Guest Bathrooms - Initial Thoughts.

We've decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and redo our upstairs bathrooms.  One of them is off the guest room, and the other is a jack-and-jill bath between two other bedrooms.  Neither one of them is totally offensive, but they certainly lack any style.  It also really bothers Justin that they used wall tile on the floor.  I likely would have never noticed, but I could see how someone could go slipping and sliding on them, if they weren't careful.

Since they are secondary bathrooms, I really want to keep the look neutral and timeless (and budget-friendly).  Based on the images I've been pinning, it's obvious I have a strong preference -- I am heavily leaning towards mostly white bathrooms bathed (no pun intended) in white subway tile.

I can't decide whether or not I like the look of the tile on the ceiling -- I've been waffling.  I do for sure like the look of the dark grout on the floor.

Bringing in a few hints of black could help break up the white.  I like the simple thin black trim in the shower here.  I'm not a huge fan of the dark fixtures -- seems a touch heavy for me, but some polished nickel would do the trick.

This bathroom still has the subway tile, but I am digging the dark floor and dark gray vanity.  (Maybe we do something like this in the guest bathroom; and something more along the lines of the others in the jack-and-jill?)

This shower a great way to keep an all white tile space interesting -- use different sizes of tile with some well-placed trim pieces.  I am really loving this look (and the fixture is fabulous too).

Speaking of fabulous fixtures, this bathroom is amazing.  White, black and brass -- yes, please!  Of course, our guest showers aren't that luxurious, but maybe we could do something similar.  I absolutely love this look.

We were supposed to go check out various tile options this past weekend, but poor Justin ended up with a stomach virus Friday night (complete with a trip to the ER for IV fluids).  We first thought it was food poisoning, but it was definitely a stomach virus because I caught it Sunday night.  I also ended up with my own trip to the ER.  Thankfully, Justin and I are both on the mend.  
          

But back to the guest bathrooms . . . Part of me thinks I should branch out from the white subway tiles since it's in our master shower and our kitchen backsplash, but it works so darn well.  I hate to mix up what I already know I like.  What do you think?  

Home Tour: Powder Room.

Yikes.  It's been a while (thanks for your frequent reminders, mom and Ellen).  But let's ignore that and focus instead on the fact that I am finally getting around to showing you our powder room.  Who doesn't love a good before and after?

Basically, the before was a massive snooze-fest.  Complete with a bad brass and chrome faucet, a claw-like light fixture, pale yellow walls, two toilet paper holders (why?), and a toilet and sink that were undersized.  Needless to say, this room didn't do anything for us and needed some major help.   

     

And here's the after!  Bye bye snooze fest, hello gorgeous (if I do say so myself). 

Absolutely nothing from the old powder room stayed.  I'm all for re-using what we could, but in here, there was nothing worth even working with.  I knew right off the bat I wanted to do some bold wallpaper in this room.  If you can't be bold in the powder room, where can you?    

And for some detail shots . . .

My mom bought this vintage mirror and it was exactly what I was looking for.  She was sweet enough to let me have it for the space.  I love the detailing on the frame and the contrast the dark frame provides in the space. 

The light fixture proved to be more difficult than I thought it should have been.  Probably because I kept envisioning sconces in the space (that wouldn't fit) or a chandelier (which would require us to re-wire).  I also wanted to add a touch of brass in this room via the light, but wanted to keep it simple.  At the end of the day (and lots of searching), this fixture fit the bill. 

I struggled with what to put on the walls for two reasons:  (1) I didn't want anything to compete with the wallpaper; and (2) I was scared to put a hole in the beautiful paper.  I'm happy with my choice to go with simple black frame (that works with the mirror), which has a large white mat to provide some separation between the picture and the wallpaper (and only required 1 tiny hole).  Win, win, win!  The picture itself is one we took of a street in Paris right by one of the hotels we stayed in.    

As a bonus, here's a before shot of the hall that leads to the laundry room and garage with the powder room off of it (the door on the right). 

And here's the after.   You can't tell from the photos, but the wood floor and the handrail were all stained a darker, richer color.  And we replace the ceramic tile in the powder room with some fun black and white mosaic tile.  We still need to paint the laundry room, but that's a subject for a different post.

Oh!  And we added the chandelier in the hallway.  I mean, why not?  Since we didn't want to redo the electrical to put it in the powder room, we did the next best thing . . . we put it right outside the door.  It's actually perfect there.  I love the way it totally glams up the hallway.  Some things just work out.  (In case anyone's curious, the wall color is Benjamin Moore Silver Chain.)

If it's something that would be helpful, I will do a post with the sources.  So what do you think?  Much better, right?        

Master Bath Plan.

Since the last pictures I showed of our bathroom weren't very pretty, I thought I would share the direction we are headed with the master bathroom.  

Faucets: Newport Brass Fairfield Collection
Countertops: Carrara
Hardware:  Restoration Hardware Grafton Pulls
Sconces:  Byrant Sconce
Mirrors:  Reflection Mirror (we may not get these exact mirrors, but something similar) 

If all goes as planned, I should have pictures of some of the tiling this week!    

 

Tub Talk.

I had high hopes of posting the video tour of our new place, but being the You Tube novice that I am, I had no idea it would take so long to upload my video.  I'll post the video tour later this week (unless I decide by then that listening to me talk for nearly 7 minutes as I cruise around a house is not entertaining for anyone).  So instead, let's talk about bath tubs. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, there are a so many freaking decisions to make when you renovate.  This weekend, we spent a substantial portion considering various bath tub options.  In doing some research, I came across this fabulous post by Holly at Things That Inspire.  It basically sums up our dilemma.

I mean, you can't really deny the beauty of a free standing bathtub.

Source: decorpad.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: sarahrichardsondesign.com via Emily on Pinterest

We've talked with our contractor and a freestanding tub is going to be substantially more expensive to install since you have to rerun the plumbing and change the drain.  Neither of which are easy (read: cheap) to do on a slab foundation.  And maybe in an attempt to rationalize keeping the budget in check, I've realized that, with a freestanding tub, there are two potential downsides:  (1) there is no place to set my book, magazines, and/or wine; (2) the Inspector-Gadget-arm-reach needed to turn on the faucet.  The width of our tub is 42 inches -- that's a long reach across to turn on the water -- or maybe I just have t-rex arms.  Either way, I would probably have to stand in the tub just to reach the faucet.  See what I mean?

Source: sarahrichardsondesign.com via Emily on Pinterest

So now our search has been focused more on drop in (and possibly under-mount) bath tubs.  Even though we had jets in our last tub, I hardly ever used them.  So this time around, we are just going for a deep soaker tub without all the bells and whistles.  But we can't decide on whether to go with a rectangle shaped tub or an oval one.  

We had an oval one in our last house and we liked it:

The tub is in an alcove in our new place, like these:

Source: justinetaylor.tumblr.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: houzz.com via Emily on Pinterest

But there's something sleek and a little more modern with a rectangular tub:

Source: apartmenttherapy.com via Emily on Pinterest

Source: styleathome.com via Emily on Pinterest

The tub size we need to fill the space is 72" x 42".  That's a big tub!  I don't think I realized it until I saw this picture of a tub we were considering:

(photo: here)

I sure hope it's the angle of the photo that makes her look so tiny in there.  I don't want to have to wear a life jacket to take a bath!

Here's Riley and me trying to recreate the above picture in our current tub.  Okay not really, I was trying to figure out if I liked having those little arm rests inside the tub and Riley wanted to assist (he laid down shortly after this and got comfortable in the tub). 

So what do you think?  Do you guys have a preference -- rectangle or oval tub?  Anything I'm missing that I should consider? 

Home Tour: Office Bathroom.

In the last installment of the home tour, we took a look at the entryway.  And I also mentioned that next up would be the office.  Well, when I went to upload the office pictures, I noticed that the camera wasn't on the right setting, so the colors are way off and all the photos are super grainy.  Oops.  Hopefully pictures of the office bathroom are a sufficient substitute. 

We hardly ever have guests, and if we do, they usually stay in our upstairs guestroom.  So this bathroom isn't fully "done up."  I hope to add a few more touches here and there, but it's cute and serves its purpose.

Both the shower curtain and the bath mat are from West Elm.  I actually ordered the gray striped shower curtain at first, but it wasn't right with the color of the walls.  I loved the striped look and decided I like the brightness of the citron color -- and it ties in well with the office too (how's that for a little teaser?).

The color is the same as our office -- Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray.  The door to the right is a linen closet and the door straight ahead is a decent-sized walk in closet.

I purchased the vintage peony print from Etsy a while back.  I think it's perfect for this space!

The bath accessories are the ones Justin and I registered for when we first got married.  I still like their simplicity and think they work well.  I just jazzed it up a bit with this tray from West Elm.

The office will be up next on the tour (assuming I can get the camera settings right this time around)! 

Bathroom Trellis Wall.

I am slightly embarrassed to direct you back to my original post on painting the trellis pattern on a wall in our bathroom because you can see how long the project has taken me to complete.  But it is officially done and I like the way it turned out (and that's all that matters)!

I used the template from here and traced it onto the wall with a pencil.  Along the way, I used a level to keep things from going cattywompus.  Once I had drawn the pattern over the entire wall, I went over my lines with the paint.  Following Centsational Girl's lead, I picked up some acrylic craft paint at Hobby Lobby in metallic taupe and champagne.  I used about a 50/50 ratio of the two for the wall. It required 2 coats to get an opaque finish. 

I like how the paint varies based on the lighting/time of day.  It's hard to fully capture on camera, but you can tell how the color looks darker or lighter depending on the lighting in these pictures.  (As a side note: the frame and the print are from Ikea.)

In case you're curious what's in the apothecary jars, one of them has epsom salt and the other has bars of Ivory soap. 

As I referenced before, this project took a lot longer than I expected.  In full disclosure, it really was time consuming for me.  It's not hard to do, it's just tedious.  It took me one evening to trace the pattern on the wall.  And I'm just estimating here since I did it over a long period of time, but it probably took me close to 3 full days of painting to complete the wall.  I think you can do it in less time if you: (a) aren't a perfectionist; and (b) find a paint that looks good with only 1 coat (or are ok with a more translucent look).  

A few tips if you decide to tackle this project:

-- Have a massage scheduled.  My shoulders and neck were sore from reaching/looking up and from dodging the chandelier, which I knocked my head on more times than I care to admit.

-- Some wine (or other alcoholic beverage of your choice) is certainly needed.
 
-- I am slightly OCD.  This project is probably not the best if you're a perfectionist.  I spent so much time fixing very minor mess-ups, when in the end no one would have noticed them anyway.  Towards the end of the project, I realized not having the project completed was bothering me a whole lot more than a few little imperfections in the pattern.  So my goal then became just to get it done, with the realization that it didn't have to be perfect.  In the end, I don't even notice where I decided to stop freaking out about everything not being just perfect and instead just doing a clean job where it doesn't look messy.  The end result looks great (if I do say so myself) and that is ultimately what's important.  I wish I would have thought about this when I first started, but at that time, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into!

-- Test different brushes to see what works best.  I used one brush for my first coat to trace around the pencil and then a different brush for the second coat.  Finding the right combo took a little trial and error, but saved time overall.

-- Start from the middle of the wall and work your way out.  I started at the left and worked my way to the right.  As you can see, I had to add little curves along the far right side to make the pattern meet the corner.  Oops! 

Now when I take a bath I can actually sit back, relax, and enjoy the finally-completed wall!

Bathroom Updates.

This past summer we made some renovations to our bathroom.  In case you missed it, you can see all the before and after pictures here.  

While these more recent updates aren't quite as dramatic, they are still fun!  First up, we (and by "we," I mean Justin) hung these cute "J" and "E" alphabet hooks from Anthro.  We also bought "R" and "Z" ones for Riley's and Zoey's leashes to hang downstairs.     

And the second update is still a work in progress, but I thought I would give you a sneak peek.  I was loving the look of the trellis stencils I had been seeing around, so I decided to paint the one wall where the window is.  I downloaded the template from Jones Design Company.

I am loving the look of it so far.  The color of the trellis pattern really changes depending on the light.  I'll be back with more "official" photos once the wall is finished.  This project is taking a whole heck of a lot longer than what I thought it would, but it will be worth it in the end (at least that's what I keep telling myself).

In the meantime, here are some gorgeous (and completed) painted trellis pattern inspiration pics:

(photo: good girl gone glad)

(photo: jones design company)

(photo: centsational girl)

Bathroom Before & After.

It feels so good to say that our bathroom renovation is finally complete!  As a reminder, here are some before pictures: 

Here are some shots documenting the progress:

(My contribution to the new drywall.)

And the afters!!

I am thrilled with how it turned out.  It is much more relaxing and spa-like.  Justin worked very hard and did a great job on everything.  In addition to the obvious work, he also re-grouted and re-caulked the shower.

You can't really tell from the above pictures, but I replaced all of the knobs with antique-style glass knobs.  After a lot of looking around, I came across D. Lawless Hardware.  They had awesome prices ($1.95 each) and the shipping was free and super fast! 

Of course I need to accessorize a bit, but I couldn't wait to share the pictures!