Master Bath Reveal AKA Look But Don't Touch

When I was a little girl, I had this habit of setting up really elaborate houses and villages for my Barbies, Strawberry Shortcake dolls, Little Ponies—you name it—and as soon as I had them arranged to my seven-year-old satisfaction, I'd walk away. I didn't want to play because everything looked so great, I didn't want to mess anything up.

This was exactly the way I felt when we got the master bathroom to a state of near finish last week.

It's been a long time coming...

When Mr. W told me he planned to inaugurate the shower last Friday, I immediately wanted to seal the door and only allow people to look into the room through the windows from the backyard.

I knew the shower had hit its peak and would never, ever be the same after it had been used. Which is why I took all of the pictures below before Mr. W put his dirty body in there. 

I might have also watched while he squeegeed it naked to make sure he did a good job. Seriously, I was only overseeing the squeegee job....while drinking a glass of wine...and smiling.

Anyway, we still have some sanding and painting to do on a few spots on the wall, and Mr. W is in the process of building the drawers and cupboard doors for the vanity—but for all intents and purposes, the bathroom is fully functional.

We've had some major ups and downs with this one (as with all of our projects, I guess). We initially bought a totally different slab of marble that had all sorts of issues when our counter top installers went to cut it, so we had to buy a completely new piece. I love the new one, so it was probably a blessing in disguise, but not a blessing for our bank account.

The cute little hexagonal tiles in the shower were also super problematic. We had a hard time getting the grout just right—which surprised me because these are timeless and you see them everywhere. Apparently the people who were laying them in the 1930s and 40s had way more skills and patience than we do.

Did I mention that the glass for the shower was also cut wrong when they first came to install it? Yep, kind of one thing after another with this room. But like Leo in The Revenant, in the end we triumphed.

Sorry if I just ruined that movie for you.

Here are the winners of Best Supporting Bathroom in a Musical or Comedy:

I took my first shower in there Saturday morning and I have to say, it's pretty freaking awesome. Well worth all the long work days and long wait for it to be finished. It's a beauty. Can't wait until we finish the vanity and I can reveal its gorgeousness, too.

Fun with Photoshop...and Non-Fun with Stencils

In my last post, I gave you a peek at the inside of the master bathroom. In this one, I'm telling you the torrid tale of its outside—i.e. the bathroom door.

I should start by telling you that Mr. W and I are wicked mad wimps when it comes to morning sunlight streaming into our bedroom. We have dark curtains to block the light from the French doors and windows, but the pocket door we bought for the bathroom has a frosted glass panel in the middle of it and, in spite of the blinds we installed inside the bathroom, the sun was shining right in through that door every morning. Our sleepy work-from-home-all-day-in-our-pjs eyes just couldn't handle it.

We discussed possible light-blocking options: some sort of wood or veneer, straight paint, tin tiles or a sheet of cool metal. Paint was the obvious easy choice but I felt like it needed texture beyond a straight color, particularly because of the big block of color on the gallery wall. Gotta have variety. Except when it comes to bedfellows. And morning soda-coffee. #DrPepper

Anyway, I found a few different stencils I liked online but didn't want to buy anything without having an idea of how it would look on the actual door. And thus began the Photoshop fun...

Which one did you like best?

I preferred the L-shaped hooky, linky option, so I ordered it online, bought a couple variations of the grey paint we have on the walls, and grabbed a flat sponge brush aaaallll excited to take on my first stenciling project.

Anyone out there ever done a large-scale vertical stenciling project? Let me tell you, it ain't no picnic.

Per the instructions, I had to spray the stencil with adhesive to get it to stay in place on the glass. And every time I moved it, I had to spray it again, which was particularly superfun at the very end when I had one tiny piece that I had to keep repositioning to get the edge right. Punch me in the face until I'm unconscious. 

The other difficult thing was that when the paint would bleed out beyond the parameters of the stencil, it was really hard to get off the frosted glass. If it had been regular glass I could have just scraped it off with a razor blade. But in order to not scratch the frosting, I had to use q-tips and nail polish remover. Not nearly as exact a science as I would have liked.

The good news was, I had a great audio book to listen to while I worked on it all, and when I painted the secondary color, all my fuzzy inexact edges became much less noticeable. I'm actually really pleased with how it all turned out (minus the reflection in the picture below...I was too impatient to wait and take a better pic with different lighting).

The best part is that not an ounce of morning sunlight sneaks in past this paint job (Mr. W and I can continue our life of slovenly living and nice, dark mornings). It also blocks the tools, tile, and various other renovation heaps still hiding inside the bathroom...

Suite Dreams Are Made of This

Ever since our master bedroom became livable back in June, our renovation velocity has slowed a bit in that part of the house. Sure, we styled the bookshelf, got the gallery wall up, organized the closet, and Mr. W installed most of the molding (after a spirited cursing fight) but the room felt like there was a huge hole in it because of the blank wall over our bed.

We had planned the entire room around this one piece of art. Not just any piece—a painting that our friend Pete did for Mr. W back in 2002. If you read this blog regularly, you know that we tragically lost Pete in 2012, so to have one of his paintings hanging above us every night is pretty much equivalent to having an angel chillin' over our headboard.

The only catch was, his original painting was about 15x20" and we wanted a 24x36" canvas. So we had a high-res scan of the painting made, Mr. W worked some Photoshop magic on it to adjust the aspect ratio (which took many hours), and then we had a company print the new image to look like it was painted on canvas.

This whole process took weeks, during which I said over and over to Mr. W (because he loves it when I do this) "You know what would really make the room feel finished? If we could get Pete's picture done." Rinse. Repeat. 

Though it was a long wait, it was worth it. Every time I walk into the room now, it makes me smile.

It also makes me smile that Mr. W has been plugging away on the master bathroom. He has the shower almost completely tiled (after many tedious days working to get the slope just right on the shower floor).

And last weekend, he built and veneered the bathtub surround. We're going with teak veneer in this bathroom and I think it's going to look so purty once it's varnished.

Here are a few examples of the aesthetic we're after:

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If we're lucky, maybe by the end of the year he'll have the vanity built, too. Our countertop slab of French vanilla marble is just sitting at the local building supply waiting to be cut and installed. Once it's in, once the bathroom is workable, I'm prepared to celebrate with a glass of champagne and a bubble bath. Most likely followed by some touch-up spackling and painting...

What We're Making: A Bench You Can't Sit On

Earlier this month, we completed the gallery wall project we had slated for our recently renovated master bedroom. But pretty much as soon as we hung the final frame on the wall, I started thinking the room looked unbalanced. #neversatisfied Though the wall looked sharp, we pretty much had a bowling lane running down the east side of the room. If I didn't find a way to break up the space and balance the heavy bed and couch on the west side of the room, I was going to have to start wearing an eye patch every time I walked in the room so I'd only see one side at a time. And nobody wanted that.

I decided a bench on the gallery wall would solve the problem, so I spent many an evening researching options on All Modern, Overstock, Crate & Barrel, Wayfair, Dot and Bo....and on and on. (Follow me on Pinterest and you can track the madness.) Unfortunately, nothing I found was the dimension I was seeking—I needed something long and shallow. And on top of that, the stuff I really liked was pricey. So I did what any self-sufficient DIYer would do: I asked Mr. W for help. 

I set him to task, cutting me a nice long bench base from one of our discarded closet doors, then I ordered some cool mid-century-esque bench legs from Home Depot. I had some foam left over from a previous bench project we'd done in the guest room, so all I needed was some nice fabric and a few coverable buttons. Easy peasy. Right.

I hit Joann Fabrics over the weekend and found some awesome, toothy navy blue upholstery fabric and went to work Sunday afternoon thinking I could bang out the project in a couple hours. Instead, it took five. Here's a time lapse of the first few steps before I got burnt out and was cussing too much to stop and take pictures:

Staining the legs with walnut stain.

Piecing together some old and new pieces of foam for the cushion.

Covering the whole thing with batting. And yes, I got a blister from using the staple gun so much.

My little helper. Not really helping.

Covering in my snazzy fabric. Pardon all the cat hair...

After this, the wheels sort of fell off. Covering the buttons was harder than I thought it would be and actually installing the buttons was super hard because I'm not sure I had the right kind of needle. It's a good thing we don't have kids and a curse jar at our house because that thing would have been filled with dollar bills.

Once I got the buttons placed, I hot glued fabric to the bottom and installed the legs. I was quite proud of how it looked when I was finished. However, when I tried to sit on it lightly, the wood began to bow. It is possible to sit on the corner where the legs add strength, but trying to rest on the middle of it would likely snap it in half.

So it becomes another piece of art on the gallery wall. Fashion before function, my friends.

I know, I know. The corners need some work.

One more peek at the before:

And the after:

The room is so much more balanced now, don't you think?!

Rewards and Punishment in the Bedroom

I've gotten into kind of a bad habit of blurting out inappropriate phrases when Mr. W tells me he's making progress on one of my top priority house/renovation projects.

Like when he said he was going to install the shower backer-board that had been leaning against the wall of our master bedroom for weeks, I think I yelled "Take off your pants!" Or when he said he was going to clean up all the scrap wood from the backyard, I turned to the cat and said, "Your daddy's gonna get lucky tonight!"

On the flipside, however, when he flubs it on something that matters to me, I punish him royally. Like when I casually mentioned 8,000 times that I thought the bedroom would look so much more finished if we could get the window moldings up. He bought the molding; I primed and painted it; and as he was hanging it around the doorway inside the closet he informed me he didn't have enough to go around the windows. He would have to go buy more. Later.

Completely calmly, I said, "Why in all that's great and holy would you install molding INSIDE the closet before you put it on the windows that I have to look at every day? No one looks at the inside of the closet!" Then my head exploded and I had to take an Advil. Punishment exacted. A few minutes later, without an ounce of murder in his voice, he advised, "Maybe if you'd get off your $%*#@*$ a$$ and help me once in awhile, this stuff wouldn't happen!"

And now we get to add the molding fight to our long list of benign, but extremely heated lovers' quarrels. 

It's funny what makes you feel delighted and/or enraged you when you're working on a house...

Now here's a little reveal of one of the happier projects we knocked out in the bedroom: the gallery wall.

Worry not, dear reader, I will be DIYing a bench to balance the big empty space at the bottom there.

Mr. W likes to do things very scientifically, so he busted out his 2-way laser level to get everything lined up just right on the wall.

That's not a big, red bald spot on his head, by the way. The laser is hitting him back there. And yes, his brain is level.

If you're wondering where we got the awesome grapevine, Mr. W found it outside the local recycling center in Solvang and brought it home. Unfortunately it had some sort of burrowing creature living inside of it that withstood a bug bomb inside a trashbag and had to be doused in Raid twice before dying. I'm sure we'll probably wake up with antlers or tails or something one morning because that thing is off-gassing insecticide in our room now...

The final product made me immensely happy, though. It was exactly what I had envisioned—a cool symbol of wine country surrounded by Mr. W's awesome photography. The pictures showcase some of our favorite places we've visited together—Santa Ynez Valley, Monterey, Capri, and Provence. 

And you didn't hear it from me, but Mr. W may have been rewarded handsomely for his efforts on this one...

The Most Romantic Deck in the Santa Ynez Valley

Over the last week or so, Mr. W has been working like a boss to build the deck outside our bedroom. County regulations said we had to add a deck, but I think Mr. W also wanted to do it so that he and I would be able to stand out there together, romantically gazing at the stars...or the scrap wood and rubble heaps in our backyard. He'll stand behind me with his arms around my waist. Just like Leo and Kate in Titanic. I'll feel like queen of the world on my shiny deck built for two. It'll be magical.

I'm actually most excited because having the deck means I can put a doormat outside and that means we'll both stop tracking dirt into the master bedroom when we go out to visit the chickens or pick kale.

Because I know every blog reader loves a good before and after, here's a little recap of how the process went down:

I could hardly wait for the polyurethane to dry so I could throw some accessories out there. I'm sure I'll rearrange everything a hundred times. I do dig the funky little table we got at Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, though. It was black when we found it, and I gussied it all up in gold.

Look how cool its shadow is!

We have a lot of clean-up work to do in the backyard to get things to where I want them. We have at least a couple dump runs to make. We have a fence to build from the edge of the house to the chicken yard. We have decomposed gravel to lay down. A pizza oven to build.

But for now I'm going to just enjoy our pretty deck and try to turn Mr. W's head in the direction of our unfinished master bathroom...