Archive for March 2011

we finished the half bath the same day we finished the floors. we still need to get some other accessories, but i'm not really sure what i want so i'm just going to wait and see what i find. keep in mind, this bathroom was bright yellow when we moved in: (picture with previous owner's stuff)

after we moved in we painted the baseboards white, painted the vanity and replaced the hardware, and painted the walls light green.

we also started removing the yellow paint from the back of the door, but ended up hanging the door back up before we completed that project.

we can't forget about the lovely built-in medicine cabinet complete with lights.

the floors in the photo above don't look all that bad, but they were cheap laminate and we wanted to replace them with the same solid hardwood we used in the rest of the house. and since we would need to remove the toilet to replace the floor, we thought that we might as well replace the toilet with a new one (old toilet didn't work very well, and it wasn't white). and if we replaced the toilet, we should probably replace the vanity, and the lights... you know how these things go.

i kind of took a risk with this bathroom, but i am very pleased with how it turned out. like the rest of our projects, i wanted something that complimented the age of our house, but i also wanted something that was a more modern. the dark color might not be for everyone, but i really like it. i think the dark gray is a nice compliment to the (now darker) woodwork, as well as all of the white in the room.

and we finally finished the door! this is a difficult space to take pictures of, sorry that these are so awkward!

i wanted to get a few pictures including the new light fixtures but that didn't really work when the fixtures were turned on. i'm really happy i decided to go with the black fixtures, they are a little unexpected, but i think that's a big reason why i like them so much.

we replaced the vanity with a new pedestal sink that fits perfectly in the sink nook and got a nice simple faucet. we couldn't find a mirror that fit the measurements of the space that we had, so we had this mirror cut to size and made a frame for it.

now we can check one more room off of the "really finished" list. we have several that are still on the "slightly renovated in order to tolerate living here, but still in need of a real renovation someday" list.

and the floors are finally complete.

so the bathroom is done (except for the mirror, which we are in the progress of making, more on that later). but, i was being ambitious over the weekend and as soon as we complete the touch-up painting in the bathroom, i wanted to finish up with the floors in the kitchen. so we moved the fridge and the stove... directly in front of the bathroom door. we can still kind of access the bathroom if we squeeze behind the fridge, but i cannot take any pictures for you all just yet. woops. and, we had to do some floor leveling under the fridge prior to installing the new floor, so it will probably be another week before the floor is done. nothing is ever easy.

now that the fridge is out of the way, i think it might be time for another wall/window exploration... mike is less than excited about putting a hole in the wall, but i'd really like to figure out what is going on with the window behind the fridge (it is covered with drywall, but seems to be in good shape from the outside). plus based on my most recent discovery during the bathroom demo, it appears we might have some additional space in the wall that we could use in the future kitchen remodel. it would be nice to know that before starting any planning. and the fridge will be going back in the same spot for now, so it's not like you'll ever see the hole in the wall...

mike does have rugby practice tonight, i can't make any promises about what may or may not happen to the wall behind the fridge when he's gone.

kidding... kind of.

we also installed the new baseboards, we just need to do the final coat of paint.

and installed the toilet! (we also installed the tank, i just forgot to take another picture)

we tried to install the sink but could not get it to sit level. we determined that the sink was not manufactured correctly. we exchanged it yesterday and the second sink appears to be much better. we ran into a few issues with plumbing the sink last night, but hopefully we can finish that up this week after we get some more supplies. we also decided to go ahead and refinish the bathroom door (it was painted yellow, we started striping it a couple of years ago but ended up hanging it back up without finishing it because we were having people over and needed a bathroom door). so now we have a working toilet, but no sink and no door. i'm still considering this to be significant progress though!

the last section of flooring we have to install is the portion that is under the fridge and stove. i guess that next weekend we'll be moving the appliances, we're so close!

it took us most of saturday and sunday to go from this:

to this:

i still need to do some touch up on the paint, but i'm really happy with the new wall color. we are so so close to being done with the floor. i was hoping to finish up the floor in the bathroom over the weekend so that we could at least install the toilet, but all of the bathroom prep work is just taking forever. i do not want to talk about how many hours i spent striping the wood shelf/ledge so that i could stain it the darker color. not seen in the picture, we also ran new wires for the sconce, finished the drywall work, painted new baseboard and striped the rest of the wood shelves.

but we're making progress!

ps - we also installed the new washer and dryer on saturday morning and then did 3!!!! loads of laundry in one afternoon. it was amazing.