Some of our DIY Home Renovations

The work at our house is amazing. I'm saving the pictures of the work being done by the pro's for later.  This post is about our personal DIY efforts.

We started with finishing the trim work in the girls room. This was the last step in their redo's. Having the carpet replaced (added in Ky's) made a huge difference! Doug did the prep work and I painted.

 

We then moved on and painted the living room and hallway. The problem here is that now the fireplace looks dingy... guess I know what's next.

 

I desperately want to change out the doors.. but that is not in the budget this time around.

Maddie helped out by working on my bedroom painting while I worked on her bathroom. So thankful for her sweet worker spirit!

I've also worked on the laundry room. It was BAD. I looked to see if there was a before picture. Nope. It was that bad.  Here are my in progress pictures.

 

And then I decided to tackle Maddie's bathroom. The floors were being redone and I knew that while I wanted to renovate it, I couldn't afford to right now.. so I painted (am painting) the tile. It is incredibly stinky.

The before.

During.

The paint that I used previously for a tile project was a little different, so it took a while for me to get my groove. I should have started on the wall behind the toilet! Where the inconsistency didn't matter. ugh. Now I have to go back and sand paper the drip marks. But oh well, it looks soooo much better already!!

This is truly stinky stuff.

And here we are after the first few coats.

 I am in love.

I'm hoping that a new counter will just magically appear on Maddie's counter. If not, we will wait till the next round of renovations!

What a difference.

That's pretty much been my mantra these days I have been spending around 8 hours each Saturday and Sunday working on the house. It will be totally worth it. But in the meantime... I'm tired.

I LOVE Style By Katy

As a creative artsy person it isn't easy to say this.. but I hate home decorating. I love the results of a nice home design, I just roll my eyes at the work. I just am not patient and and don't enjoy the process of picking out the stuff to make a room look nice. 

This stems from the fact that I never like the results and it seems like I always end up buying the wrong color, style, or whatever 15 times before I get to the right thing. So I don't. I end up with a room that isn't finished or is "finished" badly and live with it.

On the flip side, my sister Katy LOVES home decorating. She designed the decor of my old house and the results were stunning. But she has been uber busy with her children and life and work so I didn't want to bother her with my pathetic decorating needs.

But those days are OVER! Katy is now staying home with her young children and has started a home based business using her love of decorating and her savvy shopping skills. YES!!!

The process was amazingly easy. 

Here are some pictures of our first project together.

Take pictures of the space. I started with our hall bathroom. It is an eyesore with good bones.

I gave her my parameters. The fixtures couldn't be changed, the flooring is going to be changed in a couple of months to a dark ash grey color and I really wanted to keep the canvas that I liked so the colors needed to work with that.

After asking my preference on a few items, she sent me a design board along with all of the links to purchase the items from Etsy, Target and Lowe's. It was soo easy!

And so I began. Almost immediately I could see the paint was going to transform the room.

When I got to the new little shelves, I wasn't sure where to put them, so I sent Katy the picture with the options and she replied.

Done.

And while I loved the print that she suggested in the first place, I ended up getting another one that she picked out as an alternate because a different Etsy store was having a 20% off sale!

And there you have my hall bath makeover. 

Here is my spending summary:

Painting supplies for the walls, the cabinets (I went ahead and did a refresher of them since I was painting..) and the mirror: $55.

Soft Goods (including towels, bath mat, shower curtain, liner: $100

Hardware (shower rod, shelves) $40

Window shade: $20 

Accessories: $30

Total: $245 plus the $100 design board

Would I do it again if she wasn't my sister? YES!! I already have.

I can't wait to show you Lexi's bedroom. It is AMAZING!!

And here is my take-away... while it's hard to spend $100 on a design board that you can't actually use in your decorating. It is totally worth it! I have spent way more money on mistake decorating purchases over the years! A decent quality shower curtain is easily $40 and it doesn't matter the quality if it looks bad in the room!

So yeah, I'm sold.

Katy,I am so proud of you and what you are doing!

You can contact her at info.stylebykaty@gmail.com to start your own home decorating project.

Another Bathroom Refresher!

Like many houses built in the mid 1970s, our house has a number of style issues. Today's problem deals with the tile.

 

The tiles are in good shape, just out of date!

 

So... what do you do? If it's like our tile and it's just the accent tile, fix it like I did today. If it's horrible, fix it like I did our other house about a month or so ago! (search for bathroom remodel)

 

Today, since this was a small project, I pulled out the finger nail polish and the paint pen.

Here is the before.

 

 

And here is the tile in progress. I used Sally Hansen 300 White polish to prime the gold accent tile becuase that is what my teenage daugther had.

 

A cool thing about this project was that Lexi could help.  Since nail polish is in a small bottle with a little brush, it is perfect for those inbetween kids to help with!

 

After we finished going around the walls once with fingernail polish, I went back over with white paintpen. If I had purchased more white fingernail polish, I would have just used that as it coated better, but I had a white paint pen and that did the trick as well.

 

Tada! 

 

I'm still deciding on the color of the mirror and looking for decorations that remind me of the ocean. I'm trying to stick with calming blues and greens. With 3 girls in and out of the bathroom I figure any calming force that we can use would be a good thing.