POUTer Room - The Final Chapter

After WAY too long the guest bathroom is finally finished being rebuilt. I believe that this is where we left off.



The walls and tub were in but missing texture, paint and general functionality. Yeah that sounds about right.

Next came the shower surround tile. This was the number one thing I was worried about, well that and just being able to shower...at my own house...and not outside. You should never have to see your breath as you are showering. That's just a bad sign all around.



Then of course, my favorite part, paint!




Finally everything started really coming together.






Oh yeah and then another paint change...


This is how fine it is looking now.



Oh yeah.



I love how it has turned out. There are still cosmetic things to do like some shelving above the potty, and then of course a bedazzling here and there. I'm on it guys don't worry. I'll post more as those projects occur.

All I have to say from this...



...to this, was a lot of work and I will probably never do it again.




So down the road, remind me that even the smallest bathroom is a huge pain in the well you know, okay guys? No seriously. NEVER AGAIN.

Oh yeah, I did add this little ditty on the door frame itself behind the door. I figured those other people (or that darn meerkat in the wall)left those spindles and ball between my bathroom walls for me to find. Why couldn't I leave a more obvious trail?



Dang sentimentality.

POUTer Room - Chapter 2

A week into the project and I am ready to start taking lives. Seven days without your OWN shower does that to a person. Luckily we have great friends that let us drag our disgusting exhausted selves to their house to shower. I'll tell you what, there's nothing like showing up at your boss's house late at night for a hit and run cleaning. Good Times.

I would say that I had the most fun during demolition. I do not remember sweating that much like, ever. I'm sure it was pretty sexy.



Removed the vanity and found this AMAZING linoleum.







Beside the cardio, here is the other reason I loved demo



We found these in the walls. I call them secret treasures, Joe says they are garbage. It just goes along with my sentimental nature. I like to think of all the reasons they would be in the walls. It's very likely that maybe a mouse or a sewing meerkat carried them in there but I like to think that a family just like ours put them in there for future renovators to find. Just let me have my moment of rose colored glasses, okay?

After removing all the debris we removed the tub. I think I still have fiberglass in my lungs. Or I've got the black lung. One of the two. Underneath the tub actually looked pretty darn good which always makes for happy renovators! All except for the 3' by 3' whole where the drain was.



I don't ask questions about why our house is the way that it is anymore. Suck it up, fix other's mistakes, and keep going. The hubs patched that bad boy right up and we were on our way to a new bathtub and plumbing.



Bathtub CHECK!



Plumbing CHECK!

It's at this point that I always start to get a flutter in my tummy.



It's sheetrock people! SHEETROCK!

...You know what comes after sheetrock? Texture. You know what comes after texture? PAINT! Oh yes. My love for paint and colors will never cease to thrive like a river out of a mountain. That's pretty freakin' deep. Just so you know...

As we speak Joe is tiling that beast known as the bathtub surround. I haven't heard any swearing or throwing things so I'm going to say that it's going well. I could be wrong. He might have slipped in thinset hit his head and is unconscious. Hopefully he got the tile all up before that happened though. I can deal with head trauma. No Shower is just too much for this kid to handle.

POUTer Room - Chapter 1

Flashback to October 2009. Joe and I are looking at homes to start our family in. We have looked at probably 20 houses including the one we currently reside in and are getting incredibly frustrated considering we are up against a deadline to be out of our apartment. I would like to say it's because we got kicked out or something amazingly rebellious but we were just overanxious and young and put in our 30 days notice like, uh 60 days too early. After returning to our home for a second viewing this was the picture that still haunts our renovating dreams.

Yeah...

Then my husband said those words that give hope to every young girl in love with an idea of home remodeling, "I can fix that babe." Little did I know it would be almost two years and countless ideas later that we would be ready to open Pandora's box of bathroom remodeling.

You think that I'm joking about how awful this bathroom is. Here are a few more pictures just to help clear things up for ya'll.

This would be the nasty dirty vent that tries to dehumidify the room.

No that's not a mouse hole, well it might be, it's just someone being lazy and not finishing a job. Oooh and that trim.

My camera does not capture the RADIANT 1970s glitter that is in cooperated in that bathtub surround. You can still see those classy diamond shaped outlines though. Winning!

My personal favorite, uneven, dated light switches. Gah.

I have decided that I am going to do the opposite of what I usually do on projects. I am going to expect the absolute worst to happen. Hence this set of blog post titles. If I plan for the most awful of awful to happen the result has to be better than I think right? Please, please, please tell me that's how it works.

We start tomorrow people. If never another post gets written it's because Joe murdered me and buried my body underneath the dry rot that is our guest bathroom.

Made For You

I would generally say that Joe and I are an "unlucky" couple. Since I don't believe in luck really I believe in preparation and opportunity I guess I would go as far as to say that we are an unprepared couple. We fell for each other in a ridiculous almost embarrassing amount of time and planned a wedding even faster. There was no baby on board the opposite actually we were just ready. I've never really told our wedding story probably because I tried to block it out. It was a crazy ride with filled without any alcohol and too many anxiety pills. Sorry about writing that (mom) but it's true and I am nothing if not overly honest and a bacon lover.

I am a planner to a fault. Ask my poor husband, my parents, my boss, those weird neighbors that watch us while we are in our hot tub ANYBODY. Yet I wasn't that girl that planned her wedding. Mainly because I'm not the marrying type but that's another blog post. So when it came down to it I just sort of winged everything which of course increased the anxiety. You see the vicious cycle here?

Well let's start with the fun stuff DRESSES. I love to dress up so my favorite part of the wedding was trying on dresses here were a few of the contenders.









After about 30 dresses. I chose this one



I would say that the venue is the next most important thing. Funny thing about that. I had that picked out for a long time. It was a large six bedroom house in the Cascade mountains that my family stays at in the summers. Because it was large enough the guests from out of town would be able to stay there as well so two birds with one stone right? Wrong! I had sent the down payment I had spoke to the owner we were good to go as far as I knew. TWO days before the wedding my sister in law called to get the directions and the owner said that she was waiting for a confirmation E-Mail from me. To this day I look for that E-Mail and have yet to find one but whatever. Needless to say she rented the house out to another family. AWESOME. At this point I kind of just decided to not get married. I was so over everyone's drama and all the choices that weren't really mine to make.

I worked up until the day of my wedding I left late Friday to make the journey north to meet a man I hadn't seen in weeks and tie myself to him forever. I remember stopping at a Subway along the way and just watching people, something I do a lot, and just thinking about how I was going to change my life forever. I sat and stared at that engagement ring and people for probably an hour and a half. Which inevitably led to me being late for the rehearsal dinner. Thankfully my BFF Kaelyn was already there telling me to breath and getting me a brown paper sack to breath into. Thank God for her.





I have to show a picture of my bachlorette party cake because it was amazing.

I'm so sorry Grandma and Grandpa please cover your eyes.




The next morning I put on my dress...and it didn't fit. You see I have a tendency to not eat when I get stressed out so in the two weeks between my last fitting and my wedding day I had dropped 14 pounds. Here are the picture to prove it.





To this day the look on my mother's face still cracks me up!

We ended up getting married in the park by the river which was beautiful but it was pooring down rain as it often does in Salem. I had to have four helpers carry my dress so it and I didn't get soaked. SO MUCH FUN!



The ceremony went smoothly and I actually got him to say "I will" which was my greatest fear. I had so many dreams about him saying no which would have uh...sucked.

So here we are two years later to the day and he still says "I will." I wonder often why he picked me. He is such a good man. He would do anything for anyone at anytime. After three years of being together he can still make my knees weak with that smile. I guess unlucky works for us.

I Did It All for the Nookie!

So I lied on this post's title. I did it all on this Nook for organization and my sanity. The poor poor people that are my friends and family know that I am a crazy person when it comes to organization. Actually, I'm really just a crazy person in general but for the sake of this blog and their anonymity I'll just keep going. I like each object to have a specific place and purpose. So when this...



...was my laundry nook, it was officially deemed unacceptable.

Since there really isn't much space in there we had to make the most out of the square footage. Luckily there were already two very large

chudd ugly

shelves installed in there they just needed a little pretty added to them. After many a coat of paint because for some reason I hate primer (shout out to Behr paint + primer in one) they were starting to look like they actually fit in the rest of our traditional cottage.

Since no white walls are allowed in this home the builders white had to go. Quick reminder that this is not a NEW house, so this makes me greatly question the souls that lived here before us and stood for this bland impostor! The laundry nook is right off the kitchen and dining room so I decided to paint it the same color as below the chair rail in the dining room.



What is a laundry nook without baskets labeled in a foreign language right?! Well let me help you there. No nook of mine that's what! I bought these little baskets at Fred Meyer one Saturday just knowing that my Organization OCD would need caressing at some point. Then added ribbon from a previous project with a label in French so it frustrates my husband and there ya go a little cubby for rags, cleaning supplies, dog supplies, toilet tissue and laundry goodies.



Mr. Budden has a long reigning history of washing things in his pockets so I saw this little diddy on Pinterest.com and decided it was a necessity for this tiny space. Not really thinking that the person who will be reading the jar, I labeled it in French too. Who needs to read when you have a GIANT check mark and a mason jar? Seriously.



And since we already have other guestimating going ons elsewhere in this space let's add some laundry decals that no one uses anymore because we know how to read, and the greatest part of the whole project, my Mrs. Neat Freak Laundry Organizer and there you have a pretty little room.

Voila!

There you have an Ashlyn friendly, less brain cringing laundry nook. Save the oohing and awing for the upcoming football season because I've done enough of that, the washer and dryer are starting to get big heads.

Seizure Sewing Table

After eating a fantastic 10 pieces of bacon while grabbing my gut and hoping this one nights mishaps won't make me gain back the 15 pounds I've lost, I decided to post about my recent furniture mishaps and success.

Slowly and surely the new room is coming along. I was going to wait and reveal all the accoutrement at once but I just can't. So I'll make a few nugget sized posts instead. Woot!

I got this sewing table after saving this girl's life at a garage sale. So I guess she wasn't actually dead. She had a seizure and was non responsive but it acts A LOT like dead. That's another story for another post but I got it for free regardless. This is what it used to look like.

What a sad little piece of unloved furniture.

Then BAM!

Lookin' saucy! Not as saucy as those Victoria Secret commercials that randomly come on the TV and our men pretend not to look at, but pretty dang fine.

Things not shown in these pictures:

• Spilling Dark Walnut stain ALL OVER our deck, the dog, my legs and more importantly my 'bidness' a little north of my legs. Note for future stainers--WEAR LONG SHORTS AND DON'T SIT SPREAD EAGLE!

• Carrying my 70 lbs. Golden Retriever with wood stain on her paws while trying to take giant leaps in my husband's flip flops to the bathroom as not to get stain all over our new carpet.

• Blowdrying the desk after a week of not completely drying.

Yes, this was supposed to be my easy project after the dresser...it wasn't.
Looks pretty good though. Eh?

Stripe Tease

I wish I was a little less excited about this reveal alas I'm not. It was my first furniture project and so I was SUPER slow at it and went a little crazy with making sure everything was great. I love the way it turned out. First a little bit of history.

This dresser belonged to my great great grandmother. She used it most of her life and passed it down to her children, who passed it to their children who gave it to their kids and grand kids. Needless to say I was a little worried to tryout my new hobby on a piece that means so much to many people. I hope they like it. If not they can rush my house and steal it out of my tea room. Bring it.

Before I show ya'll the results I have to share my favorite part of the dresser.



That is my great great grandmother's handwriting on the back of the dresser. I can't tell you how many times I have run my hand over that signature and wondered about her history and the stories this piece could tell.

When I was 13 I wrote a message on the bottom drawer hoping that someone would find it and run their hands over it and wonder about my story. This seems doubtful but darnit I love my rose colored glasses.

Alright here we go. Hope you like it, If not...good thing it's not in your house.




BEFORE








AFTER



It literally took 3 or 4 hours just to sand the top down enough to stain it. I learned a few things during that time mainly I HATE SANDING. It gets everywhere, on everything and that noise makes me feel like I need to go see my dentist. However the wood absorbed the stain beautifully and the Dark Walnut stain looks amazing.



Notice the smile on my face at the BEGINNING of this project. Oh and how long my hair was!

I wanted to do something fun with the drawers but didn't quite have the guts to go all crazy tiger on over a hundred year old wood dresser. Call me crazy! I thought the stripes would bring it up to current day design without offending my vintage taste. I just taped off a few straight lines with plain old painters tape and BOOM! Stripage.



I purchased new knobs to better support the continual pulling motion since the little handles were starting to wear on the wood. The knobs were the most expensive part of this whole project it also took almost 2 weeks to get here! But boy are they heavy and solid! She's a brick house is playing in my head right now. Aren't they pretty?! She's mighty mighty, lettin' it all hang out...sorry.



We are using the dresser/buffet to hold our DVDs right now but I have high hopes to keep this dresser in our family for another century. Which means it probably has many restorations coming her way. Little nip here, little tuck there. Hopefully she doesn't turn out like Lisa Marie Presley. Whoo! Poor girl.