Decorating Endeavors Part III: the Bathroom!

I watch WAY more design shows than is healthy.  I watch psychotic homeowners take out a whole kitchen's worth of cabinets because they are oak, not cherry, and replace them for like... $10,000 when they could have just STAINED THEM.  STAIN! Come ON people!  I watch people who don't know how to hang a picture try to flip a house.  I deviously laugh when they fail (hey, they put themselves on tv, I get to laugh at them) and I am happily shocked when they get their asking price too (I'm not TOTALLY evil, just somewhat evil...).

Anyways, the one thing people spend a gazillion dollars on and swear they will get every penny back is the bathroom.  Nevermind that they chose a shower with 50 jets and 30 speakers that play the Rocky soundtrack with corresponding light show instead of a, you know, boring bathtub.  I refuse to live somewhere without a bathtub.  Maybe I am persnickety but you can't take a bubble bath in a shower even if it can solve complex math equations and automatically wash your dog.  That being said, we spent roughly $50 on our bathroom and damnit I hope we get that back! Just kidding.

Before

I really love the 1950's look that the kitchen has.  What I do not love is that horrific brass sliding door.  Sliding doors are typically nice since it keeps water from spilling everywhere and you don't have a shower curtain attacking you whilst you try to rinse off.  BUT when one of the doors is a mirror and it is located DIRECTLY next to the toilet, let's just say that there are a few aspects of daily life that don't need to be reflected in a mirror.  Also, I would like to draw your attention to the GIANT WINDOW in the shower.  Yeah, our house backs up to another row of houses in the back.  Every single person in that row can see DIRECTLY into the bathroom, especially at night.  I see this as being potentially problematic, just a thought.

After

Dan picked the color.  I love it! I think it is one of the more feminine colors in the house (Antique Map by Martha Stewart-Valspar that they don't make anymore) but it is very very retro and awesome.  

Have I mentioned that the room is also Paris-themed?  It's the only "themed" room in the house and it was kind of completely by accident.  I also am one of those people that ends up with 10 different kinds of shampoo because I fall prey to commercials.  I wish I was kidding.  We had to put a shower curtain and some frosted contact paper over the window because the wooden window frame didn't like being hit by the shower head and we didn't want to put on a show all the time for our neighbors.  Hey, you can't get it for free!

Well all we did was paint, change the light fixture and replace the door with a curtain.  I think it was a success!

Decorating Endeavors Part II: The Office!

The office was the only room in the house that we pretty much put together right away and haven't changed it (i.e. I haven't repainted it 5 times and the furniture has stayed put).

Before

Ok, this is not the office, this is the dining room.  However, I don't have a picture of the office "before" and it is directly above the dining room so they are identical, just about, minus the fan.

The office (or second bedroom) is much darker than the dining room for some reason.  Since I am in school and Dan is getting ready to start school, we wanted a warm, studious area.  So.....

After

Tada! A perfect reading chair!

And a nice desk!  Ignore the leaning pictures, we were hanging stuff in the basement and they weren't done yet.   So, from all white boring room to a nice cozy study room!  Now I just need to learn to pry myself from the living room and actually do my reading up here!

Decorating Endeavors! Part I, the Kitchen.

Dan and I moved into our Hampden rowhouse about a year and a half ago.  It was entirely greyish-white, the kitchen was outdated, the basement was a mess, and the yard looked a bit droopy and sad.  We picked it for a few reasons: 1. it was a very good price 2. it is an end of row house, so it has windows on 3 sides instead of the normal 2 for rowhouses and 3. we wanted something we could work with to make our own.  Since we had pretty much a non-existent budget and I change my mind about 3 times a minute, it was a bit of a challenge.  Now, the house seems pretty much done!  Let's start with the kitchen, shall we?

Before

Hmmm nothing to write home about.  There is an old, nasty fridge and a broken stove.  The floor is covered in stick-on tiles.  There is no backsplash.  That weird light thing above the sink? Yeah that thing doesn't work.

What did we do? Well, first, we decided to paint it red...

In Progress

New stove! Moved the fridge! Bye bye stupid useless light!  It's an improvement, but it is still all cluttered and obnoxious.   Notice all the craziness??

Yeah only one of us can cook at a time and we have zero counter space.  Really.  Maybe a foot. Tops.  See the dish rack?  That is because we have no dishwasher.  It takes up the only space we actually have. Dude.

So... it took us a year and a LOOOTTTTT of switching, sweat, tears, mania, etc.  but we SUCCEEDED!!!! BEHOLD!!!!

After!!

First, we couldn't afford to replace a fridge just because it was ugly... soooo we painted it with chalkboard paint! It is a bit banged up right now but it is a VAST improvement to the ugly stained white thing.  

The ugly builder's grade wood cabinets are now white! Dan and I put up the tile ourselves and it was soooo much easier than I thought it would be.  Now I am eyeing the bathroom....  Notice a shiny stainless steel appliance that wasn't here before?? Yep, that would be a DISHWASHER there! I had NO idea the dishwasher would affect us as much as it did.  The kitchen is clean about 95% of the time.  The dishes stay clean, things don't linger in the sink, and we have reclaimed our countertops!  Of course, we lost the only big cabinet we had for storage so we had to get creative. First, we hung those lovely pots and pans above the stove- very very handy!

Second, we decided to put up pegboard a la Julia Child for the rest of our pots, pans, etc.  Edmond seems to appreciate the change!

We also decided to replace the ugly little light with a $40 "track lighting" fixture from Ikea.  Go Ikea!  Now we can actually see what we are doing!  So, after many many coats of paint, tiling, 2 new appliances, 1 new light fixture, and a lot of door handles, we have a somewhat new kitchen!!! Dan wants to replace the stick-on tile.  I can't figure out what to put there instead...  We will have to wait and see!  Overall, I think we had a very successful remodel! Yay!!!