap in some areas and a quarter in others. In some places we could only do the best we could, but I think it looks great and I love the character it adds to this classic-style bathroom. 

For a top piece we went with a 4" board, similar to the baseboard. 

Dave pounded in the nail heads as much as possible and I went around and filled in holes and chalked everything. Then we sanded everything.

It was super dusty!

Then we primed the boards.

Learn from our mistakes moment:

I was gone on night and Dave decided to put a coat of paint on the boards. It was freezing outside and  we store our paint in the garage... He painted with cold paint and it was a mess! All clumpy and thick... Don't do that!

So after it dried, he sanded... again...

Then we used room temperature paint and painted a couple of coats. We found that for flat boards, using a small roller with a foam brush worked best. 

I painted too! I know I am not in any pictures, but believe me, 

I have spent a lot of time in that tiny bathroom too :)

This was the light fixture that came with he house. Um, not keeping it!

I found a great deal online for this one. It has that old-school house vintage look that I was looking for. I also decided that I would have all of the fixtures/accessories be chrome. It says timeless to me. 

Time to move onto the ceiling.  As I have mentioned before, everything in this house was painted an off-white color when we moved in. EVERYTHING. Well, except the trim which is all nice blue-white (boo!).. With all of the white in the bathroom, I didn't want a off-white/yellow-looking ceiling. One morning I painted it white. 

Much better. 

I finally decided on a paint color- It is called sleigh bells by Benjamin Moore (1480)

Here it is in a hallway (a picture I found online)

First coat

I went to pick Hudson and Andrew up and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Yup- I was sporting some paint highlights :)

                        Second coat...And third coat done!

 It looks different in different lights... plus the camera doesn't capture it right, but you get the idea. 

Onto the sink, toilet and all of the fun extra's!

The Powder Room

We're Back!!!

Back in November we decided that we shouldn't let the wait for everything to be finished stop us from working so we decided to start working on the powder room. This is the room that made this remodeling craziness start a lot earlier than it would have! 

Here it was right after the flooding... 

If you remember, the company sent over by the insurance company tried to dry out the grout, with no luck. 

So they ripped the tile out and left us with this. It stayed like this for an embarrassingly long time, but we were getting a new kitchen, new wood floors etc...

I picked out what I wanted for the floor, found it online (it wasn't available anywhere around here). Dave went and bought grout and everything else he needed and got to work. 

First he ripped off the layer of particle board that was covered with the old grout and put down a layer of fiberock.

Then he started cutting and setting tiles. I wanted a boarder around the hex tile, and we found a 4"x4" tile that matches.

The corner was a little tricky, but he figured it out.

Next came the hex tile. It comes in sheets, but when Dave tried to cut it with the wet tile saw, the tiles fell off the backing... So he bought a hand tile slicer and scored and cut each tile that was going to be an edge piece one by one... 

 He then set the tiles. Doing the edges first.

We had a couple of trim pieces that we were going to use for something else, but they worked perfectly for making sure everything was straight.

Yay!!!

A couple of days later it was time to grout. I choose a light/medium warm gray grout

No finished picture yet... After the grout was done we moved into the walls... post coming later this week!