Bathroom Makeover: Chapter Two (Shades of Grey)

I will warn you that this may be one of those epic books that has about 700 chapters. Hopefully not. I mentioned yesterday that taking off the door to the linen closet (To be clear, I’m not talking about the actual bathroom door. I’m open to a lot of things but no bathroom door is definitely not one of them!) was a huge turning point for us. It instantly went from a giant unconquerable task to something that we could manage one step at a time. Why did we think it was such a turning point? See for yourselves.

Before:

After:

Doesn’t that feel a million times more open?  Imagine Peter and me sitting on our bed a about midnight on a Friday night. I say, “It’s just so cramped in there. That door gets in the way.” And then Peter exclaiming, “Let’s just rip it off!!” Here’s an action shot just for fun.

Unfortunately, removing the door left us with huge slits and holes in our door frame from where the hinges used to be.

The holes can be easily patched using wood filler. I put some in each hole, making sure to pack it into the small crevices in the back.

After letting the wood filler dry for about 24 hours, I sanded off the excess, and then repeated the process. If I was going to do this over again I would have put an insane amount of wood filler over the hole so that when I sanded it I wouldn’t have to add any extra. The reason being that making wet wood filler attach to dried wood filler is much more difficult than when it is all wet. I ended up battling the bits that were falling right off onto the floor.

When the holes were patched and the door was off for a few days, Peter and I couldn’t bare to look at the awful wall color any longer. For some reason, the linen closet was painted a terrible yellow color. You’d really have to see it to understand just how bad it was. I’ve attached a photo below but it really doesn’t do the color justice. If you want to get an idea imagine urine mixed with whipping cream and then covered it with high glass paint. It was really that bad!

Anyone who knows me well knows that grey is my absolute favorite color. (I remember asking a friend of mine if it was OK to paint my entire house in different shades of grey. The short answer is no but I still believe I could make it work.) After a trip to Home Depot, we brought home a few paint swatches and taped them inside the closet to get a better idea of what the paint would look like.

Wondering what we chose? You’ll have to come back to find out, but since I forgot to take pictures when we first removed the door, the after photo at the top will give you a sneak peak of what’s to come.

What’s going on in your bathrooms? Many of you are probably following Meg’s bathroom reno. Heather wrote in yesterday saying that she has an embarrassing bathroom as well. Does anyone else have anything to share? Or does anyone else just want to help me encourage Heather to post her bathroom photos? (Misery loves company.)

Mailbox Coat Hooks

Peter and I have been casually looking for coat hooks to help reduce the piles of coats that we inevitably throw over the back of chairs or leave on the couch. In our search, I found a simple row of mounted coat hooks at Home Depot. The board and its color mimicked the lines and color of the trim in our house but it was obviously different. Wanting to avoid the I-tried-to-match-and-failed look, we decided to keep looking. Soon after an idea magically appeared in the inbox of my email account via Martha Stewart’s Organizing Tip of the Day. Martha recommended using mailboxes with magazine hooks to hang your hooks and hold your accessories. We found the mailboxes at Home Depot for $13.99 each. After grabbing a can of Kilz and a can of spray paint we were ready to begin!

Here is one of the mailboxes after priming it. We were originally planning on painting them white but after seeing them primed we decided we needed something with a bit more color.

We chose Krylon’s Indoor/Outdoor Paint in Celery. I love the way it turned out. I think the color looks really nice against our walls.

Before mounting the mailboxes we attached the magazine hooks. I’m not the greatest spray painter, so painting their small curved surfaces was a bit of a challenge. I skimped on the parts that you can’t see when they’re hanging up, but the end result looks great. To attach the magazine hooks you simply insert the hooked end through the bottom of the mailbox and bring it through the opening in the back.

Once the hook shows through, you pull it downward to lock it firmly into place.

Here is the end result. We decided to stagger the mailboxes to give them visual interest. The added bonus is that the taller one is perfect for Peter to drop his wallet and keys into and the shorter of the two works great for me.

So, what do your coat hooks look like? Do you have an eclectic array of Anthropologie hooks or did you manage to find some awesome vintage coat rack? Maybe coat hooks are something that you never bothered with. Let us know!

Paint Cures All

When Clay and I decided to refinish his dresser it was in pretty sad shape. There were dents and scratches all over and, as you can see in the picture below, one of the handles was missing and one was mysteriously upside down. Strange.After our attempt to stain the beat up dresser failed, we decided to hide all of our mistake with paint–but first we wanted to challenge ourselves in one more way. The pulls that Clay found to replace his old ones required holes that were wider apart than the originals. Instead of searching for pulls that fit the preexisting holes, we decided to patch the old ones using Elmer’s Wood Filler. The process was simple. Fill the holes with putty and let them dry for 2-8 hours (huge window, I know). We left them overnight just to be on the safe side. After the putty dries, you sand off the excess until only a smooth surface remains.

We also did this with some of the major scratches and dents on the outside of the dresser.

After two quick coats of paint and the not-so-quick process of re-drilling holes appropriately sized for the hardware, Clay’s dresser had a brand new look.

I think the handles were meant to go on the other way but Clay preferred having them look like they pointed at one another. Overall, we’re really pleased with the way that it turned out. The dark color balances the curves of the wood making it feel more masculine. It’s definitely more suited for a guy’s room.

Staining is Hard.

This weekend I flew to Lubbock, TX to visit Clay. Clay has owned the same dresser–a hand me down from his older brother–since before I met him five year ago. I never knew the dresser to be without dents or scratches or even to posses all six of its handles.

So Friday I turned to Clay and said, “You know we could replace the hardware on your dresser this weekend.”

He shrugged, “We could…”

I started getting excited, “We could also paint it!”

More shrugging followed by, “We could–or we could stain it.”

Neither of us had ever stained anything before but we were confident in our ability to figure it out. We called around for advice, bought the necessary supplies, and got to work.

Everyone that we talked to seemed to disagree on how much you should sand a piece of furniture before staining it. Feeling lazy, Clay and I opted to go with the school of thought that preached lightly sanding rather than completely sanding down to the bare wood.

Unfortunately, for our project, I think we chose wrong.  The thing to remember about staining is that any imperfections that result in areas with more exposed wood will absorb the stain at a different rate that the rest of the surface area.

If we had spent the time sanding the wood to a more uniform state, then the stain would not have highlighted the imperfections in the way that this attempt did. In the end we opted to paint over our mistakes. Comeback tomorrow to see how it all turned out. Have you ever stained anything before? Tell me it turned out better than this!

Special thanks to Clay for understanding my weird definition of a vacation.

Lighting Mishap

You know those people at the hardware store who stand in front of a single item, staring at it for hours–last weekend I was one of those people. I left for the store with the simple task of buying light bulbs. Little did I know that I would have so many choices. I was pretty sure about the wattage that I needed but did I want energy efficient bulbs or regular? Did we like daylight or soft white? Sure, they had examples of the bulbs but under the harsh florescent lighting in Home Depot all of my options looked the same. I called my dad and he counseled me on energy efficient vs. regular light bulbs.  Would I see a huge change in my power bill? No, probably not but they did last longer and they may be worth it. My dad tends to be on the more frugal side so if he said I should buy the more expensive bulbs, I thought it was a good idea.

As for the type of light, my dad told me that it was a personal choice. I usually write blog posts at night and everyone says that picture quality is better during daylight so I thought maybe if I bought daylight light bulbs then it would make up for the fact that I never take pictures in the right lighting. In short I was wrong. Not only bulbs look too green for comfort, I also tried to mix soft white with daylight in a shared space (I mean, really? Who keeps track of what type of bulbs they have anyway?)

First you see “daylight.”

Now you see the soft white. I guess we already had the soft white in the dining area but since they aren’t two separate rooms the different types of light clashed against one another.

Can you see them running into each other on this wall? Keep in mind that there is no difference in paint color. The variation only comes from the two different types of light.

Yes, we’re messy people. We’re working on it. I promise. For now I moved the daylight bulbs into the office but I have a whole other package that is sitting unopened. I may have to try return the unopened package because the idea of these bulbs lasting  longer than the regular type is horrifying.

Now every time Peter and I are walking and spot daylight light bulbs in a person’s house we point it out to one another. Personally, I think the lighting is harsh and terrible but maybe someone out there really likes it. What do you think? Have you tried the energy efficient bulbs? Are we really going to save money in the long run or did we just pay seven times as much for an unnoticeable return? Let us know!