Half bath Reno

Our half bathroom on the main floor was not my cup of tea.  My mom described the walls as "old skin".  Who doesn't want a bathroom that reminds guests of old skin?  Maybe this could be a PSA about tanning beds.  "Hey you college co-ed, don't go fake and bake or you will look like these half bath walls".  We are the 4th owners of our 1999 house and the second owners had wonderful taste, but the 3rd owners, well, did not.  So when they changed some parts of the house it took away the flow of the decor.  But, dead skin is not in my decor, well, ever. (I have found that I am really bad at taking "Before" pictures, but here is one after my kids destroyed a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.  I had my dad paint it this neutral color to see if I could live with the faux finish on the walls. Before it was a brown paint. So imagine it darker without shredded toilet paper all over the floor--good times!)

The vanity was a piece of furniture what was turned into a sink.  One of the biggest problems is when water was splashed on it, it started rotting.  This is one of the reasons that we ended up gutting the bathroom.

You can see the color of the walls before they were painted where the vanity was in this picture

The ceiling had a neat faux finish on it, but it was way too dark.  I didn't mind the light fixture. Our handy man traded me free installation of our new light fixture for this one! Score

One February morning, I noticed that under the sink was moldy...ewwww!  So I called our trusty handyman to remove the vanity and he ended up gutting the entire bathroom. The toilet had been caulked around it and it was leaking. Because of the caulking we had no idea it was leaking and this could have lead to a bigger problem.  The floor had started molding and if it had gone unnoticed for years, could have rotted the floor out and the toilet could have fallen through the floor. Can you imagine?!? Billy was quite surprised when he got home and out bathroom looked like this:

The only thing left was the light!!

Due to some unforeseen issues we lived with a gutted bathroom for 3 months.  It was kind of a pain when we had people over, but they didn't seem to mind using a bucket in the yard.  No, our master bedroom is the on the main floor, so people just used our bathroom.

Because of the delay, I had lots of time to think about what to do in this room.  I wanted to do something different in there.  I think you can get away with a lot more "wild" in a half bathroom.  I decided I wanted to do wallpaper.  OH MY GOSH, have you ever looked for wallpaper?!?  It is insane.  I cannot believe how many books upon books of wallpaper choices there are.  It is truly overwhelming. I took my poor mother with me to look.  I needed a nap and a drink after that experience.  I came up with two choices:

When I showed this one to my dad he said, you are kidding...right?!

The first one is a much "safer" choice and I really liked it, but again, I wanted something different, something I wouldn't do in any other room of the house.  So we decided on the pink!  It took some convincing of Billy.  But once he realized he didn't really have a say, he happily agreed! The wallpaper is from the UK so it took a few weeks to be delivered.  

Our handy man put the walls back up, painted them with 2 coats of paint and painted the ceiling.  We decided to go with a gray color to complement the wallpaper. The brown and gold was much too dark and I did not want plain white. 

Then the day came to put the wallpaper up! It was pretty amazing watching the wallpaper hanger do his magic.  It is all about repeats. He did a great job, but what exhausting work!

It took him about 3 hours

I picked out a vanity from pottery barn.  I looked at Lowes and Ferguson but did not find something I liked for a half bath.  I really liked the look of the hammered sink and liked how it brought out the metallic in the wallpaper. 

My neighbor found this amazing mirror on Horchow.com, it is a perfect compliment to the space!

The last thing to find was a light fixture.  I knew I wanted to replace the one we had. I liked the existing one, but felt I need something with more "sparkle".  There is a great outlet light store near me and the women who work in there are always really helpful.  They suggested this fixture and it was a great price and it is definitely sparkly enough!

We are really happy how the bathroom turned out and its an unexpected pop of color for our guests! 

The best place to start is at the beginning...

We moved back to Virginia from North Carolina in the summer of 2012.  We had a 6 week old so of course, the timing was perfect for moving.  Who doesn't like to watch all their stuff be packed up with a screaming infant in their arms and a 2 year old wrapped about their legs?  But, hey, we live on the edge.

We moved into an apartment since we did not find the "perfect" house before the new owners of our NC house demanded that we leave.  Can you imagine how excited the people above us in the apartment building were to see us coming? A toddler, infant, a dog, and two exhausted parents--we were the perfect tenants! But don't worry, our 2nd child screamed every night from 5-10 pm, so it got even better for our neighbors.

Moving into our apartment

The days and months slowly ticked by as I waited patiently for a house to come on the market that we liked.  I only called my realtor, Anna, every other day and checked realtor.com every 36 minutes.  But one September morning, Anna, called me and told me that I needed to come see a house ASAP.  Could it be the house? Our house? Our answer for getting out of the apartment that reeked of smoke and I could be reunited with the other half of my crap that got put into storage?

We had a few requirements for our house.  We wanted all brick, a basement, a nice kitchen, 5 bedrooms (we knew we wanted 3 children and room for guests), and no 2-story rooms.  We had a 2-story family room in our house in NC and did not like it--hard to heat, cool, and it was noisy upstairs (Billy would be watching a football game downstairs and my Real Housewives of name a city would be disrupted).

I met Anna at "the" potential house.  Brick, check. 5 bedrooms, check.  Basement, check.  But it did not have a nice kitchen and it had a 2-story family room.  I told Anna maybe we should keep looking.   Anna, a wise woman, encouraged me to look at the house again and think about the things that it has that I cannot change--brick and a basement--and the things that I COULD change like the kitchen and the 2-story room.  So I called Billy and told him I found our house, being a trusting soul, he insisted on seeing it before putting in an offer. I guess if you are about to make the biggest financial decision of your life, you like to see it in person.  But he approved and loved the house as much as I did (minus the kitchen and family room).

Our offer was accepted and it all went really smoothly, the inspection was really "clean", we only did minor negations with the owners, easy peasy.  So then I started looking into kitchen remodels.  Ummm...do you know how much renovations cost? Yes, I'm sure you do.  Everyone seemed to know but me.  So my kitchen got tabled (kitchen tabled?!?) to a few years out.  These contractors, they want money.  I know--I was as shocked as you are.  Crazy.

So here starts our adventure in slowly making this house our home and getting ready for a huge renovation.  We are going to gut the whole existing kitchen, expand it into the existing dining room, create a small office at the front of the existing dining room (new kitchen), move the dining room to the existing formal living room, close the family room off and create a media room above it, add a bathroom to the new space above the family room. Wish us luck...we will need it!

Home Sweet Renovation