I Lied, Sort Of

I really didn't mean to lie or fib or anything.  I thought that I was back.  What I forgot to do was look at the calendar.  Blog goes on the back burner when it is anywhere close to Christmas.  Sorry 'bout that.  I hope that I didn't lose too many of you.

I did finally take pictures of my completed bathroom.  Ta da!  I have some ideas for more posts, so I am going to try and get back on this band wagon.

To help jog all of our memories, I will post the closest pre-reno pics that I have and then the post-reno.  Hit it!

So here is the pre-reno entry into the bathroom.  You can see on the left the end of the current linen closet and how close it is to the door.  There was no room for a towel rack.

Now the entry is far brighter and the closet has been turned to face the entry rather than facing the interior of the room itself.

The old linen closet that opened into the room.

Yes, it was very roomy, but we don't miss it.

Here is the little closet that we had installed.

Yes.  It is a great deal smaller, but takes up far less room and is enough for what we need.

The view towards the front window.  That shelf was a cheap built in that was easily removed.  We found out that the insulation in the entire room was completely inadequate, so that was added into the remodel.  It was well worth the unexpected expense and now that room is probably the warmest in the house.

This is under the window now.  My very own window seat.  I do share with the kitties.

I made the cushion and pillows.  I bought a 2 or 3 inch thick foam piece at Joann's and then I purchased 3 different pieces of outdoor fabric from Hancock to cover two of the pillows and the bench seat.  The little light blue pillow I covered using extra fabric from the curtains that I had hemmed.

I am no great seamstress.  This is a very simple envelope pillow.

Here is the little one I made with the leftover fabric and a random piece of trim that I had.

The best part of the window seat is that it hides all of our linens.

I purchased some baskets at Target and all of our linens fit in here.  I love it.

They used a large piano style hinge on the lid.

The pre-reno view towards the sink/toilet area and side window.

And the view now.  We have so much more room on and in the vanity. 

The old tub/shower combination.  Notice the nasty floor.

The view now.  And of course, there is a comfort height toilet hidden in the alcove.

This is the old shower.

And this is my fabulous shower now.  Yes, that is a light above the shower.  I love it.

So now you have seen the full renovation of our upstairs bath.  We absolutely love it and I usually can't believe that it's ours.  I had a great team behind me, but ultimately, it was a lot of work running around looking at tile, fixtures, curtains, fabric, trim, etc.  I am thrilled with the results.

The only thing I have left to do is add any artwork.  I am so slow at that.  I also have an idea for a furniture piece, but that takes a while to find.  When I do find it, I will post it.

Thanks for waiting.

Projects on the Side

The railing before any cleaning.

Before I take and post the pictures of our new bathroom, I thought that I would show you a couple of side projects that I did.  One is the railing for the stairs and one is the extra storage for the pantry.

I knew what I wanted to do to clean the super gross railing that attaches to the wall leading upstairs; lemon oil.  I am in love with lemon oil. It cleans and shines and moisturizes wood. And it smells good!

Gross railing.

After I found the lemon oil, I had to find the umph to attack a really, really gross, dirty railing. I finally managed it today.

I intended to just squirt the lemon oil on my rag and wipe away.  That would work.  However, it was going to take the entire bottle of lemon oil and a big hunk of time to do it that way.

A quick trip into the house and a  Google search brought up some great ideas for cleaning a wood railing. I chose the one that involved baby wipes.

Why do I have baby wipes when the only child who lives at home is Swim Girl and she is 28? That's easy:  art.  I use a lot of baby wipes in the Bat Cave for art projects.  I mean, I didn't even have to make a run to the store.

The oily hunks of grime.

My wipes hadn't been used in a couple of months, so they were dried out.  A quick soaking in a bit of water revitalized them.  Ok.  Now you can start.

Wipe the dirty, gross railing with baby wipes. You should start to see the gunk kind of come up in oily hunks. Be sure and go over and over until you get up all of the grime.  It should loosen up fairly easily with just a touch of pressure.  You don't need to wreck your arm. Throw the wipes on the garage floor as you use them.  You can throw them away later. Yuck.

After the railing is cleaned up you can use the lemon oil.  Just squirt some into a clean cloth and wipe away.  Then with another clean cloth, wipe and buff.  You can repeat this step if you want.  If you have done a good job with the baby wipes, very little dirt will come off onto the oiled cloth.

The directions I checked also suggested using equal parts vinegar and water if the baby wipes didn't work completely.  I did not have to do that.

In progress

Finished

We have quite a bit of room in our pantry for some storage under the last shelf.  I looked all over for some sort of rolling storage that wasn't plastic.  No luck.  I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and make some rolling crates.

Yup.  Snack crate.

I purchased two wooden crates at JoAnn's for about $10 each. I have seen them at Michael's also. We have plenty of leftover paint from the remodel so I primed the crates and gave them two coats of paint.  I chose to use the same color that we put on the kitchen walls.

Let me tell you, this was a bit of a pain to do.  Each one of those slats has edges that need to be painted. Alaska Girl suggested that I use spray paint and I almost ran to the store to get some.  Then I remembered how much paint we have left and just sucked it up.

The wood was also pretty rough.  It really needed sanding, but I am lazy and didn't do it.  I tore up more than a few foam brushes painting the crates.  I suggest that if you use this type of crate that you set up in an area where you can just leave them and the paint.  You will be more likely to keep at it. It does take a while since you can only do so much at a time. I think the whole process took me a week to complete.  This includes a couple of non-painting days.

The casters

I then turned the project over to my husband.  I had purchased two packages of 4 casters to put on the bottoms.  I also bought the screws. I did not buy washers.  He had to make a washer run. Apparently, I also bought two different sizes of screws accidentally and I failed to take into account the fact that each caster needed four screws.  My turn for a hardware run.

There is plenty of room on the ends of the crates for identification.  I almost painted those with dry erase paint, but decided against it.  That stuff is expensive and once you open it you have to do all of your layers and then throw the rest out!  You cannot save it for later. Have fun!

It's a New View

Hey.  I am delivering on my promise.  I have pictures of our kitchen.  I will save the bath for another day.

The kitchen is basically finished.  I still have a few things to do as far as decorating.  The only plain wall has nothing on it yet.  I will be trolling the sales and shops this summer for appropriate decor.

We are nearly finished with some storage for the pantry.  I will post those pictures when all is completed.

I have yet to get out my labeler and attack the cabinets, but that can wait a bit.  I am getting better at remembering where it all goes.  Baby steps.

Now, to help you remember what the 'old' kitchen looked like, here are a few reminders.

This was the view from the entry of the living room to the opposite side.  This is a very old refrigerator that we inherited when we bought the house.  We moved our fridge into the basement and then moved this one into the rec room (where the trees are to the left) and used it throughout the remodel.  The tubs held our food in the rec room during the process.

Same view.  The fridge was relocated to the other side so we gained a huge amount of workable counter top.  Plus, we had no upper cabinets before.  Yay. 

This is the bit of space we had next to the fridge. 

Now, instead of the fridge and a choppy little counter we have this beautiful uninterrupted stretch with plenty of storage below. Yum.

The view of the sink area.  There was also this crazy scroll work above the sink.

The sink area now.  It was my husbands idea to add the cabinets above the sink.  We also added an LED light stick that was hardwired in so we could use the switch.  It is awesome.

The old flooring and pantry.

The new flooring and the pantry on the right.

Same location, new doors.

New shelving.

And my personal favorite, a motion activated light inside the pantry.  My husband painted and rebuilt the shelves in here.  We are finishing up some additional floor storage.

These two pictures show what the wall that borders the living room used to hold.  Because of the huge microwave storage shelf, the counter was virtually useless.  We kept seldom used things under there.  Note the soffit.

There's the fridge!

Old view.

New view.

The new configuration has the fridge on the living room wall with the stove moved down a bit.  This allowed for a lazy Susan cabinet to be installed, a corner upper cabinet and a return in the corner that allows for more use. There is a very small 9" counter that separates the stove from the fridge, but we haven't really noticed that very much.  Next to the fridge is an upper spice cabinet and a lower cabinet that is built to hold trays and cookies sheets.  I love it.

 Because we only had enough space for a 32" wide refrigerator, we had to forgo one that was counter depth.  (We would have lost a lot of interior cubic feet.)  So, our contractor came up with the brilliant plan to recess the fridge into the wall by turning the studs sideways.  I think that this small improvement has made the biggest impact by making the kitchen appear wider.  It still amazes me how much more room we have.  They did extend into the opening to the living room by about 9" in order to accommodate all of the changes.  Other than that, no walls were harmed in this remodel.

One of my favorite additions is the LED under cabinet lighting .  

So there you have it.  Our new, much more efficient and modern kitchen.  We did not change any major structures, just redesigned things.  I still can't quite believe it is ours.

Next time:  the new bath!