Unanticipated Bathroom Update - Quick Custom Art Project

Last year, I showed you the pictures of our bathroom redo here.  Nothing much changed in the ensuing months...until Superman came home on leave in June.  Remember these two little vases on the shelf?

RIP two little Ikea vases.  The previous "picture" was too little anyway.
  It was a mushy greeting card Superman had given me early in our marriage...
I loved it so much, I framed it and have it up somewhere in our house all the time

They were pretty, weren't they?  Well, in one move, Superman bumped the shelf with enough force to knock them both off the shelf and send them crashing to the floor.  Bye-bye, Ikea vases.  After Superman went back to work, I rearranged to make it look like this. 

There have been fires in the area for more than a week...look how the
quality of the light is altered by the filter of smoke.  Do you like my blank
wall?  I even left the nail in place to nag at me to come up with art for the space.

I left a big blank space under the shelf and waited for inspiration. Well, here we are in September and inspiration took its sweet time!!  Fortunately, Costco supplied the missing piece and the project came together in a day.



These frames are really nice...didn't think to take a picture before the project.
Inspiration comes in the strangest forms, doesn't it?

Saw these frames at Costco...11 x 17 with matte...two frames for less than $20, plus 100 free prints from Costco.  These frames, combined with thoughts that had bouncing around in my head, resulted in the perfect art piece for our bathroom.  All it took was a piece of fabric and a vinyl cutout and 20 minutes later, we had "art".



The card is on the shelf now and my new art is on the wall...this new arrangement
is so much better and I still have my framed greeting card...plus a gift from my
daughter...the little sheep (including the black sheep) were a present.  I love them.

Look at this.  All I did was tape a piece of fabric to the back of the matte and apply a vinyl cut-out to the front of the fabric.  (I didn't even use iron-on vinyl.  This is just standard vinyl...Oracle 631 from Expressions Vinyl.)  I tucked the end of the branch under the matte to make it look like the branch was coming out from behind the matte.  After that, I put it all back together and put it up on the nail that was still in the wall. 

The original nail was too low, so I moved it up an inch.  Plus, the picture
was missing a little something.  It needed just one more thing.  Do you see it?

I love how it turned out.  Unfortunately, the nail wasn't in the right place, so I have a new nail hole (sorry, Superman!).  Plus, I think picture was missing a little something...it wasn't quite perfect.

There!   See?  I added a tiny heart above the birds.  The perfect
finishing touch!  Now, my project is just perfect.

Ah, now it is perfect!  I love the way this project turned out.  The nubby fabric and the smooth, matte vinyl look elegant framed with a picture matte.  I have one more frame...I need to find another place that is crying out for an art project!

Just in Time for her Birthday...

I thought I'd show you Buttercup's Christmas present.  It all started with this bathroom makeover.  Buttercup fell in love with the paint color I'd chosen: Water Sprout.  After that, she was convinced her life would be perfect if only her bedroom was painted Water Sprout.  Well, I've been down this road a few times with my beloved daughter, so I made her a deal.  If she still wanted her room done over, we'd do it for her in January.  That gave her four months to mull it over and four months to convince me this wasn't a whim.

Once she'd convinced me, I talked it over with Superman.  While he was a bit dumbfounded when I told him her dearest wish was to have her bedroom done in Water Sprout, he was all for it when I suggested that rather than making her wait until after "Daddy went back to work after Christmas break", we surprised her with Daddy and Mommy doing it for her as her Christmas gift from us.

 With a little help from Santa in the form of a new dresser, Daddy and Mommy redid Buttercup's room to her exact specifications.  (And yes, it was done in January before Superman headed back to work, I just haven't found the time to write a post about it.)

So, this is what it looked like before:

And this is what it looks like now:

We removed the shelving in the niche under the window and, instead, put her bed in the niche.  (Interestingly, we offered the girl a double bed, and she turned it down...so, this is the same bed.)  She wanted to be part of her project, so she used her own money to buy the comforter and pillow sham (clearance at JC Penney - she got a steal).

Superman made a padded headboard and added these little corner shelves on each side of the bed to serve as a bedside table.  I had the extra-long sheer curtains from our California house and they worked beautifully here...just used a shower curtain rod to hang them.

With leftover fabric from the headboard project, Superman cut down an old bulletin board we had, covered it in the fabric, and added some decorative moulding to make it tie in with the rest of the room.

Finally, I used another scrap of the fabric to cover a cork board that Buttercup uses for her jewelry, bringing the fabric all throughout the room and tying it all together.  (A totally simple project with fabulous results.)

So, there you have it Buttercup's Christmas present...pretty cute for an almost 13-year old, isn't it?

PS.  Green really has taken over our house, hasn't it?



Obviously, we've entered our Green period...

A few weeks ago, I shared this post with you.  Yes, a new bathroom floor was on my wish list, but I wasn't really putting it high on that list.  Obviously, the heavens had a different timeline in mind, so the floor and the toilet were replaced two months ago.  All that was left was some fresh paint...but what color to choose? (The yellow looks nice, as long as you can't see it with the flooring.)

Superman came home on leave for the holidays, and I put it in his capable hands.  He agreed that the yellow just didn't work anymore.  "I just can't decide.  You pick, please, but please, please, pick a color that is NOT tan or brown," I pleaded.  He picked Mountain Sage green and I said, "Great!  I'll make it happen."

So, now this bathroom is Mountain Sage green (to accompany our Celery Sprig green basement and our Water Sprout green bathroom)...

I must say, I really, really like it.  What do you think?  This is the first Superman is seeing it, too.

Ta Da! The Bathroom is Done!

Last January, I started to tackle the last untouched room in our home.  I found one picture of the bathroom and you'll have to be nice, because I was being goofy for a kid with a camera! 

As for anymore pictures, I can't find most of the "before" pictures for the master bathroom, but these "during" few give you a taste of what I was facing when I began the project.  A chair rail that hid an unpleasant surprise.  (This is the true color of the red.)  They painted over wallpaper!  Should I replace the drywall?  Ugh...I hate surprises like these!

Red paint that was somehow flawed, so that the coverage was uneven and left a smear of pink on whatever I used to wipe the walls.  The Behr 2-in-1 Paint and Primer really did cover well.  It only took two coats of Water Sprout to cover that dark red.

 This is where I was testing the Behr paint to see if there was a smear or if it wouldn't cover.   (It was fabulous!)  We discovered that half the plugs in the bathroom were run illegally through the cabinetry, too.  Bye-bye plugs.  The bathroom was a disaster...truly.

Now look at it!

Water Sprout is a lovely pale green (it doesn't have as much yellow as shows in some of these pictures, but it isn't minty, either).  Combined with fresh white paint, we have a light and airy bathroom.   See how much bigger it looks? 

Superman and I decided not to replace the drywall.  Instead I lived with the room in disarray for a few months and we put up wainscoting when Superman was home in April.  During that same leave, we put in a new granite countertop with integrated sink.  Superman even gave me a valance over the window.  Then he headed back to work and left me to do the finishing touches.

I painted the wainscoting and the valance in Behr Premium - in Frost.  Shelves and towel hooks finished it off.   The vanity was painted for me by Mr. R (he's so nice and he's a much better painter than I) and we added drawer pulls to finish it off.

A few more decorative touches and it is done.  (Having first names that begin with letters found in cardinal directions makes it easy to find our initials in home improvement stores.)  A 3M hook holds my brush. 

Cotton balls and q-tips?    They're here, too.

See how beautifully they fit in here?  It may have taken us six months to make it happen, but I love how this bathroom makeover turned out and my beloved stained glass got to stay.  How cool is that?  It was all worth it.