Finishing Touches - Kids' Bathroom

I finished it, I finished it! I have been sitting on the photos of most of the decor pieces for this room for weeks and weeks now, waiting for myself to get around to the last little bit so I could share it all at once. Well, today was the day I quit putting it off in favor of other things - go me!

The kids' bathroom was actually one of the easier rooms to pull together. I would just randomly run across things and think "oh that's perfect for ____!"

The first thing we did was replace the towel bar with a wall shelf and hooks. We all know it's a losing battle, trying to get the kids to hang up their towels, let alone hang them up and expect them to look good. In fact, Tyler is too small to even pretend he could hang up his own towel. I heard about the idea for using hooks for kids towels long long ago and have been so happy to finally get some myself. Then I ran across a shelf I fell in love with on the Idea Room blog.

Perfect, no? My husband actually agreed and had no problem re-creating one. Isn't he fabulous? He built this the same time he built my fantastic drying rack and it went on the wall as soon as the paint was dry. (see! told you I'd been waiting and waiting to show you!)


For those of you that are now insanely jealous and wanting one for yourself (I know you're out there because I've already had at least 2 people tell me that next time Sam builds anything he needs to just go ahead an make one for them too! :) ), it's not too complicated. We used a wide board for the back (1x10" I think), then used the length of 1x4 for the top. Added a piece of crown molding under the 1x4
and some rope trim around (smaller detail trim is harder to find than you'd think at Home Depot. This piece came from Michael's.) the bottom to dress it up a bit. And of course added the hooks (these are from Target). Then I filled in the holes and painted it all.
Of course, then I had to figure out what to put on top of the shelf. I ran across this bathroom definition printable (free - you can find one for yourself here) and thought it would be fun. So I had that printed the last time I ordered photo prints, matted it with scrapbook paper and stuck it in a frame.
I added a small floral arrangement and filled a couple of cylinder vases with the shells Kaitlyn collected at the beach last week.

And there you have it! I'm so happy with it, now that it's all pulled together. Well, I was happy with it as soon as it went on the wall too, but even more happy now! It probably needs a couple more things to fill out the shelf, but this will do until the right things find me.

For the other wall, I took these fun shots of my kids up to their necks in bubbles in my jetted tub and had them printed on canvas. Then I used my handy dandy vinyl (and Silhouette) to make a couple of flourishes to finish it off and hung it all over the toilet.

Ready for the final Before/After? Ok then.

Before:
After!

Before:
And After!

Cross another room off the list, baby! Happy Dancing now... :)

Linking to:



Tatertots and Jello

Before and After - Part 3

Anyone that bothers to read my (lame) status updates on Facebook knows that I've (still) been painting my tail off. And I know you are all (or at least two of you!) anxiously waiting to see how it's coming along.
Here is exhibit 1. Sam calls it WallZilla. To the rest of us, it's our entry. It's two-story and try as I might I couldn't get the right photo angle to show just exactly how intimidating that height is, especially above the stairs. I've been dreading tackling it. Really really dreading it. But Sunday, tackle it we did. I spent way too long at the top of a really tall ladder, super tense, painting with one hand while Sam stood at the bottom making sure it didn't slip. And I won't tell you how I managed to paint above the ledge in the staircase - I don't want you to try it at home. And the parts we couldn't reach even then? We taped a paintbrush to the end of the roller extension pole and free-handed it. Let's just say I'm glad no one can get close enough to any of it to inspect my work because it's far from perfect.
Before: (yes I forgot to grab before photos until I was partially done taping)
Entry

Stairsand upstairs hallway

After:
We used a total of 3 gallons of paint on everything. And in the end, I'm glad we did it (and saved ourselves $1000 for only one day of hard work). Paint always goes a very long way in changing the appearance of a room.

Before the entry, I had tackled the kitchen because that's where we had been testing the paint colors. Took us 3 tries, but we got one we're pretty happy with. I know it's hard to really guage it in photos but it's a khaki color - not too green, not too brown, not too dark but a decent contrast to the white trim.
Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

And not to be left out, the kids' bathroom got the same color paint.
Bathroom before:
Bathroom After:

By my calculations I have 5 rooms left to paint, 4 of which will be getting the same paint color. Then I can move on to the accessorizing - yay!