Spare Bathroom Update

Our new bathrooms definitely needed a little face lift.  After we got the keys to our new house and walked in for the first time, my husband commented that there was a moldy mildewy smell in the house that we never smelled with the previous owners belongings still in the house.  Once we got to the bathrooms and started looking around we think we found where it was coming from.  The vanities had some obvious water damage on the inside that we never noticed (there has got to be something about first looking at a house you're in love with, you never notice this little stuff till it becomes yours!).

I was planning on trying to paint the old vanities white, but once we saw there was some water damage, we decided we didn't really want to put our brand new quartz counter top on old vanities. The previous owners had the tile floors done in the bathrooms, and though it wasn't my first choice, it looked okay enough and would go with my decor choices.  The vanity lights also needed to be changed out.  Though I wasn't crazy about the doors on the tub, I love the mirror and decided we should keep them.  So we got to work removing the hardware and vanity.  We even removed the pea trap because we discovered another awful smell when we took the faucet off (just a good thing to replace in my opinion).
 


































Look at that wallpaper!  The one thing we realized when we were looking at the house with the realtor was that the texture in the bathrooms and kitchen did not match the knockdown texture in the rest of the house.  It was grainy and inconsistent.  Our realtor mentioned that it looked like there was wallpaper on the walls which was removed, but no texture was put up before painting.  He was exactly right.  My husband sprayed texture from a can in this bathroom since the areas to paint were so small.  While it definitely helped the appearance of having texture on the walls, we are still undecided about the quality of the texture itself.  It may be soft in some areas, there are a couple of areas where a chunk of texture came off very easily even after painting and drying.  We'll need to see how it stands up over time and wear.  Something else you'll notice is that the tile was only done up to the vanity, which may cause issues with leveling our new vanity since it is a little wider than the old one.

























I chose the color Agua Fría by Sherwin Williams:
Agua Fría - Sherwin Williams
And the vanity was from the Home Depot Decorator's Collection:
Home Depot Decorator's Collection - ThornBriar
My husband put up bead board on all 3 walls. I found some cute glass cabinet door pulls from Hobby Lobby:
Hobby Lobby - Clear Crackle Mercury Glass knob

We chose Silestone Quartz Counter tops from Lowes called Ocean Jasper:
Lowes - Silestone Ocean Jasper
Pictures do not do this counter top any justice!  It's a beautiful marbled grey with silver flecks that sparkle in the light.  We went with a 2 cm thickness, the 2 inch back splash, and the free partially beveled edge.  I love how it came out!  We also painted the medicine cabinet white and framed the mirror in white trim.  We hung a beautiful light fixture I'd found on Amazon:
Amazon - Tiara Crystal Sphere 28" Wide 4-Light Chrome Bath Light








We found out that the counter top installer charges per hole after 4 holes, I believe $295 per hole.  We really wanted under mount sinks and wide set faucets, but decided we din't want to pay for that many holes.  So we went with Kohler Drop-in sinks:
Pennington Drop-In Vitreous China Bathroom Sink in White with Overflow Drain
And Moen centerset faucets:
Hensley 4 in. Centerset 2-Handle Bathroom Faucet Featuring Microban Protection in Spot Resist Nickel

I absolutely love this bathroom!  Our daughter loves the color blue and I love the white and grey accents.  The existing tile works with the updates as well so I believe it's a win! 

New Carpet

My husband absolutely loves carpet.  I love it too, mostly.  I love the way it feels beneath my feet, and how it helps absorb sound in a room.   The carpet in the house was green and had been home to a dog previously so we decided it may be a good idea to replace the carpet in our new home before we moved in.  Obviously if you can, it's nice to get this done before there's furniture in the house so nothing has to be moved or disturbed in my opinion. Pictured right is a pretty good example of how green the carpet was.  The entryway tile is a wood-look tile, which actually looks good with the green.  I love the tile so I wanted to make sure that we found something that would go well with it. 

So after looking around, we decided to go with a carpet we found at Home Depot in the Home Decorator's Collection called Kensington:
   Home Decorators Collection - Kensington  


I loved the warmness and how well it complimented the tile.  I was a little worried about how it may look with grey accents, (I LOVE grey) but decided I would cross that bridge when I get there!  One thing that we knew for sure was that we wanted the best carpet pad they had available.  We wanted extra padding for added comfort.  At the particular store we were at, it was a half-inch foam pad:

Prime Comfort 1/2 in. thick premium carpet pad 

So long green carpet!  It was so nice to see it go. 

We've gotten a ton of compliments on how comfortable the carpet is.  We love it.  Just like the paint, I feel like the carpet has helped to really transform the space and make it more inviting.     

Fireplace TV Mount

We decided that we wanted to mount our 60" Sony flat screen above the fireplace.  We noticed that in all of the realtor pictures, the previous owners had TV stands in front of the fireplace for their TV.  And we did our research to find out all of the reasons against mounting above a fireplace to make sure we wanted to do so.  The heat and soot are two good reasons not to mount your TV above the fireplace if you plan to use your fireplace often.  We, however, live in South Texas and our winters aren't very harsh so we felt pretty confident in our decision.  We knew that given the configuration of the room, it was the most logical decision and I didn't want to face our couches any other way.  Never having had a fireplace in a home before, I absolutely wanted the fireplace to be the focal point of the room.

We discovered that the studs in the fireplace behind the drywall were not consistent, There was one stud just to the right of the middle, and no others except outside of the recessed area.  My husband bought a 2x12, textured and painted it with Wool Skein to match the rest of the wall.  Then cut it to fit inside the recessed area.  Then he used long screws (2 on each side, top and bottom) to secure it to the studs on the side, and then attached the mount to the 2x12.  He also used 2 lag bolts into the one stud we found in the middle, JUST to be on the safe side.  This was the only way we were comfortable with mounting a TV that large.  It look a little modification but we got it done!  Then he ran electrical from a light switch that is on the wall on the side of the fireplace and put an outlet behind the TV.  He also ran CAT5e and coax to plates behind the TV as well.

  Lucky for us, we have that cubby beside our fireplace so we were able to cut a small hole in the top of it so we could see what was going on up there.  The stud finder really had us scratching our heads since the studs weren't consistent.  It was alerting on some areas that weren't actually studs and it really helped to be able to see in there without cutting a huge hole in the wall!




I would definitely recommend that if you plan to mount your TV above your fireplace, or on any wall for that matter, know what you're dealing with.  And if you don't feel comfortable with the project, hire a professional!  We consulted one on this project and confirmed our plans to make sure this was an acceptable method.  Know that there will not always be studs available to attach to, and a Plan B may be needed.

He also mounted a sound bar under the TV.  I love this look!  So much cleaner than TV stands and cables!  Our big city remodel is starting to come along nicely!

Living Room Paint

We knew that we absolutely loved the bones of this home. There were a few design choices that we'd like to change to better work for us.  The previous owners were sweet enough to leave their old paint remnants in the garage for us, which saved a TON of guesswork on what colors or types of paint they used.  That was an absolute lifesaver.  We also had plans to replace the carpet and we definitely wanted to get the paint done before the carpet was installed to make things a little easier.
(PS, we also needed to make sure the paint was DRY before the carpet guys came in!)

First of all, there was one large accent wall that we knew we wanted to cover in the living room.  I definitely knew that I didn't want to keep this orange, but I didn't exactly want to paint the whole living room.  Luckily, all I had to do was go out to the garage and find the can of paint used on most of the living room walls.

We were also worried about the high ceilings.  We didn't know if we'd need a scaffolding to get up there, but our little giant ladder was just tall enough to get up there to reach the high spots thank goodness!  We bought ours from Costco and LOVE it.
Little Giant Ladders

I liked the main color well enough so we decided to go ahead and use it to paint over the orange.  The color is Wool Skein SW 6148 - Yellow Paint Color - Sherwin-Williams.
Here's what it looks like after we covered up the orange:

What a HUGE improvement!  I feel like we just changed the whole attitude of the living room.  It feels so much warmer and more inviting.

If you notice on the picture to the left we also removed the mirror and shelves above the wet bar and painted behind it as well.  We have big plans for that wet bar, but we'll talk about that in another post.

I love how paint is such a small thing to do but can make such a HUGE difference!  I'm getting really excited about this remodel!

Our new city home!

It's been quite a while since we've been able to work on our mobile home renovation, we have been renting over an hour away in the city and decided to go ahead and buy a home here for future investment purposes.  We're very excited!!!!

This is a 3 bedroom 2 bath single story home with a small office space off the living room.  There's also a Florida room in the back and hot tub which I think was the main selling point for my husband!  It was built in 1986 and we know that there were at least 2 previous owners.  The most recent owners made some great upgrades to the home and we are looking forward to continuing where they left off.   The inspection came out very good, and we already had big plans to start as soon as we got the keys. 

We fell in love with this house, but there were some changes that needed to be made. We'll be painting, replacing bathroom vanities, getting new counter tops, sinks, carpet, and trying to customize our new house as much as possible!  I will be posting about colors, design and kitchen organization (man, that is one SMALL pantry!) throughout the process.  Can't wait to get started!