Stripe Tease

Sometime last week I got it into my head that I needed to snazz up our small bathroom. It could have been the full moon, or the fact that Mr. W uses that bathroom daily, so it looks like a locker room most of the time, or it might have been the influence of one of my latest reads—Styled by Emily Henderson. Whatever it was, I got a wild hair that I couldn't shake.

I had to do something to improve the aesthetics in there.

Every time I walked down the hallway, all I saw was a toilet and a big white wall and I just couldn't take it any longer. So I started messing around in Photoshop to see how I might be able to break up the space.

First, I tried a wire magazine rack (Mr. W does seem to do an awful lot of reading in there...)

Next, I tacked in a vintage Guinness picture to match the one we have hanging over the toilet.

Then, I tried on an accent wall treatment. 

Searching for inspiration, I Googled "black and white bathrooms" and found a large number of them with striped walls, so I decided to give that a try.

A lighter variation seemed better—and was clearly the winner among the Photoshop mocks.

A quick search through our paint closet and I found a shade I thought could work perfectly in the room. While Mr. W went to Santa Barbara for a golf lesson, I set to work taping up the wall to create my stripes. I measured out my stripe widths and then used Mr. W's laser level as a guide to set up my tape lines.

I cannot tell you how many times I drop the f-bomb when I'm doing projects like this. Let's just say, I'm very glad we don't have children in our house. They'd be getting detention a lot at school if they existed.

If you're not a crazy DIY blog reader like me, you may not know that the trick to getting crisp paint lines for these kinds of projects is to paint over your tape with the base paint color first. So after I got all my stripes laid out, I went over each area I planned to paint grey with the existing white color of the bathroom.

Once that was dry, I went to work rolling on the grey and tried to busy myself with lunch-eating and cat-petting in between coats. Of course, I forgot to take progress pictures, but when it was all done, I nearly died of joy overload. I think it turned out so cute!

The entire time I was working on the bathroom, Mr. W was outside building the vanity for our master bath. He only came inside bleeding one time. Which I suppose is pretty good when you're operating a table saw... Very excited to get this guy in place and finish that bathroom too!

Once the master is done, we may finally finish the laundry list of stuff we have to still do in the small bathroom (read: demo and re-tile the shower, build a concrete countertop for the vanity, install the new sink and faucet, make a new frame for the mirror, caulk the floor trim, and repaint the door casing). Until then, I will distract myself by enjoying it's charming and adorable stripes.

Half-Remodeling the Half Bathroom

 

There's nothing like impending houseguest visits to expedite a remodel, and thanks to a scheduled stopover from Mr. W's best buddy from Portland, our half bath revamp got put on the fast track. We spent the last days of 2014 plastering, sanding (I'm beginning to loathe that word), painting, and prettifying the little bathroom we'd turned upside-down.

Last time I showed it on the blog, it looked like this:

The toilet looked lovely in the shower, but it was even better sitting in the hallway for about 3 weeks. Thankfully neither of us is a sleepwalker—we might have ended up with a tragic accidental peeing-into-the-hallway-toilet episode.

Prior to moving the door from the laundry area/kitchen to the hallway, the bathroom looked like this:

Not terrible but not our ideal with the 80s oak cabinetry and grimey (no matter how much I scrubbed) linoleum flooring. Even worse, when we opened things up in the new kitchen layout, you could see right into the bathroom, and I don't know about you but I just don't want to look at a toilet when I'm making stir fry or taking a fritatta out of the oven...

So we moved the door into the hallway and reconfigured the half bath layout.

All was going well until our plumber accidentally cracked a tile during the toilet installation and we didn't have any extras. (Yes, everyone has lectured us on how you should never buy tiles at Costco because you won't be able to replace them if you break 'em.) Through some miracle, even though our tile was no longer available at Costco, Mr. W tracked down a tile display at one of the stores and was able to unglue a piece from it for us to use in our bathroom. Crisis averted.

Though we wanted to make this bathroom nicer, we also wanted to save some money so we made quite a few thrifty choices. We opted to recycle the sink cabinet and upgrade it with a new front panel and doors (courtesy of Mr. W's mad woodworking skillz) and extra hardware we had left from the kitchen. Eventually, Mr. W will build a concrete countertop for it and install the more modern sink and faucet we bought.

 

We also saved money by using the extra pendant lights we had left from the kitchen and turning them into shiny, black sconces. Stay tuned for a follow-up post on how we did it.

We were planning to reuse the old mirror that was in there but both Mr. W and I accidentally cracked the corners of it on two different occasions, so we had to buy a new one. He plans to make a sleeker new frame for this one in the coming weeks.

The one big thing we have left is to re-tile the shower. After the pain of doing our other bathroom's shower, Mr. W has vowed never to do bathroom re-tiling jobs again. We'll likely hire someone to do the tile (after we demo it) when we're working on the new bathroom add-on. The plan is to go for a look like this with white tiles and dark grey grout:

Source

Source

We'll also be replacing the old crank-out window in there when we have new windows installed for the addition. So although it feels like a whole new room, we're really only about halfway done. Which is just fine by me. I look forward to having the hallway plaster dust-free for a few months!!

The Big Kitchen Reveal

When I was 21 years old, I moved into a tiny studio guest house that required me to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. Only two burners worked on the stove and one full cupboard was unusable because it was so close to the side of the oven. Pretty sure a racoon lived in there... My next apartment felt like it had a chef's kitchen by comparison. Its olive green, 1970s stove—with four functional burners—and spacious pantry closet felt like a major luxury. Then I moved in with Mr. W and got access to a dishwasher for the first time since I'd left my parents' house. Complete Heaven.

One might think a dishwasher and stainless steel fridge would be enough to keep two foodies content for years, but when Mr. W and I bought our house in Santa Ynez, we immediately began fantasizing about how we'd build the best kitchen ever.

And a little over two years later, we have it.

Well, except for the final cabinet trim and some touch-up paint. Believe me, I had to battle Mr. W a little to write this post when we're not *officially* done with everything. But it looks dang done to me. So here we are.

Anyway, when dreaming up our ideal cooking space, I rooted for things like Carrara marble and lots of storage space while Mr. W insisted on soft-close cabinets and a huge island or peninsula where he could roll out bread and pizza dough.

Thanks to his mad skills with sketchup, we were able to play with layouts and finishes until we achieved what we both felt was pretty much perfection.

And then, of course, we had to do the work to bring it to life. Or rather, Mr. W had to do most of the work and I had to try not to cry as I cleaned drywall dust off my wood floors 857 times. Now that everything is almost finished, I will say it was all totally worth it. Like the lady who is in labor for 36 hours and goes on to have more children, I would do it again now that I know how wonderful it all turns out in the end.

Before I show you the goods, let's take a walk down memory lane shall we...

Before we bought the place, the floor was beige and brown linoleum and the countertops were white with gold sparkles. The cabinets were in okay shape and we talked about salvaging and painting them, but Mr. W was in love with the idea of soft-close. And I was in love with the idea of not having to refinish a bagillion cabinets.

As an interim solution, we painted the floor and the countertops. A lovely shade of grey. (Mr. W says everything in the house is grey and he's not too far off...)

So here's how things looked before we started demo:

 And here's how it looked this weekend (after we cleaned and decluttered and made it photo-ready):

We're pretty in love with how everything turned out. Not only is it lovely to look at, the gas range works like a charm (although I did burn risotto in the pressure cooker one night last week...), the dishwasher is so quiet, and the giant peninsula was so nice to have when my brother and his family came to visit earlier this month.

I'm sure in a few years, we'll start finding little things we'd wished we handled differently. But for now, we're caressing the quartz and snuggling the range hood. Life is good in the northwest quadrant of our home.

What a Difference Some Wood Makes

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that title is reflective of the fact that Mr. W is home for 10 days. And that I'm quite certain my stress level is going to drop significantly. You totally want to make a dirty joke about "wood" right now, don't you?

Get your mind out of the groin gutter, people.

The reason I'm talking about wood is because last weekend my darling sister and I laid a whole lotta cubic feet of wood chips along the front of the house in Santa Ynez.

A week or two prior, my wonderful parents went up to the house and pulled up just about every weed and mischievous piece of grass growing in the front yard. When they were finished, the entryway looked like this:

Still some dead grass. And although the clear dirt looked better than the weedfest, it still wasn't ideal. So I asked Mr. W if I could sprinkle it with some cedar chips.

He told me that according to his measurements, I would need to buy 8 bags of chips.

So I bought 6.

My sister told me to lie to him and say that he mismeasured. (Life lessons from the wife of 20+ years....) But the funny thing was that we ended up needing 10 bags anyway, so both Mr. W and I were wrong.

I'm quite pleased with how it looks now:

I'm sure the neighbors appreciate that it's slightly less ghetto out there too. Now that Mr. W is home for a bit, we'll likely make even more progress up at the new house. Maybe paint the back door that is still a garish red color. Probably do some more yard work. And definitely tackle more ferrying of possessions from Hollywood to wine country.

Now excuse me while I go get my hands on some other wood.... Thankyouandgoodnight.

Blowing the Doors Off

I'm going to try to keep this brief. Between work, life coaching, traveling to Canada and Santa Ynez, trying to participate in the occasional social activity, and managing the upkeep of multiple properties, this girl hasn't had a whole lot of time to blog. However, she has had time to paint and organize stuff at the future wine country abode.

Before Mr. W left for Vancouver, we decided to take the doors off this closet in the new house's hallway and paint it the same soft grey we chose for the walls. I couldn't be happier with the choice. It looked like this before we moved in:

Now it's filled with books and games and pictures and DVDs:

I think it'll add a little interest for visitors when they venture from the dinner table to the bathroom...

I also decided to remove two of the bedrooms' closet doors last weekend. My parents were visiting—celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary. Don't you want to applaud that? It is seriously impressive that people can stay together that long. I look forward to celebrating five decades with Mr. W someday. Anyway, with their helpful hands at the ready, I was able to remove and repaint 8 doors. And laugh hysterically as my dad flapped around like a wild man when he walked into a cobweb inside one of the closets...

 

Now instead of the old garish yellow doors, I have nice clean white ones.

Bye bye buttercup.

In the spirit of door removal, I also decided to take apart some of the kitchen cupboards. Here's the before (before we moved in, that is):

And here's how it looks now:

It's kind of amazing how much more this one little change opens up the whole kitchen. I can't wait until we gut the whole thing and have some other open shelving for our ridiculous mass of cookbooks. (The picture above represents about 1/4 of the collection...)

I'm sure I'll have the house just the way I want it by the time we're ready to start remodeling. I guess that'll allow Mr. W to have more of a say in how things go and not feel so much like I'm designing the whole house without him. And I'm sure that'll move us a step or two closer to that five-decades-of-marriage goal...

Bathroom Before and After, Seahorse-Style

This weekend, Mr. W and I went up to our new house and began what will likely become a years-long process of cleaning/fixing up/remodeling. We had a very ambitious to-do list and, of course, ran out of time when we were only about halfway through it.

But we trimmed up a lot of unwieldy rose bushes in the front yard (see my battle wounds below), made headway with the temporary sprinkler setup, and got a fair amount of cleaning done.

The room that felt closest to being temporarily "finished" at the end of the weekend was the main bathroom. Sure, the original linoleum flooring is still in it, its pink and blue flecks and sparkles sadly faded, but overall it feels very cute and kitschy and clean. Here are the before and afters:

Most of what we did was just scrub the crap out of the man mess. (Why are boys so dirty?) The tile is in great shape—even though we think its original to the house—and the room had been freshly painted, so it was just a matter of wiping down the walls a bit. And of course, hitting every surface with Ajax with bleach.

The one big sticking point was the toilet... Hard water had stained and corroded it pretty badly inside and, frankly, Mr. W and I wanted to be able to put our tooshies on something brand spanking new. So after a quick trip to Home Depot, we had a shiny new white porcelain champion. (There was literally a toilet model called The Champion. I totally wanted it.)

I'm feeling very affectionate towards the seahorse tiles right now. We'll see how long that lasts...

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to make it over to Solvang's "Danish Days" weekend festival. We did, however, see this gem when we were driving back to the house after Home Depot.

That is a parade float with a giant pan of aebleskivers in it. Classic.

We also met about half a dozen of our neighbors and everyone is SO nice. It was hard to come back to LA. We are so ready to begin our lives as house-rehabbing farmers. Sigh...