Guest Bath Reveal

Well, ladies & gentlegerms... I finally have the guest bathroom reveal for you. This is our third bathroom; it sits downstairs, next to the family room and my office. Here are all of the posts in the series.

And here are some before pictures of the space...

Sometime after...

 Not ugly, but definitely boring.

Now that it's all made over, a certain brood of rugrats are no longer allowed past the threshold.
For real.

I really wanted this post to be full of glory; to share the beauty of the room. However, I don't think the pictures do the room justice. Blame it on the photographer, go ahead. But... in my defense. There is NO natural light anywhere near this room. It's off of a small hallway and there is nary a window nearby.

And I am still trying to learn manual mode on my new camera (thanks to Shoot Fly Shoot). And the room is SMALL.  9x6 - an even rectangle.

I love the picture above - the artwork picture - from Hobby Lobby. It was $29, but I used my 40% off coupon. The colors are spot on for what I was hoping to achieve. And then you can see the paneling and moulding. Better shots to come soon, I promise.

We did... we took out the medicine cabinet... and in its place we added a towel bar. I plan to add some additional art above the towel bar, but for now, I have pretty yellow hand towels.

We also took out the builder grade mirror that extended almost the entire length of the room. Too much...

The sink was hard to decide on. Originally we wanted a vessel sink, but we couldn't find a counter-top that was in our price range. And considering this room didn't HAVE to be made over, we wanted to keep the spending to a minimum. It was important to us to get rid of the builder grade counter top that extended over the toilet. My husband thinks it looked too 80s; I agree. So we found this beauty of a sink at Home Depot for $139. We kept our existing vanity, but purchased a new light fixture (which my husband had to move and install) and a new faucet. Both in Oil-Rubbed Bronze, farmhouse style.

Marcos did the tile backsplash; his first tile job ever. It's white subway tile with a blue/green glass insert. I love it, mucho. Hey, look! In the mirror ($35 from IKEA, btw), you can see the paneling some more!

In this picture here (below), you can see the pretty IKEA curtain panels I purchased, originally for the formals. I like them in the bathroom. And I like how TALL they are! We have 9 (or 10) foot ceilings... we want to show them off!

The greige is Mega Greige by Sherwin Williams, color-matched to Behr. It's a shade darker than what we painted in the formals and I adore it.

I even added fake legs to the cabinet. You can barely make them out in the picture below!

I am keeping an eye on RugsUSA for a steal of a deal on a patterned yellow rug, I think that will FINISH the room!

Okay, I promise to try and get better pictures for the House Tour post... But I hope you can see the difference. The tan walls and yellow lights are gone. It's now fresh, white and purdy!

Edited to add a few more pics; better ones, I hope.

And finally, one straight out of the camera (SOOC)... that gives a pretty accurate reading of the colors in that room.

 
Have you ever made over any rooms that didn't really NEED it; just to add character?

Spreading some Holiday Cheer

While I enjoyed Thanksgiving, I am glad to be moving on. Although, December is a crazy month for us. Do you have one of those months in your family?

Nic's birthday is on Sunday, mine is on Monday, Marcos' is on the 12th, our 18th wedding anniversary is on the 16th, then there is the family Christmas Eve (what I like to call Christmas Adam) on the 22nd, the real Christmas Eve on the 24th and then Christmas Day on the 25th. Of course, then there is my aunt's anniversary on the 21st and my grandparent's on the 22nd (missing you, grandpa!). Then throw in wrapping parties, cookie exchanges, my neighbor's daughter's bridal shower and wedding - yikes!

Whew. I am just glad I remembered all of that.
With all of that said, I am not ready to put the tree up yet. For several reasons. The first is that Nic's having a birthday party on Saturday, here at the house. I want to celebrate his special day before we celebrate Christmas! ;) Second, I *just* completed my formals... why would I want to move things around now? I need at least a week of good, clean, fun. ;)

However, that doesn't mean I can't get my mantel and bookcases all dolled up.

I pretty much reused everything I had from years past. The Elf is new... and so is the reindeer glitter art, which was so easy and sits in a dollar store frame.

I printed off a picture of a reindeer from Google, traced it and filled it in with Elmer's glue and then sprinkled red glitter all over it. The tree art on the right is a gift bag from the dollar store... I just cut out the front and put it in the frame. Here are some posts about easy, cheap, Christmas crafts.

Even my couch is getting in the spirit. For now, anyway. This sweetie will have to move and make room for our faux evergreen come next week. I love my new pillow case from IKEA. Mr. and Mrs. Clause... and some random kids/elves/hired help. Did the Clause's ever have kids, do you know?!

That's it for now... just a little holiday cheer popping up here and there.
We are looking forward to two new holiday traditions we are starting; meeting our new Elf {on the shelf} and also our advent calendars! Yum, 25 days of chocolate. ;)

Do you  have any special holiday traditions?

The Formals are Finished.

This post has been a long time coming. Have *you* been waiting, with baited breath? Don't answer that, especially if the answer could potentially, most likely hurt my heart. Let's pretend you've been waiting for this reveal all your life. And I will continue to be happy. :D

These formals were a labor of love. I've read a few blog posts as of late about people having buyer's remorse. We did just that when we purchased our house a little over two years ago. The house was HUGE (it still is, lol)... and we needed to fill it up fast. Needed, huh?

In the past two years, we've grown. We've come to realize what we like and what we don't like. Even during the makeover process, I started out with one thing and ended up with another. But in the end, I love how the formal living room and dining room turned out. Very unformal-like. There's no plastic covered sofas in there, no-siree. It feels comfy and lived in, which is something we've never been able to accomplish so far in any place we've lived.

You can read all about the process of transforming the first two rooms (one large, really) you see as you enter our house.

Here are the latest before pictures... I say 'latest' because it's been through a few different phases.

The rooms wouldn't have won any "Ugliest Space" award, but they just weren't us.  After a few months, we finally got our act together and this is how the rooms look now. Well, yesterday. ;)

There are some items I will go into detail about in a future post, or two. Like, the background on those fab chairs...But for now... can you believe the difference?

I could stare at this pictures all day, but instead, I think I am going to curl up on that couch with a good book. Like the one sitting on the side "table"... from Young House Love.

Don't forget, guest bathroom reveal tomorrow!

Project Day was a Success (and a new mantel!)

How many times do you change up your mantel? Or your entry way table?
Me? Too many to count. So, I won't bother counting... but I will share a project I've been wanting to do for a while.

We moved out the old Radio Cabinet (it's still for sale!) and added in IKEA shoe cabinets. I am sure they have a Swedish name, I just can't remember. I actually call them the shoe boxes. As in, "You better get your dang shoes off of the floor! I didn't spend that much money on the shoe boxes to allow you to IGNORE them."  They were kind of expensive; at almost one fifty a pop, I splurged. But, it's well worth it!

That space has looked so many different ways in such a short two years. I even wrote a post about it here. But it's changed at least twice since then.  Not only do I have cool, new shoe boxes, I also have a new "mantel."  And it's changed since THIS:

I've been working my butt off today to try and get the house put back together and decorated for Thanksgiving. I finally painted all of the patches from all of the gazillion nail holes. I also made a new chalkboard. And I even just about finished the bathroom.

Here is the new fall mantel:

Do you like my new chalkboard? I bought a painting that I quite liked (Nic called it the Paris painting) from Ross a while ago. But the colors did not lend to the new brighter colors in our formals. So I decided to paint it Mega Greige and make it into a chalkboard. And after several layers of regular and chalkboard paint, I love it! =) 

Well, so much more to do. Tomorrow is CLEANING DAY (since today was PROJECT DAY). And Wednesday is BAKING DAY.

I'll check back in before Thanksgiving, I am sure.
Hope the next few days go smoothly for you as you get ready for the Holiday, yourself!