Finally..A Tour of the Powder Bath

Did you think I would never ever post pictures of how the hows turned out after we built?  I've wondered myself.  I've had a few requests for a House Tour since the construction finished up last May  but honestly I just haven't had it in me.  

Today is different though.  I thought "o.k. I WILL post some pics of the bathrooms today".

And then…I couldn't find my camera.  Seems the hubs never in a million years thought I needed it today and he took it with him to work?  Huh.

Anywho…So to make myself feel better I took some fancy I phone pics and I WILL most certainly still show you the powder bath and how it is slowly but surely being decorated.

Here she is..

Wait.  Don't leave yet.  She's cute but once she gets a little lipstick she's more fun.  Read on.

It's very difficult to get pics of powder bathrooms don't you think? 

We installed the cabinet and sink ourselves from IKEA and I can't remember for sure where the faucet is from but I believe it was online at Lowes. The light is from Lowes as well..I think:/  (I kid you not when I say I've tried to block out the whole experience and apparently I'm pretty good at it)

I love the mirror I found at Ross one day.  Can you say SCORE!  

So the room was pretty blah.  We haven't ventured into painting anything and I'm not positive about the direction I want to go in here but I came across these books on Amazon and it helped a TON.

Ashley and Jamin Mills from the Handmade Home put together these awesome books that include 40 prints that will fit in any 8 x 10 frame with all kinds of matting possibilities.  All of the prints work together beautifully and I can't wait to use them all throughout out home as we finally start hanging things on the walls!

As you see above I first found some frames that I had stashed in our guest room AKA decor storage room.

See.  

We have no bed for company but you can shop in here if you like.  Oh snap I forgot I had those purple peacock pillows!  Woohoo!

I digress.  So as you saw above I played with the picture layout on the floor first and then started hanging.  No measuring required.  My philosophy is just to wing it which would drive some batty but I don't have the patience for measuring.  If it doesn't look right just move your nail over.  

Guys remember these are phone pics..Lame

So that's how she sat for a while and then I remembered I had my old dresser my parents bought me when I was two that would be fun and funky and brighten up the place.

I painted the dresser for my now 6 year old daughters nursery and now here she sits all fun and bright in out powder bath. 

As you can see we also received another addition to the family for Christmas.  My inlays got us the fab marquee letter H and it fits just fine in here for now.  Mr. marquee may end up in the playroom when we get around to doing something in there.

So there you go.  A teeny tiny peek at how one room actually turned out after construction and is slowly evolving into a homey little space.  Next up…I hope to show you the master bath but I need my real camera back to do it justice.  

Shiny and New

Before we get started:  We still have no wifi so I can't download better quality pics nor can I format a half decent blog post since I'm just doing it on my phone. But....the Internet company is here as we speak. Fingers crossed! 

It's been a long time coming but we finally have our frameless shower doors! Contractor J can now use his shower instead of the kids!

 Of course there were the normal issues of "oh you wanted frameless?" and they'll be there to measure tomorrow, oh they'll come measure next week, and um ma'am it looks like they measured wrong we have to order a new piece and a week later "ma'am I know we were set up to deliver tomorrow but our supplier is saying they didn't receive our order", and a week later "I'm so sorry ma'am we have never had this issue with our supplier but again they are saying they didn't receive it".  Holy smokes I kid you not!  Now we are fine, absolutely fine because we are lucky enough to have other places to bathe but isn't it all just crazy and almost comical? Or is it scary?  The other night contractor J said "I don't believe in this kinda thing but if I did I would think this house of our is cursed".  I have said the very same thing;(. But....as soon as their all finally out of our hair I plan to kick the curse out!

What Inspires your Decorating?

Well if we are at a standstill in the construction process I might as well pretend to decorate right?

I believe this was a place setting at West Elm at one time.  I pinned this picture probably two years ago and it doesn't link directly to the source but I think I remember that is where it's from.  Anywho..When I saw it I instantly wanted to incorporate these colors and textures into the Jack n Jill bath at the new casa.

I love the different variations of green and the bright white with a little rustic wood thrown in.  

I want the kids bath to be playful but not too youthful.  Nothing is set in stone yet except the vanity...

The countertops will be Grey Expo from silestone.

The dark stained concrete floors...

And this fun West Elm light.

I'm going to bring in the wood tones with two mirrors in a shade and texture like this mirror that was super inexpensive at Garden Ridge.

Now for the fun stuff(the accessories)!

I love these green giraffe curtains as the shower curtain.  It's playful and that's where I want to go for the kiddos.

I fell hard for these animal hooks from anthropology a long time ago too.  I hope they still have them or I can at least find something similar and paint it white if need be.  I just picture 3 different animal heads holding the kids towels!  

This owl light switch cover resides at anthro too.  I'll admit I have never bought a thing at Anthropology because I'm a cheapo but I may have to splurge for these cuties.

I think they will add a perfect bit of whimsy to our fairly basic bathroom.

And although I'm tempted to do some super cute more childish art on the only wall that I have to decorate in the space I don't know if I can pass up this butterfly display.  

I think these Free Printable Butterflies that BHG.com featured would look awesome on the wall in the wet area(the shower and toilet are in their own little room). 

Now don't hold me to it but that is where my mind is right now and well really it has been for a while;) I suppose I could always move in and have a change of heart but I am still loving that place setting as inspiration!  My mission will have to be to find some mint green and other green tones to really follow through with it.  Have you ever been inspired but something like a place setting or something like it before?

Join in

I am totally out of the blogging loop these days! In some ways I miss it but it others it has been liberating not to feel like I have another part time job when I should be rolling around on the floor with my babies! That being said my friend Dana over at Make Them Wonder has recently posted about the Roomspiration Blog Hop and it got me motivated to join in.  It is always fun to see all of the great and usually thrifty ideas that all you creative ladies come up with!  So I had to join in.  Go take a look.  Peruse through all the before and afters grab some great ideas with us!

I joined in over at View Along the Way to link up our little family room revamp.

 and then over to Homemaker on a Dime to share a few of our bathroom transformations.

Hope you'll join in and don't forget to go show Dana at Make Them Wonder some new blogger love!

Waiting in the Wind

Who doesn't love a good ol' before and after?  I have wanted to post about this room for a long time.  We bought this house 4 years ago and it was the first room that I considered "finished" and I have always really loved the way it turned out!  Unfortunately I couldn't find any before pics so she had to sit and wait and wait until I could either find them or find a newly constructed and open home that I could take a pic of since most of the homes in our neighborhood are very similar.  This is your typical builders half bath.

Actually this one is a tad bit nicer than the one we ended up with.  You see with the housing market in a bit of a slump the builders are now upgrading the homes a bit more to bring in the buyers but this gives you the general idea of what we had to work with.  Now they have real ceramic tile instead of linoleum and you see that towel holder? ...ours was a lovely plastic version(the you can't get any cheaper version).

Here is a picture from the outside..It is absolutely impossible to get a good picture of a half bath. 

We started the whole revamp with some color.

We went with the Sherwin Williams low VOC paint in Moody Blue

It is a great color!  Sometimes I second guess my color choices every time I see them but this one has not let me down. 

The art on the wall here is from IKEA

Here is a peek at the new sink and cabinet that we put in.  I love love this too.  Did I mention this is one of my favorite rooms in the house?  You can see here that we have new flooring in this bath as well.  That came waaaay after the bath rehab when we decided to remove all of the carpet from the first floor.

This is my sad attempt to get a picture of the other side of the room.  You can read a post about the art made from styrofoam here.

We found this unique little number at lowes.  I don't remember what we paid but since I am a cheapo I know it wasn't much more if anymore than most of your other average faucets.

This huge lovely sink was another IKEA find and so is the sink cabinet.  The hubby of course did the hard work of actually installing all of this fun stuff but changing out a pedestal sink to this really isn't that difficult.  Even though pedestals can be very simple and good looking we needed more storage space bad in this casa so this helped a ton.  We now had a place for extra T.P. and tons of towels since this room is near the back door and the kids tend to play in the water a lot out back.

Here is my attempt to get a picture of the cabinet.  We already had this mirror and just hung it right over the "builder grade" mirror.  We also replaced the T.P. holder and towel rack with beefier better looking finds from the pottery barn outlet.

And here is the view of this spot if your a really short person sitting on the pot;)

I think it is a pretty nice view!

Linking up to:



Thrifty Decor Chick, C.R.A.F.T, HOUSEography, The Stories of A 2 Z, Type A Decorating, House of Hepworths, A Glimpse Inside, Momnivore's-Dilemm, Green Door Designs

Modernizing our Master Bath

Welcome to our first Master Bath renovation(we were 8 years younger and a bit more aggressive with this one).  It was a much bigger deal than our little mini master bath revamp that I mentioned here.  This baby needed everything! Well almost everything..the only thing we didn't have to rip out was the tile in the bath/shower area.  With a really good scrub down she was just fine.  Oh but the rest of her..well

Look at that pretty vanity, the gorgeous shell sinks, the 80's wall paper, "wood look" toilet seat, peel and stick wood floors(now don't get me wrong there are actually some pretty nice wood look floors out there these days, as a matter of fact we have some in our current casa that we love)etc...you get the picture.  There was also a closet located in the bath that we had to paint and recarpet.

So we started with demo!  I didn't take  many "in the process pictures" but you can see below we obviously tiled the floor with "slate like" ceramic, Made all of the trim out of MDF, replaced all of the doors( I actually spray painted all the door knobs and hinges because those puppies can really add to the budget..in a bad way) and we got another free toilet from the city of Austin like I posted about in our first bath reno.  We removed the wallpaper,  retextured and once again tried a yellow color that I just couldn't make myself like.  Then the hubby built these cabinets out of MDF.  After lots of paint and poly they looked really good and were so inexpensive!

See those lights?  They are super cheap outdoor lights from home depot, the tower cabinet in the middle was from target but it was white so that got repainted and with my makeup mirror on it and all the white goodies inside I think it turned out pretty nice.

The color in these pics looks a bit purple but it was a taupey grayish tone.

In this pic below the door on the right is the little toilet room shown in the first picture and the one on the left was our closet.  Doesn't fresh white trim and new doors make all the difference in the world?

I was never good at keeping up with receipts but this was a very inexpensive yet huge makeover for our first master bathroom and we LOVED how it turned out.

Oh and see that crown molding..we found it at a home materials salvage store and it was made out of styrofoam so it was really easy to work with and affordable too.  Have you guys taken full advantage of MDF in your homes?  It really saved us $$ and allowed us to be able to afford a certain look without the hefty price of wood!..

Linked to:

Tater Tots and Jello