Kids Bathroom Redo

When we moved into our home (just over 3 years ago) I didn't want the hall bathroom - the one the kids use - to be a "kid" bathroom.

I love those kid bathrooms - but only when they are actually dedicated kid spaces.

Mine was a hall bathroom - the bathroom guests would be using.  I felt like it needed to be "adult" in it's decor.

Fast forward to now - things have changed. I no longer work outside the home, my life revolves around my kids.  And I no longer care if my (childless adult) guests giggle a little at my hall bathroom.  Two children use it every day and I want it to be bright and happy for them - not the boring neutral that it's been for way too long.

Before:

Model Home-ish, wouldn't you say? Except a Model Home would have had something nice hanging above the toilet. I always meant to hang something there, but never could find anything I liked.

To start, I decided to install beadboard.
I've had a beadboard obsession for longer than I can remember - yet I've NEVER installed it in a room.  The bathroom is small, so I figured it was a perfect place to start - nice and easy :)
Once I knew beadboard was going in, I chose a paint color.  I wanted something bright, and lately I'm having a thing for green.  I chose a Behr color called Grape Leaves.

Here are the After picture -

I purchased this adorable shower curtain at Target.

I already had a stack of brightly colored towels that matched the colors in the curtain perfectly.  I sewed little ribbon loops onto them to hang them on the new towel hook I installed to replace the old towel bar with.

 

The shutter is actually an interior shutter that I found for CHEAP on KSL.com (our local - better traveled -version of Craigslist.)  I painted it with an oops paint in the most gorgeous shade of turquoise and distressed it.

The sign hanging on the front is made from a scrap of beadboard and hand painted by me.  I'm not sure I LOVE it.  It might be replaced in the future.  We'll see.

The shelf is another project that I'll share in the future.  The accessories on it I already had.

I framed out the mirror with molding and corner pieces.  Love the way it turned out!

The whole re-do was SO cheap!
I bought a gallon of paint for $25 (only used half)
2 sheets of beadboard for $33 (I got one for 50% off because it was damaged at one end)
The molding, liquid nails and silicon for less than $30
The shower curtain was $20
The new towel hook was $3
The shutter was $1.25
The shelf was about $4
Total was about $100!

The counter top flower arrangement thing is made from stuff I already had.  I'm not sure I love it.  Thoughts?

Is it good, bad or ugly?

Linking up to The Room a Month party at Shades of Pink
and to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch
and to It's So Very Cheri's It's So Very Creative party!

Laundry Room Makeover

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

And some detail pics :)

My counter top is made from melamine - you know, that white plastic coated MDF? My counter area was WAY deeper than standard counters come, so we had to figure something else out. Melamine worked out really well and was very cost-effective! The giant sheet we bought did my big counter top (66x35) and 2 shelves in my closet (41x18) with some left over - and cost only $25! I added a strip of pretty molding ($9) to the edge and painted the whole thing the same white that I painted the board and batten
The room is so pretty I want to squeal every time I walk by!

Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions to my decorating dilemma post!  I used a lot of them :)
Linking up to DIY Day at ASPTL

Parlor re-dec

I have this room in my house...

This strange, semi-formal wasteland when you walk in the front door.

Sometimes we call it the living room, sometimes we call it the front room. Its the room that I imagine little old ladies in Georgia call "the parlor."

I hate this room.

It's wasted space. And - in my house - it was ugly, too.

In a perfect world I'd knock down the wall between my kitchen and this 'front room' would be absorbed by a new, massive kitchen/dining area. It would be beautiful, functional space with none of the ridiculous characteristics of the current room. It would be used often and enthusiastically. It would be perfect.

It would also cost a fortune. I'm thinking a minimum of a million-billion dollars. Or something like that. More than we can afford, at any rate.

Here is the eye-sore that is (was) my front room.

I don't often take pictures of it - you might be able to tell how old this one is by the baby in the background. That's Ash. He'll be 3 in a couple weeks.

I'm not sure why there are folding chairs and a table against the wall, or what's in the bag on the floor. I think the picture was supposed to be of the new (at the time) color on the wall. I think I was deciding if it was too orange-y (it was.) But I can't really be sure about any of that.

This was the layout.

BORING.

Obviously something had to be done.

We love to read, and we have a ton of books. At our old house, we had book shelves in our front room. At this house, those shelves were sitting in the basement, collecting dust (and various homeless items.) Problem was, the color definitely didn't work with the new place.

I looked into buying new shelves, but frankly, wasn't interested in spending the money.

So instead, we gave them a make-over.

The before shelf:

I picked out a color called Espresso and bought several cans to cover the 4 bookshelves that we had. Since the shelves had a laminate finish and I was concerned about the paint 'sticking', I also bought several cans of primer.

Lastly, I bought 6 strips of long decorative molding - 2 strips each of MDF crown molding and baseboard and 2 strips of real wood decorative door casing.

Then I talked Matt into helping and we set it all up in the garage. I gave the shelves a VERY quick, VERY light sanding and then went nuts with the spray paint.

They ended up taking several coats. I think we spraypainted every few hours for almost a week. Pretty intense. The fumes were, I mean.

At the end, though, they were gorgeous.

We moved them in and set them up against the wall. I used brackets to secure them to the wall, then attached the molding to the front of the shelves with L brackets.

The molding really helped make them look like one large (expensive) unit.

This one corner of molding doesn't match up perfectly - but I swear, you don't even notice it.

Once they were in place I got down to business shelf-scaping.

I wanted most of the space to be taken up by books, but didn't want a big wall of monotony. After all, the purpose of this redecoration was to get rid of the boring.

I tried to use stuff I had around the house for the most part, but couldn't resist buying some fun new things. Strangely, they all turned out to be bird themed. Must be the Nester's influence.

Speaking of the Nester - I also mistreated the windows. Because the sad little curtains you saw in the before pictures were AWFUL.

I built two simple frames out of 1x2's and bought some beautiful home decor fabric (the name is pumpkin courtyard. I loved it, so I remembered it) to stretch accross them. The art in the middle came from TJ Maxx - love it :)

Other than those things, most of the re-dec consisted of moving furniture around - some came from other rooms - and one more BIG project, which I'll post seperately.

The after of this room turned out even better than I had hoped. It's so much prettier than before! It's less formal, but more purposeful. It's both warmer and cooler...it finally looks done. I love it.

From the front door:

From the kitchen:

The new layout:

I'll share the last piece soon!