The Necessary Room

"Mom, why are you taking pictures of the bathroom? That's just weird."

Seven year olds just don't understand.

I can't blame him for not appreciating the huge changes that have occurred in what was my least favorite room in the house when we moved in.

He's seven. And male.

But, boy do I notice.

Remember in "Animaniacs" when Wacko is having a potty emergency and he goes into a scary gross truck stop bathroom and exclaims "I can't potty in there! It's disgusting!"

That's how I once felt about our bathroom.

When we moved in, it had peach colored walls and orangey wood everywhere. I promptly painted it (dark) purple, because I'm a genius. Then, after years of it being cramped and dark and cavernous, I decided to paint the walls a buttery cream and paint the wood vanity white. It was definitely an improvement.

But it was still ugly. The floor and the shower and the sink were all old, damaged and gross. No matter how much you scrub an ancient tile floor, it will always look like an ancient tile floor.

My rescue came in the form of a broken pipe, which flooded the bathroom (and hallway, and basement). The decision was made to tear it all up.

At this point, I was in the throes of morning sickness and didn't think I could handle a weekend of bathroom renovation, so my husband sent me to my sister's house for a few days and got to work with my brothers in law.

Things always take more than a few days, but I was quite grateful for the changes when I returned home.

Before

During Demo

We could see through that hole to the basement

After digging through layers and layers of flooring, they finally found and replaced the subfloor. Then it was tile, then toilet and sink. Seth sent me regular photos of the progress on my phone, and now I can't seem to find them anywhere. But here are some afters.

My favorite parts are the sink and the tile. The walls are a really pale blue Valspar color. I totally forget the name (hate when I do that). I also love all the white. I switched the shower curtain, rug and towels all to white, and bleach is my new best friend. Everything feels fresh and clean.

There's still lots to do. Trim, paint the medicine cabinet and door white, add some decorative touches...Oh, and totally gut the tub area. Ya know, little things.

But it's only been a year and a half since we started this project. Still got loads of time. ;)

Research

We've been recuperating from a lovely virus for a couple days, so that means I've been engaged more in the "research" side of design (aka pinterest and blogs). I love finding new blogs that inspire me and I have added a couple to my list over there. ------>

I've been thinking about color palettes since my little pillow mishap. Thanks to one of those inspiring blogs, I found myself on this site, trying to find something that I could incorporate through the whole house. I knew I'd be drawn to the sea and food colors, so those are the categories I searched the most.











I think my favorite is the ice cream one. My general idea is to use the lighter colors on the walls and the darker colors as accents. I couldn't find one with mostly grays and pops of pastel yellows and blues. So maybe I'll have to make my own.

But that sounds like work right now.

In any case, this is a fun website filled with lots of awesome color palettes. Check it out!

The Room Where We Live

I think one of the hardest parts about this blog (aside from having clean enough rooms to take current pictures) will be locating "before pictures". For a small house, it sure has enough black holes for computer disks to disappear into.

Perhaps I should work on organization too.

We call our living room the bowling alley. It's long and skinny, which aren't really desirable features in our most occupied room. Furniture arrangement has been a constant puzzle. I used to rearrange regularly.

When we moved in, I painted the walls an orangey tan color called "Dune". I went for a tan/dark red motif, because that's what the early 2000's were all about. We had next to nothing as far as furniture was concerned, but we soon began to fill it up with garage sale purchases and the cheapest furniture we could find. We eventually ended up with burgandy curtains, a dark brown couch and loveseat set, black shelving, and a huge darkly colored rug.

I liked it in the spring time and fall when I could open up the front door and let natural light in. But in summer and winter, it felt like a cave. We have a huge picture window in the front that is very old and very drafty, so the curtains were always closed. (That's a really expensive project that we hope we will someday have the funds for. It would save us so much money in energy costs!)

Looking past the adorable children, you can see why I often felt closed in, like there was too much clutter. And since I spent about 89% of my life in that house, eventually, I decided it needed a change.

As it always does around here, change came slowly. First, I repainted the walls in a gray-taupey Sherwin Williams color called "Roman Column". Three years later, I still love it, although sadly, they discontinued it, so unless I can find some touchup paint in the basement, I may be repainting soon. Even with lighter walls, it still took awhile to purge out the red and brown. Rugs are expensive! As are couches!

Eventually, I pulled this look together.

Or variations of this look anyway, since I was still constantly rearranging furniture.. We swapped the dark brown couches for the light one we had in our basement, took down the red curtains, and got a thirty dollar rug. The black bookcases and entertainment armoire didn't feel as heavy anymore, so they got to stay as they were.

After a couple years though, some things needed updating. The children had trashed the couch. It was stained and literally falling apart. The dog had puked on the rug more times than I cared to remember, and Homegirl was about to start crawling. 

We made do with an old futon for about a year. It sucked. George made it gross. Thing Two had some potty training accidents on it.

So, on Christmas morning, when I saw this, it was like angels singing.

We had been discussing this couch for awhile. It solved a lot of problems for us. It worked with our long, awkward room. It was wipeable. And even though my style dream would be white slip covered couches, that didn't seem very practical with three kids and a messy dog. Second best Christmas surprise ever. (The first being exactly one year before when I found out Homegirl was on the way.)

This couch also makes it impossible for me to rearrange the furniture, but I haven't had even one inkling to since we got it. It seems to just make sense now. I also used five dollar Wal-Mart white sheets to make no-sew curtains, and I love them.

A few weeks ago, we finally replaced that gross rug (even though, I admit, I liked the look of shag), with a huge carpet remnant we got a great deal on. 

So, I'll stop prattling on. Here's the living room currently. Notice I said "currently" and not "normally". Normally it's covered in baby toys and dog fur.

Much brighter than the old days, even on a cloudy day like today.

TV area, featuring a dresser I painted last year. Still need to do something about the wires.

Our old garage sale recliner. It's not pretty, but I use it a lot. I'd like to find a more modern lamp.

Ikea pillows

Awkward space behind the couch. I'd like to do something more functional here. Maybe shelving? And I love that armoire, but I'm thinking about painting it. (Surprise, surprise.)

Still need to add homegirl's handprint to the picture.

So that's where we are right now. I like it much better in here, but there are still things that need to be done. I'd like to do more artwork, more fabrics and tweak a few things. Needs a pop of color. I've been entertaining the thought of yellows or turquoise in here. We shall see.