Bathroom Gets Fancy Pants

May 2013

While we were working on the backyard we had a few days of rain that made me take one last look at our bathroom.  The space was missing many of the finishing touchs that would make it feel more like a bathroom we would have designed.

Disco bathroom gets updates

The first step was the decision to paint the sink cabinet.  I am pro wood. I would never paint wood unless I absolutely had too.  This one was a long internal debate.  Two things finally turned the tide. The current cabinet was starting to get water damage from all the bathroom steam. I believed painting it will help seal the wood and avoid further damage.  Also, the cabinet was Maple which is fine but really not in keeping with anything in the house or even the feel of the house.  Before I could change my mind I sanded the cabinet on a Friday and primed it.  Three coats of semi-gloss white paint and it was looking much more smart. At Lowes I bought two black knobs to tie into the black countertop. Mini-Project Complete!



Many people have asked about the small sign on the tile.  It reads 'Please!  Mind the faucet water is hot and flows like crazy!  Thanks the Mangement.'  Don't all of you wish you lived in an old house that requires disclaimers?

The next step was what to do about a hamper.  We had been using a rolling metal basket that was mine from college.  It worked great, but the round shape meant we hit it alot and banged up the wall.  We had many requirements for a new hamper.  It must be narrow (no wider than 14")  it must have a cover on it (no one wants to see your dirty underwear), and it had to match the style of the bathroom.  This is actually a tough nut.  There are not many hampers that are that narrow or attractive or have covers.



I love this John Muir quote and sign

We finally found a small tilt-out unit from Home Decorators that was about the size we wanted and had the bonus of being a small cabinet that would allow us to store stuff on top. It was expensive and on principle alone I would never spend 100 bucks on a hamper.  I searched the internet and got several coupons and decided to bite the bullet.  There were two things wrong with the hamper. First, it is a little more ornate then we wanted (it has silly little feet and this curved trim moulding), second, it was cream not white. But since it fit so well we decided to overlook it's fancy pants and took the plunge.  And, for the second time, I was sanding, priming and painting a cabinet for our bathroom.



            

             Mr. Whale looks really high in this photo, probably because I am sitting down. 

Once these changes were made, all we had to do was update the accessories.  After searching all over the internet it turns out I like products from Target best. I bought some Nate Berkus towels and a floor mat. I decided to go with a gold color to compliment the gray wall color.  I also picked up a blue glass toothbrush cup and soap dispenser.  The last addition was a new metal sign with a John Muir quote in gold.  The room is finally starting to feel a lot more our style.



This really gives you an idea of how small the space truly is.

Side Yard Waste Land

April 2013

 Side Yard April 2011

After finishing the fire pit we had about 2.5 seconds of celebration.  Then we turned around and looked at the South side of our house.   When we moved in, this area was covered in blackberries and was completely overgrown.  In 2011, I cut all of it out so that we could paint the house.   I then put down cardboard until we could decide what to do.  Well, we decided to store left over building materials there.  Then slowly over two short years the blackberries came back.  

  Side Yard 2013- Cringe

Starting at the corner I cut back all the blackberries.  It took about 4 yard debris bins to get it all and it seemed like I would never make it to our front yard. As I cut back the blackberries I was forced to deal with all our debris. We 'free' craigslisted the old wheelbarrow and the fence gate (scrappers delight).  We recycled the plastic garden pots, dumpstered our broken concrete, and neatly stacked the tens of pavers, bricks and rocks we found back there. Once we had a bare slate, I turned up the ground and tried remove ALL of the blackberry roots to avoid the same problem again.

Random pile of dirt from old owners, huge pile of pea gravel from us

Once again, this was backbreaking and I have no pictures of doing this work. We filled a whole wheelbarrow with all the roots we found under there.  I rotilled the space and Josh got to work fixing the grade. We needed to be very careful making sure we had a steady sloop away from the house, we also needed to meet the existing height of our neighbors side yard in a 10' wide area.   Josh's solution was to create a curvy dry creek bed feel that would be our pathway.  I loved it!

The sun is killing me here 

Using the fill from our random dirt pile we created mounded beds on either side and kept a free flowing feel to counteract our more ridgid lines over by the firepit. 

This is what is left of the forsythia and two limelight hydrangeas

Next, we put down landscape fabric for the pathway and then installed more boulders and river rocks to form the edge.  Using the remaining pea gravel we had left we filled in the pathway.   All we had left was to find plants that would be happy on the South side of the house.  We also had to find plants that will be happy in the constant shade along the fence line.  We started with a Lilac since these like sun, smell delicious and never get too big.

Lilac is on the left between the living room and bedroom windows

If you have been following- this is the third tarp in this post.  We were cleaning them throughout the project, which really made for some horrible pictures. Boo to the large cinderblock wall.

Fast forward to June when I took these, you can see the pathway.  I also added lavendar, little lamb hydrangeas and some sunflowers.  I am still looking for more plants for the fence line.  Also, please note the amazing moment the pathway ends into our stone fence.  Gate and new fence TBD.

Back Yard Jungle: Part 2- Sunny Fire Pit Weekend

March 2013

After we completed the firewood pad we started addressing the 'pit.'  As a reminder it looked like this. 

The first step was to remove all the cardboard.  This was gross.  It was soaked, covered in insects and generally ripped into small chunks when you tried to pull it up.  The real goal of sheet mulching with cardboard is that you just let it decay into the soil.  However, given the fact that we needed to level the area, and that we were not together enough to remove all the packing tape from the boxes (which would never decay)  we had to pull it all up.  Fail.

Underneath this lovely gross cardboard was hard packed clay mixed with old dead grass roots.  There was no way to level it without breaking it up.  This was a back breaking 3-4 days of turning over the dirt shovel by shovel.  I wished for a draft horse and plow but alas nothing came.  We may have been able to rent a commercial tiller, but I still not sure it could have gotten through the wet clay either. It was exhausting work and for that reason I have no pictures of this process.

Then something amazing happened, it stopped raining and got hot, really hot.  In the most un-Portland March we got a 70-80 degree Easter weekend. We came out with the sun, using our little tiller (thanks Mom) to break up the large clay clumps and begin  to level the entire area.  The tiller is amazing for this work, I turned up our earth until it looked like the Garden of Eden.  Josh followed behind with a rake pushing dirt to the low spots and raking down any hills. We even got to take some of the dirt from the pile over along the side fence that the past owner had decided to randomly amass.

By Saturday we had leveled the space, compacted it, and dug out the round circle for our firepit.  We were done early so we decided we could go to a local Ciderfest and enjoy the sun.  Glorious!

On Sunday, we went to buy boulders for the fire pit, only to remember it was Easter (we are heathens) and that the rock place was closed (not heathens).  We were devastated to be so close to the end and yet so far. We decided to try corporate America, knowing that it had long since given up religion for consumerism.  Bingo, Lowes trip.  There was, of course, no real boulders at Lowes, but they did have some attractive gray concrete blocks that were designed to be installed in a ring.  We were torn, we want the pit to be a bit more organic and less masonry- but we were here and it was pre-made to go together flawlessly (something boulders would not do).

A full car of 28 blocks, 4 bags of river rock, landscape fabric, pins, some plants, and mortar and we were off.  We got home and I swear made the fire pit in about 30 minutes.  It was the quickest house project ever.  Josh mixed the mortar and shoveled it in and I laid the stones.  When we were done we filled the bottom with river rocks and back filled the dirt around the edges.

A few quick passes with landscape fabric which we pinned down. A cuddle session with Gus and we were ready to put the gravel down.  Josh powered through on Sunday afternoon and moved about 30 wheelbarrows of gravel while I spread it. Power to the man!  A little mulch and plants and suddenly our scary backyard looked a bit like one of those fancy HGTV shows. Kirchbot sun power for the win!

A small round up for the space: three new Monterey Cypress trees ($200), 8 new grasses, 8 new ferns, and 12 perennial flowers ($150), endless amounts of Mexican river rock and river boulders for the edges ($350), fire pit stones and river rock ($130), mortar ($10), landscape fabric ($50), reused our existing pea gravel, reused cinder blocks, relocated existing 2 blueberry bushes, 4 ferns, 1 euphoria, and 1 lilac.  Pulled out our old Adirondack chairs.  I think the total was right around $900

Back Yard Jungle: Part 1

March 2013

We got a break in our normally bummer spring rainfest and had several nice weekends out in Portland.  This encouraged us to get moving on our increasingly scary back yard.  In the fall, Josh and I had decided we wanted to install a fire pit in our backyard.  Being pro safety and anti grass we thought it would be best to install gravel around the area.  We took all our old boxes and laid them on top of our grass from the corner of the porch to the back fence.  This is roughly a 20' x 15' area. 

Then something happened which we are not proud of, this area became a logical dumping ground for things we didn't know what to do with.  Remaining stones were placed to hold down the cardboard, left over mulch - left in a pile in the middle, a random door we scored for free and then had no idea what to do with, random scrap wood stacked in the corner. The end result was horrible and I looked at it all winter. 

 Please note: this is the improved backyard after I had removed the mulch, door, and Josh had taken out the blackberries. 

On the landscaping front it was even worse. We went into the winter without doing our standard cut back of much of our landscaping. We were honestly so worn out and the weather turned bad so quickly we just never got around to it. The invasive blackberries were everywhere.  The forsythia fence line was about 10' deep and 20' tall.  It was a jungle.  We had piled all the gravel for this fire pit along the house under the guest room window.  Which made it difficult to even reach the backyard from the porch.

Our first step was to cut back all the foliage and remove the blackberries once and for all. Josh dug out all the blackberries along the back fence.  I worked over on the side cutting down the forsythia and some invasive vine. If you have ever done this, it is horrible work.  I hated removing blackberries they have roots that go everywhere and the prickers get you with even the best gloves.  This took a full weekend and we ended with only one small corner in the back of yard cleared.

This is after I cut back the forsythia and only to expose our rotting fence and more construction debris

Josh took advantage of this space to build a small pad for our firewood to live.  He leveled the area and reused some amazing 1970's decorative cinder blocks that once were a fence to build an open lattice and then filled it with gravel from our pile. I followed behind to move some ferns from other spaces in the yard, and purchased an awesome lime green pine tree.  I also moved the blueberry bushes that were on the back fence to the front of the porch.  They had never been very productive so I was hoping they would work better with more sun.

Weekend one ended with a 5' x 8' section completed.  It felt great, but we knew we had a long way to go.  The good news was we reused free blocks, already owned gravel.  The bad news, I had at least 20 yards of lawn debris and we had only cleared half of the area.  

 

Dear lord do we need to paint this baby blue horror-  I pray for the willpower to come

A Grout & Paint Bathroom Weekend

February 2013

Since Josh was on board to keep working on the bathroom I started by calling in a steam cleaner to try and clean our dirty grout.  I figured that was the best way to start.  They come out and were super friendly, they explained that our grout was bad and had probably not been sealed or at least so poorly maintained that there wasn't much they could do.  I told them to give it a shot since they came.  They did.  The two guys worked for about 1.5 hour.  Honestly, not a huge difference was made.  They did seal the grout in the hope it would not get any worse. I think our solution is going to have to be a regrout- or maybe, if we stay in the house long term, to replace the tile.  But for now I will have to be satisfied with my not so nice grout. The one thing I could change was the silicone along the floor line.  The old material was covered in mildew and it did not clean up with any cleaning agent I had found.

This was all me. It took about two hours to cut and razor blade all the old silicone out.  I did this sitting on a foam pad inside my shower.  Not a fun way to spend a Saturday. Afterward I cleaned the area with bleach and water and put a dehumidifier in the room to clear out any moisture.  The old silicone was a nice gray color which blended with the tile.  Home Depot and Lowes had three options: white, clear and almond.  I figured white was the best way to go.  I really wished I had done more research here and either ordered gray silicone or maybe used water resistant caulk that was gray. The white silicone is very bright.

While I siliconed (yes I am making that verb) we decided to start painting the walls.  Going off our last bedroom repaint oops I went with my gut and only bought one sample of paint.  Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray.  It is beautiful and the sample went up and matched the upper tiles in the bathroom perfectly.  Without a second of waiting I went to Miller Paint and color matched a gallon in semi-gloss. I then set about frog taping all the edges.  This was serious! I have never taped/cut in so much in my life. We had one door, one window, a tile shower, a sink cabinet, baseboards, lighting fixtures and a toilet.  Thank God we decided to paint the ceiling the same color or else I may have gone a little batty. 

The ceilings in the bathroom are too tall for me to reach even on my step stool so I called in Josh to paint out ceiling and cut in along the upper edge of the wall.  I followed behind cutting in and using the weenie roll to roll the 2.5 sqft of actual wall space in the room. We were able to two coat the entire room in one Sunday. Since I had patched and filled all the holes the weekend prior.  One weekend, one fresh clean space.

Bathroom Trim: Painting Around the Toilet

February 2013

A couple weeks after we finished the fireplace I started working on a list of things to do before September.  One of the rooms that needed the most work was our bathroom.  This was remodeled in 2006 by the previous owner and since moving in we hadn't done much to it. To start, it looks like a lovely bathroom, while not my style I appreciate that they made some good updates.   However, living with it for close to three years had really changed my opinion.  It was not my taste and many of the materials chosen have not held up very well to the daily abuse a single bathroom gets.

Back in 2010, we changed out the double hung vinyl window to a vinyl casement with frosted glass.  The main need for the change was this window opened directly to our patio and if the window was open, it was not discreet (this is a polite way to put it).  The new window opens towards the side yard and allows people to be on the patio and not looking directly in.  Also, the frosted glass allows us to avoid having to hang a curtain in a damp location. When we installed this window we did not patch or paint any of the wood trim that was mangled putting this in. I have carefully tried to cover this up with flowers or other bathroom accessories but it was pretty embarrassing.

Using a house guest due in two weeks to spur me on, I decided to patch and repair the window trim and then paint all the trim a fresh coat of semi-gloss white.   Over the course of several nights I came home and patched and sanded.  I figured this was the best time since Josh was away on a business trip so the bathroom got a lot less use then it would.  This had been the hold up for years.  Between two showers, numerous bathroom trips there never seemed to be a time for get in there and allow paint to dry.  

It ended up taking three coats of paint, which I applied mostly on my hands and knees.  I got up close and personal with our toilet and got to remind myself why this was the most poorly designed bathrooms I know.  There is literally about 18 inches of space around each item in the room which creates these wonderful thin slivers of useless space where hair can hide in nice balls and where I now needed to wedge myself to paint. There was a moment when I had to rest my cheek on the side of the toliet as I reached to get the back corner.  It was graphic (no picture, thank goodness).  The good news the bathroom is about 32 sqft so it didn't take long to do a coat, the bad news I got paint all over myself.

Josh came home to freshly painted trim and a cleaned up window and was dutifully impressed.  I was proud. 

But, the rest of the room now looked all the more worn for the new glossy trim.  We both agreed we really needed to paint the walls and clean up the grout as soon as possible.  I made an appointment for a tile cleaner and figured we would start there.

Not Your Grandma's Fireplace

January 2013

After I made the big jump to paint the brick it was a smooth sailing to completion.  The fireplace surround that started this entire project was finally ready to be installed. For those who are interested, the surround is made by Pleasant Hearth and my mom purchased it on Amazon where it shipped free.  It has a craftsman feel to it and the arch top doors reminded me of our own hobbit door not so far away. There are several other designs that seem to work well for older style homes.

The install of the piece was really easy.  It pretty much has six toggle bolts that you tighten into the sides and top of your fireplace opening.  No seriously, that was it. According to the directions it might have been more complicated if our opening was taller, or if we lacked a metal brick ledge.  But for once, in the history of the house, we appeared to have something 'typical.' Once, it came out of the box it took only a few moments to unpack, install the provided insulation into the back and read the instructions. Just because I like to make double sure of things I decided to go online and read up a bit.  Most reviewers were positive, a few mentioned it you were using this to act as a damper you probably needed to add some additional sealing and insulation.   I went ahead and purchased the other items they recommended. 

Josh cleaned the interior of the brick opening (Gus of course had to help).  He then applied a sticky back insulation roll, roughly about 2" thick around three sides of the opening.  This is supposed to help with the inevitable air gap where the surround meets the brick.  Sorry for the lack of pictures but since it was a two man job we were lacking apposable thumbs.  The next step after the surround installed was to use heat resistant silicone to fill in all the gaps around the top and edges where our surround sat flush to the brick but left openings where the indented mortar lines were. 

This was honestly the worst part, I hate silicone.  Its not easy to work with, it sticks to everything, and it doesn't wipe off you or other objects with water.  Once every mortar hole was filled with silicone we installed the door handles.  Finally, I got my decorating cap back on and put back all my fireplace chitz.

The run down is this.  Three weeks of work, one new surround, one gallon of masonry primer, reused stain, paint, and poly.  It cost roughly $300 and made a huge difference to our little family room.

Before 2010:

2012:

2013: