How's That Bathroom Looking?

So, have you been waiting with baited breath to hear about our little adventures in remodeling the White House?? Sure. The last installment left us in a predicament with our toilet, right? Well, here are a few pictures I snapped just before the old toilet was taken out.

Ripping out the fake tile wallboard stuff:




Ahh, yes. Getting the old cruddy sink out of there:




Here you can see several layers of walls that the bathroom had seen:


Plaster knocked out, down to the slats:



Oh, and just so you can sleep tonight, here is a picture of our new toilet, installed and working perfectly!!! (There is the new drywall in the background as well!)


I'm going to leave you in suspense over the results. Wuahahahaha! Tune in for the next installment!!

Yes, Yes, I Am Actually Alive!!

And yes, I do realize it has been over a week since my last post... I Am So Sorry!! We have gotten ourselves mixed up in a complete bathroom renovation, and boy this 69 year old house had some surprises in store for us! On Tuesday night the Mr. took out the vanity and toilet and took down the fake tile look cardboard stuff. The wall behind the board was not salvageable so he ripped out all the plaster from four feet high down to the floor. On Wednesday we put up drywall and I spackled while he was at work. Wednesday night and Thursday he fussed with putting the toilet in which is where things started going south, I will get to that in a minute... Also on Thursday I went to order the sink, which as luck would have it was going to take "around a week" to come in. Sheesh!

So, I don't know what the people were thinking when they "fixed" the bathroom before, but they somehow thought that having a flange on the toilet wasn't necessary. Yeah, the (rusty, corroded) bolts were cemented into the floor and the wax ring was just sitting directly on the floor! Furthermore, they fitted some new pipe into the "poop hole" and cemented it in but didn't make sure it was level while the concrete was setting, so the pipe was crooked. So when the Mr. brought home a new flange and put it on it wouldn't sit level, and he couldn't shimmy it to where it was level because then it wouldn't sit flush with the floor. He got a metal bit and for the next three days, between working at his real job, getting three hours of sleep per night and me shoving food in his mouth so he wouldn't have to go through a two hour decontamination process just to get dinner in his belly, he was grinding the metal pipe to the point where he could fit the flange on correctly.

YAY! Or so we thought... After correcting the ID10Ts slap job of getting the toilet (they just kept reinstalling the original toilet, by the way... BLECH!!) in, the Mr. put in our new Lowe's toilet, which went fine until he put the tank on the back. Hmmm... it wouldn't fit. The bowl was right against the wall, literally touching the wall, so the tank couldn't fit, the bolts to attach the two together wouldn't even match up! URG!! Well, after yet another trip to Lowe's we found someone who actually knew what he was talking about! He said that we needed a toilet with a 10" setback (which is the distance between the wall and the bolts in the floor) which is something most people "nowadays" don't know about. Of course, Lowe's and the other big box home improvement stores don't stock that kind, but he could order it for us and it would arrive in three to ten days (Lets see, it's Saturday, and I've had to shlep down to the basement to pee since Tuesday, what's another week-and-a-half) OR we could try some small plumbing stores, one of which was the store where we ordered our sink. YIPPIE!! So we run right over to that store only to find out they were closed on Saturday and Sunday.

Well, at 8AM this morning I was on the phone calling this store, but no one answered. Wait 30 minutes. Called again. Yep, they have 10" "rough in" toilets. They probably have a couple in stock. They'd cost around $125.00 - less than we paid for our Lowe's potty. Told the Mr. and he jumped out of bed and ran (well, drove, actually) over there. An hour later he was bringing our new toilet through the door! Then he bathed really fast, dressed, grabbed his lunch and ran off to work. So, maybe with a little bit of luck and a lot of prayer I will at least have a potty up here before I go to bed tonight. I guess I can keep dreaming about my inspiration bathroom:

I Think I Have Given My Blog The Wrong Name

So, I'm starting to think I should have name this blog Adventures in Wrecking My Nest or something like that. The Mr and I were talking last week about getting new living room furniture (none of the furniture matches... or even meshes well together, for that matter.), but after looking around at three or four (or seven) furniture stores and thinking it over some more we came to the conclusion that we could make our bathroom really look the way we want for about the same amount of money. We thought that would be the better option.

What do I want to do in the bathroom? Well, the tile needs to go, the fake tile needs to go, and the sink desperately needs to go. We have talked about what kind of sink to get and whether those fabulous marble tiles might be under the sink cabinet. I was pretty sure that the cabinet was not original to the house and that the tile would be under the cabinet. This morning I decided to sneak (not much sneaking going on in this tiny house, but...) in there and do this:



Yeah, I don't think this cabinet is going to be worth even donating when we are through with it.


Plaster walls... with a big chink in them. Where there is one, there will be more... Ugg, that's going to be a job!


Okay, here we go! I think I can get a view of the flooring now!



Good news!! That picture shows the first layer of linoleum! They must have still had the pedestal or wall mounted sink (which I'm guessing is what was originally installed when the house was built) at that time. So there must be the marble floor underneath.

I'm having visions of the perfect bathroom. And it looks eerily similar to this picture I saw at The Inspired Room. She posted about decorating in black and white not too long ago... and, anyway, here she is:


Isn't she wonderful (I almost typed fabulous, but I think I'm wearing that word out, so I'll let it rest)!! We found a similar sink today, and those are almost my tiles. My heart starts beating a little faster whenever I see this picture!

My Fireplace: A Tutorial

Maybe you live in a circa 1940 home like I do and you have a "lovely" fireplace that looks like this:


We have lived in this house for almost six years. I have never liked this fireplace. At first all I could think was, "Why would someone paint that stone fireplace?" But then again, I didn't know what was underneath all that bright white high gloss paint (why gloss? why did they have to paint it with gloss???) I dreamed that one day I'd have the money to stucco the thing or strip the paint or move to a new house or something so that I would no longer have to look at this mass of bright white, high gloss piece of ugliness. But I've realized that isn't about to happen anytime soon, so I decided to do something about it. Myself. Without spending a dime. You can do it too!!

First I gathered together all this stuff from around the house:

Paint. (These were paints I had sitting around the basement. The white almond is our kitchen cabinets, the apricot is our dining room walls, the rainforest green is the girls' bedroom walls, the black was house trim, the tan and the gray color in the back were colors I just mixed from those other colors, and the burnt sienna and burnt umber were from a paint set we had.)
Sponge brushes.
Kitchen sponges.
Detail brushes.
Oh, and not pictured, but very important: Sandpaper. And a damp cloth.

The first thing you must do is sand the stones. This doesn't really take the paint off, it just roughs up the surface a bit so the paint will adhere better. After sanding, wipe the stone down with your damp cloth. While you are at it you can pick out the pine needles that got wedged in between the fireplace and the screen thingy when you had your fabulous Christmas garland up for Nester's Garland show and Tell.

Now you are ready to sponge on your base coat:


Pretty hideous, huh? Don't worry! It will look nothing like this when we are finished, I promise! What we are doing right now is giving the stone some depth.

On some stones I added patches of green, like this:


Doesn't it make you want to scream, "GO CANES!" Okay, so maybe it just makes you want to scream...

Next I sponged on some of the browns and it looked like this:


Now it's starting to evolve! I rubbed on some black. See you can still see some of the other layers showing through:


Now we are going to add tan. Remember to start off pretty lightly because you can always add more. The kitchen sponge starts to really come in handy on these later layers. I sponge the paint on with the sponge brush, then dab with the kitchen sponge. Always make sure you are dabbing, otherwise there will be streaks which are not very common in real stones.


Now we go gray. Yes, ladies, sometime going gray is a good thing! I sponge and dab and rub and even use my fingers a little bit to get the paint just how I want it and here is what I end up with:

Don't forget to stop very often! You need to step back and view your progress.

Your stones will evolve even after you think you are done. See those chocolately brown stones? They don't look anything like that now.

Between thinking exactly how I wanted the whole thing to look, researching the internet for ideas on how exactly to do this, getting pictures of stonework, and chasing two kids away from my jars of paint every ten minutes, I was able to do about five stones per day. You will probably be able to get it done much more quickly!

Here is what I have ended up with:
(Note: I still have to seal it so the paint won't stratch off...)




Now I have to figure out what to do with the mantel and trim... But I think I will sit back for a while and enjoy what I have accomplished so far.


I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial!!

Why? Just Tell Me Why.

What could possess someone to cover this up with linoleum??
It's not a perfect job. We need to scrub it, buff it, or something, but who in their right mind could cover this beauty?? I don't care if it does feel cold under your feet - put on some darn socks for crying out loud!!
My husband's answer as to why someone would do that was something like, "Well, if you were drunk this would really make you dizzy!"

I did say that I thought the first layer looked like it was from the sixties or seventies, so maybe they were tripping out on something...

Can We Tear Up This Little House Any More??

Remember my ugly duckling? Well, yesterday I was is the bathroom talking to my husband while he was getting a bath (what, you've never done that?) and some water splashed all over our basket of magazines so I moved it to keep the water from ruining our required reading. Now remember why that basket was so strategically placed? We started looking at the linoleum and got the bright idea that we'd peel up the floor! I knew what was underneath because I had already looked under it in the bathroom closet. There was a loose tile in the closet so I yanked it out and we went to Lowe's to see what it was (I thought maybe it was quartz) and what we needed to fix the floor. It turns out that the tile was marble!! We have marble floors under three layers of linoleum!!

My husband hard at work:

Here the first layer is peeled up and you can see the second layer:

Here is the original marble floor:

This picture is after he ripped the whole top layer of linoleum up.

You can see the bottom layer of linoleum in this picture. I'm guessing it was laid in the 60's or 70's.

I'll keep posting the progress on this project. He started last night and we still have a long way to go!

An Ugly Duckling of a Bathtub

Chris asked me in this post if that was my bathtub to the right of the window. Well, yeah, it is, but I'm going to give you the real deal on this.



Here is the glorious arched alcove bath:

And here we have a basket of magazines to peruse...

...or to hide the three layers of linoleum that are peeling up from mildew!



Here is the bath from a different angle:

That tile going around the arch is just ugly.

"What's that?" you say? "What's that thing at the top where the shower head is supposed to be?"

Why, it's a broken shower head nozzle! And it's ready to spray the skin right of your body like a power washer!!

Oh, this is the example of the lovely mildewed corners of the bathtub...

And this is the lovely job the previous owners did of putting up a fake (cardboard) tile do-hickey on the back of the tub. Gotta love how they pieced the thing!!

Well, I guess I should mention some pros about the tub now. I do absolutely adore the alcove, although I'd like to figure out how to improve the tiles (you can't paint them can you???) And the tub itself is so deep and great for soaking. I also love the lines of the tub which you can see in the second pic...

Hmm, maybe I can get pictures of my grandparents tub on here after Christmas. It's really neat... REALLY colorful, but really neat.

What Could Be Hiding in the Ivy???

I was going to write about favorite toys from my childhood, but we made a little discovery the other day that I just had to document here...

Okay, so in my first (Wait, wait! Did you notice what I just did? I just made that word a hyperlink! Woo hoo! No more stupid hyperlinks-that-are-just-the-address's for me! Yeah, I rock!!!)post you caught a glimpse of my hideous breakfast-nook-turned-office-room with the nasty ivy wallpaper crawling all over the wall. Well, that picture wasn't actually that bad, because, see, on three of the walls the ivy wallpaper was only on the lower two feet of the wall below a to-low-to-be-a-chair-rail-chair-railing (What's up with the phrases-that-are-all-dashed-together today?? Promise that's the last one. Promise.). What you don't see is the one wall on which one of the previous owners decided to nix the railing and just do the whole wall in the ivy monstrosity. See?
That's just half of the wall because on Thursday I was doing some rearranging in the off ice and I just couldn't stand to look at it anymore. So, I got and exacto and just started ripping it down wherever I could. My poor dear husband came home to find "his" office rearranged, wallpaper everywhere, and me smiling stupidly (after having downed almost half a bottle of wine), "Doesn't it look great, Honey?"Wow, that picture is blurry! I must have had a kid hanging off of me...

Well, as I was ripping I uncovered a "sweet" little message someone had left for me. Can you see it??
This is after I scrubbed part of it off today! Honestly, I know it must have been a stupid teenager, but still, on the wall of some one's home? Give me a break! Well, I guess it's all the more incentive to keep at it, so I'm going to be working on that tonight.