MONDAY MUSINGS

I'm sure you're confused about what Monday Musings are. Well, they are Friday Finds when you were too busy on Friday to do Friday Finds but didn't want to wait a whole week to share some goodies. And god forbid I not use alliteration in a headline.

I decorated the house for fall.

Yep, that's it. I've never been much a theme decorator beyond Christmas. I hate storing decorations. Decor that can go in the compost pile suits me well.

Some affiliate links have been used below. Thanks for your support of this blog!

Margaret Roach has an excellent post/podcast on the proper way to plant trees. A lot of the thinking on this has changed in recent years and I find myself frequently in the position of defending the "new way" of planting trees and shrubs.

Few people are fortunate enough to have big windows in their basements, but even without them this space would be pretty darn fab.

I've been listening to Monty Don ("Gardeners' World" presenter and Britain's favorite gardener, or so they say) narrate his new book Nigel: My Family and Other Dogs. Monty is quite a talented writer and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him narrate this book, which is rarely how I feel about author-narrated audio books. It is about the dogs he's shared his life with and quite a bit about his garden as well. In it, he works his way through the life and times of most of the dogs he's shared his life with, which means it also deals with their deaths and shed tears more than a few times while listening. If you're a dog lover you will too, but with such an enjoyable read/listen, it's worth it. I highly recommend it, especially if you're a gardener who happens to share their life with dogs.

I struggle with hair products but have settled more or less into a few things that work for me. But I was struggling to find something to use occasionally as a clarifying product. After reading a lot of good reviews I gave this "purifying scrub" a try. It's got a weird texture (like a body scrub), but it does lather up and my hair has never felt cleaner. My stylist has been encouraging me to stop washing my hair every day, and I try, but I don't love it. With this there was absolutely no need to wash my hair the next day. This stuff is crazy expensive but you don't need much and it is so worth it.

Our downstairs bathroom vanity. 

This is a pretty amazing round up of bathroom vanities. I hope to never need one again, but something like this sure would have come in handy when we were redoing our bathroom. In the end, Mr. Much More Patient helped build one custom because we had to keep it very shallow.

OH YEAH, I REPAINTED IT. AGAIN.

The vanity that is. I did this several weeks ago, actually, but forgot to tell you about it.

It is now Hale Navy (satin finish) and I'm finally satisfied.

You may recall that I originally painted it Hudson Bay (satin), but felt like it was too slate blueish and just dull.

Hudson Bay (sanded) on the left, Old Navy on the right and Hale Navy up in the first picture.

So I repainted it with Old Navy in semigloss and we lived with it like that for a couple weeks. But every time I walked in there I felt like it was purple (and I don't like purple) and icky shiny not good shiny.

Shiny semi-gloss Old Navy (and I actually put another coat on after this).

It bugged me enough that I actually disliked the vanity more than before I had painted it at all.

So I bought more paint. This time it was Hale Navy, which is a very black navy but not at all purple, and I went back to the satin finish.

Hale Navy

Thank goodness, the third time was the charm. I really like it now. That's as far as the bathroom has gone though, and frankly, as far as it will probably go for awhile. After all, we're now into that spring rush when I'm busy trying to finish up everything I need to get done before gardening season begins.

Plus, it's way better than where it started.

The ugliest room in my house & randomly painting things

It never ceases to amaze me how one image can spur me in a direction I never realized I wanted to go in. A couple years ago it happened with a photo of a door painted black. Although I had never really given it much thought before, four hours later I was painting our back door black. I still love it.

And so it was with this picture.

From Pinterest

It's not a particularly striking image but for whatever reason it immediately caught my eye. And in seconds I was considering doing something that had never crossed my mind before: painting the vanity in the downstairs bathroom navy blue.

I have never been one for temporary fixes when it comes to renovating spaces. That's why the downstairs bathroom, arguably the ugliest space in the entire house and the space we declared "the first thing that was getting fixed" when we bought the house still looks exactly like it did more than 11 years ago when we bought this place.

(WARNING: You are about to see one of the few spaces in my house that I deem to be too ugly for publication on the blog. You may choose to shield your eyes.)

 

Let's be honest here: It is a hideous room. There is an awful gold shower surround, badly frosted sliding doors opening to a fiberglass overly formed shower insert with a seat (am I weird for being slightly grossed out by the thought of sitting in the shower) and a pink laminate countertop on top of a pickled pink vanity. The vinyl flooring isn't great but it's not horrible, but this room has the dreaded wall texture and lucky me, it was applied AROUND the mirror and lights, meaning that none of that can be changed so long as that texture is there.

The room needs to be gutted. I have long wanted to rip out that shower insert and certainly the surround, but what would go there is sort of up in the air. I always assumed it would be a bathtub, but that's because I assumed there would be kids who would need a bathtub. That no longer seems likely but it might be nice to have one for soaking the occasional plant or just for resale (not that that's really a factor in any of our decisions). But there's no doubt about it, most adults prefer a shower they can step into instead of over, so if this is just meant to be a guest bathroom, then keeping it a shower might be more prudent.

We have no plans to take on this bathroom renovation soon. The upstairs and kitchen remodel are a little too fresh in our minds to take on another major project (please note, I also said we weren't doing the kitchen anytime soon and then just a few months later we did it anyway). But I'll be honest, it's starting to get embarassing to have to direct guests to that ugly bathroom.

The masters of make-do decorating are John and Sherry Petersik at Young House Love. Their make-do solutions never look like they are temporary and it appears to help them from losing their mind while they bide their time or save their money until they can redo a space exactly the way they want. Personally, I've always had a hard time spending money or time on something that's not really what I want.

But I'm starting to think that this disaster of a bathroom might be a place to try a bit of a temporary solution. Obviously the key to "temporary" upgrades is to keep the spending at a minimum. For me, that means paint.

So I painted the vanity. Twice, actually, because Hudson Bay, which I love on the walls of my office, was just a tad too slate-ish. So I got a can of Old Navy in semigloss. The Old Navy was the right call, but I think I would have been happier with it in satin. (Does anyone else struggle with paint sheens as much as I do?)

Hudson Bay on the left (already sanded) and Old Navy on the right.

To be honest, I'm not thrilled with how it turned out. I don't think it's worse than what was there, but it looks a lot like a person who hated their bathroom and decidedly randomly to do something to change it and painted the vanity. Funny how that turned out, since that's exactly what happened. I also bought some cheap hardware from Home Depot. I got a brushed chrome finish toilet paper holder and towel holder to replace the gross old shiny fake brass ones. Now I have four metals in this tiny space: icky, shiny 1980s brass on the doorknobs, shower and towel bar behind the door; chrome on the faucet and vanity knobs; brushed chrome on the towel ring and toilet paper holder; and sort of a pewter-type color on the light fixtures. It's really bad.

I think painting the wainscotting in the room would help a lot, as well as repainting all the peeling trim, and if I feel like investing more time in this room, that will be the next step. Or maybe I'll just start hating it so much that I take a sledgehammer to it some day.

Everybody has a room like this, right? Please tell me you do.

The big bathroom reveal

First of all, sorry for the radio silence last week. Deadlines at my real job got crazy and when I’m writing fast and furiously for work, it’s so hard to come home and put together a couple sentences for the blog. The good news is that I have some exciting posts planned for this week, starting with this one, which is the first official reveal from the big renovation.

And it’s a big one. Adding a bathroom to our house is something we’ve wanted to do since we bought it nine years ago. I definitely got “into” the design of this room more than anything else in the renovation. It’s probably the only bathroom I’ll ever build from scratch, so I wanted to really go for it.

The room is only 8 feet square but I can’t think of anything else we would need in there. At 5 feet by 40 inches, the shower is probably bigger than it needs to be but it really is luxurious. A little bonus is that there is a perfect bird’s eye view of the bird feeders from the shower. I know it sounds corny but I love watching the birds during one of their prime feeding times.

Anyway, on to the photos (which aren’t great because I don’t own a wide angle lens).

This is what the space looked like before. It was nothing but a useless dormer area with a low ceiling that few normal-sized people could even walk into.

And here it is now. Welcome to the new bathroom.

The door was actually salvaged from my grandmother's house before it was torn down. It was her bedroom door. Originally I grabbed it because I figured we'd save some money reusing a door, but as I started refinishing it, stripping and sanding off layers of tan, coral, mint green and white paint, I became very connected to the history of it. I loved imagining all those colors in a house I loved so much. The door ended up being too short and our contractor had to add a couple inches to the top and bottom. We also had to buy a whole new lock set for it (which was difficult because modern doors have different back sets). In the end, I'm sure we didn't save any money over buying a new door, but it was money well spent to have a piece of my family's history as a permanent fixture in our home. We used Wallpaper for Windows frosted film to cover the windows to allow light to still enter the hallway but still allow for privacy.

The teak floor was a splurge, but I love it. We bartered for it to keep the price down and the feel under your feet can't be beat.

I’m very happy with the decision to go with a handshower and slide bar instead of a fixed showerhead. First of all, I love the Kohler Flipside handshower. It has the most amazing “soft” spray that I liken to the spot-free rinse at the car wash and I love rinsing my hair with it. Secondly, Mr. Much More Patient is significantly taller than me (like more than a foot taller than me) so the slide bar helps us each have the water where we like it.

We used a scrap piece of teak that Mr. Much More Patient found at a hardware store in Miami. Fancy hardware stores down there, I guess.

The small window behind the toilet is a favorite touch. I’ll do anything for more natural light.

The towel warmer is another splurge and so worth it. I love that thing. Get one. It will change your life.

Here are a few specifics in case you’re interested.

Tile: Floors are light gray porcelain tile 24x6. They started out as 24x12 and my amazing tile guy split them all. They are laid in a 1/3 offset pattern. Walls (to the ceiling in the shower and halfway up elsewhere) are off-white polished porcelain with oval glass accent tiles.
Fixtures: Mostly Kohler. The sink (which I think is the very first thing I picked out for the room) is Archer. The faucet is Margeaux.
Toilet: Toto Carolina II. Love it, if it’s possible to love a toilet.
Vanity: You can read more about the saga of the vanity here, but it was custom built more or less to my design.
Lights: Ceiling light was purchased locally. Vanity pendants are Sonneman and purchased at Lumens.com.
 Counter: Hanstone Ruscello Aspen. These weren't without some drama either.
Mirror: Pottery Barn Kensington
Towel warmer: Runtal Neptune
Colors: Walls: BM Gray Mist; ceiling: BM Healing Aloe; trim: BM Cloud White

If you're interested in seeing how we got to this point, check out these posts on the remodel:

Construction Update 1
Construction Update 2
Construction Update 3
Construction Update 4
Construction Update 5
Construction Update 6
Construction Update 7
Construction Update 7.5
Construction Update 8
Construction Update 9 
Construction Update 10 
Construction Update 11 

Construction Update 12 

Punch list

Stairs

Guest bedroom sneak peak