Guest Bathroom Makeover on a Budget

I love HGTV.  I binge watch pretty much every makeover show and get wild ideas of things to do to make our home better and more importantly, our own.

My next undertaking in our house was the guest bathroom.  Our bathrooms are small, and that's something I can live with.  But their tired appearance and lack of style are just killing me.  The guest bathroom seemed like the quickest fix, as we want to do a whole makeover of the master bathroom when we have the funds. 

The first thing that needed a refresh was the vanity.  Because our home was flipped (7 years ago), everything is builder grade, less than nicely done, and very vanilla.  The two bathrooms and kitchen all have the same cabinets, handles, tile and granite counter tops.  Pretty uninspired.  After the huge undertaking to paint all the kitchen cabinets, I felt like painting the bathroom vanity would be a much more manageable project.

I chose the Nuvo Oxford Blue 1 Day Cabinet Makeover Kit for the vanity.  I felt like blue was pretty unobtrusive but also gave the bathroom some more dimension and character.  I replaced the handles with these Gliderite Modern pulls, to give some variety to our handles.  I also painted the white shelves of the shelving unit and the new white framed mirror with the blue cabinet paint.  I also ordered a new light fixture.  The one that was there was generic, but the more important problem was that it was centered on the wall... not over the vanity.

The vanity was the same color as the kitchen, nearly espresso with red undertones.  The stain was applied poorly.  Over the years, it had dings, chips and an overall uneven appearance. 

I didn't really take any before pictures.  So below are some references, one for color and the other the space.

Reference: original vanity color (the kitchen uppers)

Our very small guest bathroom, with the vanity and our linen closet

After several hours painting the vanity, and moving the light fixture I felt like phase one was a good effort.  

Vanity after the blue paint and new handles

Mid light fixture move... you can see it was centered for the wall and not the vanity

Big shout out to by husband for helping with this part!!

 New light fixture installed

For some reason I decided to take this photo with the giant drill bit in hand.  Also, this only mirror is also not centered over the vanity.

Vanity with the light fixture in place

Phase 2 was patching the new giant hole in the wall, painting the shelves and the frame of the new mirror that I would be installing, and repainting the entire bathroom.  Because the bathroom is soooo small (honestly, I couldn't get a good picture because there is no space in there), I decided to just paint the walls semi-gloss pure white.  I was hoping the pure white would help open up the space as much as possible.  One of the things that saved me SO MUCH TIME while painting the walls was the Shur-Line 2006561 Paint Edger Pro.  I really don't like taping edges off.  It frustrates me so much.  This thing saved me at least 2 hours! 

Painted shelf

The finished product!

I did a couple of other small things to refresh this space, including replace the toilet handle from a plain white to this brush nickel lever, replace the electrical and switch covers, and replaced the toilet paper roll holder with this more modern one.

All in all, this project took about 12 hours, over two days cost about 250 dollars.  I'm so much happier with how it looks now!

Buying a House and a Kitchen Refresh

2019 has been an eventful year.

Brandon and I started house hunting in October of 2018.  We had some ideas on what we were looking for, and were excited for the next step in our journey.

After seeing a lot of homes, and putting offers on many, we found a house we adored in Burbank.  We closed escrow two days before our 1 year anniversary, in February.  The house is a 1907 Craftsman.  Although it's smaller than we had originally planned, we were eager and ready to upgrade from our condo.

Going into the purchase, we knew there was some work we had to do.  The house was flipped in 2012.  Cosmetically, it was in fairly good condition, but some of the stuff that you couldn't "see" definitely needed work.  Before we could do anything cosmetic, we had to deal with electrical and plumbing issues.  We also had to replace the carpet in the bedrooms.  There were some kitties living there before and they weren't very consistent users of their litter boxes.

After replacing the carpets, getting the wiring issues fixed, and dealing with the leaks under the house, we were ready to start making the house our own.  After moving in, we were lucky enough to have my in-laws come stay with us for a couple weeks to help with the projects around the house.  My father-in-law is incredibly handy.  He took on some big projects for us, like re-configuring the master bedroom closet to have two racks, building a work bench in the shed for my husband, filling cracks in the exterior stucco, and fixing a water damaged spot in the ceiling of the master bedroom.  He was a busy bee.  My mother-in-law helped with unpacking all our stuff and putting the kitchen together.  She also fed us after our long days at work.  We appreciated their help, so much.

After the dust settled from the move, Brandon and I decided to embark on our first big project... the kitchen.

As I mentioned earlier, this home had been flipped, and with nearly all flipped homes, renovators like to take the easy way.  The two bathroom vanities and the kitchen cabinets were all shaker style, in espresso, with the same hardware.  The granite is the same in all three rooms, what I would call builder grade granite - brown with flecks.  The stain was not done well and was not wearing well.

The home is small, and with a decent size kitchen filling half the open living space, we felt the espresso cabinets needed a makeover.  We knew it would be a huge undertaking, but honestly with all the unexpected expenses when buying a new home, we didn't have the funds to hire a professional.

For the makeover, we bought 3 kits of Nuvo Cabinet Paint in Titanium White from Amazon and KILZ Restoration Interior primer.  The kit comes with two cans of paint, two rollers, and an angled brush.  Although the kit said we didn't need to prime, we felt that it would make the coverage of the espresso easier, and decided to do it.

So here was our kitchen before (this was when we were moving in)

We took all the doors off and labeled each door and matching hinges with a number.  (We were keeping things in order so we wouldn't have to adjust doors after painting.)  We removed the hardware, cleaned the cabinets (they were amazingly greasy), sanded each door with a hand sander and then cleaned them again with TSP.  As a side note, We didn't use the hand sander indoors to avoid excess dust.  We just sanded attached surfaces with a block.

Day 1:

Sanded surfaces...

Labeled doors

We left our plates/glasses/etc. in the cabinets, and started priming.  

Day 2:

This was the moment I felt like we had made a huge mistake!  Brandon was at a retro video game convention most of the day and I was freaking out a bit while I primed and looked at this splotchy mess of a house.

Day 2 - First coat:

We were pleasantly surprised how well the first coat covered.  There was a tiny bit of the dark stain peeking through, but it was much better than anticipated.  

Day 3 - Second coat - 

Finished painting:

The white cabinets completely transformed the space.  

Before and after:

The paint job isn't perfect, but it's pretty darn good.  This whole project took about 32 hours with two of us painting.  It's a HUGE undertaking, but it's a big win.  Also, the paint has held up exceptionally well over the last 6 months.  

I will add, the Nuvo White has a tiny bit of a silver/gray undertone to it.  It's most apparent when butted up against a true white.  

Halloween 2018: Link & Zelda

This is a super late post, but I wanted to show some of the work I did on Brandon and my Halloween costume this year.  It was a labor of love, but it turned out really good, I think.

Halloween is not my holiday, and it never really has been.  But, of course, Brandon loves it.  Since we've been together, I've been more and more committed to our elaborate costumes.

In 2017, we went as Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange.  We got up extra early and liquid latex-ed down Brandon's nose, thickened up his brow line, painted his face and did up his make up.  My look was much easier.  I just did big hair and sprayed it black.  It was fun and we won Best Costume at our office.

Halloween 2017

For 2018, we decided to go the retro video game avenue, and decided on Link & Zelda.  (I wanted to be Mario and Luigi, but maybe Halloween 2019??)

I wasn't a huge fan of the Zelda costumes available online.  They seemed cheap... just too shiny and mass produced.  I looked at Etsy for more toned down options, but every piece was/is extremely expensive.  They definitely cater to the Cosplay clientele.

So instead of spending hundreds of dollars on our costumes, I spent about a hundred hours or so.

Since Zelda is a princess, the first order of business was making my crown.  After the crown was complete, I started working on the belt.

I've never created any of these types of things before, Cosplay armor and whatnot, so I went to Etsy for a template.  The template for the Crown and Belt was 10 dollars.  I went to Michaels and got sheets of craft foam, some jewels, jump rings and clasps, blue glitter, gold and black acrylic paint, gold spray paint, black felt, and thick gauged wire.

I don't think I had any idea how much time and energy this project would take, but I was excited to make something!

I printed the template, cut out the pieces and started tracing them on the craft foam.  Once all the pieces were traced, I cut them out and began painting.  Painting craft foam is an arduous process.  I first coated each piece with a glue stick and then started paining.  Foam is really absorbent, so each piece required 3-4 coats of gold paint.

Once everything was gold, I then "aged" the pieces with some black paint.  Then I sprayed everything with the gold paint spray to give a more realistic gold metal appearance.

Below are photos of the crown and belt.  I don't have detailed photos of the crown in progress, but please enjoy Brandon's white fedora as my crown holder!

I couldn't find the right size jewel for the front of the crown, so I improvised with a large round, smaller rounds to create a teardrop shape and then put glitter in the gaps.
I had to move the center piece after gluing it.  I fixed the paint issue later.

Back of the crown

Front: I used hot glue to create the leaf veins

Back: I painted the pink inside later

Belt template pieces cut out, ready to be traced

Painting in progress - 2nd or 3rd coat

All the belt pieces drying before assembly

Assembled!

Jump rings and clasps spray painted 

I put felt strips of felt on the back of each piece to attach the rings

This is the completed product (you can see I'm painting the inside of the crown here!)

Next order thing on my list was painting and aging some of Brandon's costume.  Brandon asked that I paint the hilt of Link's sword and age Brandon's Link shield so it looked more authentic.

Brandon didn't like the blue of the hilt, as it didn't match the blue of the shield.

Before I started painting

In the middle of the painting process - the foam sword was extremely time consuming to paint.  It had so many groves and it took forever to dry!

Before: Brandon was trying on his things

After: Sprayed the shield with watered down gray paint, and then added some black to make it look battle worn

My dress, Brandon's boots, wig, gauntlets, and our elf ears are from Amazon
Brandon's tunic and hat are from Etsy
House is in our neighborhood

Our finished product!

I was really happy with the way everything turned out.  After this project, I would definitely create pieces from craft foam again!