bathroom – Page 2 – emerald city diaries

my weekend in pictures.

{after the electrician was here we had lots of fun unwrapping every. individual. piece of our new dining room light.}

{better late than never: 2013 let’s do this! i think this might be this year’s motto, at least to begin with.}

{sadie could be found here pretty much the entire weekend as we finally had some sun! #sunbather}

{nope, that’s not snow, it’s frost. it was so chilly that frost has been covering everything the last couple of days.}

{shopping for pipe wrenches. there were a lot of trips to the hardware store this weekend to fix our bathroom sink.}

{we had a quick date night at chipotle {in our finest cocktail attire} on saturday night.}

{happy engagement party dave & mary alice! we celebrated the engagement of good friends. we will both be in the wedding party for their fall wedding.}

{after a few setbacks aaron fixed our sink – hooray!}

i am just over a week into the flu & finally feeling better. week one had me down, but i am determined not to let week 2 keep me from being a person again. how was your weekend?

instagram @mishacslower // twitter @mishacslower // pinterest @mishacslower

as i have been alluding to for weeks, we spent some of our long thanksgiving weekend overhauling the bathroom. we have big plans for this room, including adding a vanity, changing out the toilet, & painting the tub, but for now we thought just getting rid of the yellow walls & yellow trim would be a decent upgrade. boy were we right!

i painted the trim & beadboarding a few weeks ago in the same color as the trim in the rest of the house (a bit of an off-white) to prep for painting the walls last weekend. after priming the walls, we used cruicible by valspar in allergy & asthma which is fantastic to paint with (i used it in the kitchen & living room). i wanted something really different for this space (by different i mean not grey, which is my go-to) & i picked a color that was really close to the darkest stripe on our shower curtain. i would normally hesitate to put such a dark color up on a well (especially in such a small space), but because there is so much beadboarding, i knew the contrast would be perfect. the new wall color also goes well with the lighter blue tile which covers the floor as well as the shower walls.

despite the upgrade to the wall color (which makes me gasp every time i walk past the bathroom, it is that great!) we desperately need counter space in this room. we have been looking at traditional bathroom vanities, but haven’t really found anything we like for the space. i have considered converting an antique dresser by adding a sink & countertop, but hesitate to take on a project that involves plumbing as neither aaron nor i have much (if any) experience with that. has anyone ever converted a dresser or cabinet into a sink before?

have you upgraded any of your rooms with a coat of paint lately?

let there be (better looking) light.

our bathroom light fixture was pretty outdated, but it didn’t look too bad until we added CFL bulbs. then it looked crazy.

{before}

we have been looking for a replacement fixture since the day we moved in, but there hasn’t been a single light fixture that has inspired us. we have been to the usual suspects – lowe’s, home depot – and even specialty online light stores, but still nothin’. i have even been scouring pinterest searching for “bathroom light” & apparently people either have wall mounted lights (near the mirror) or chandeliers.

i found myself at ikea sunday morning shopping for a few things & since you basically have to walk thru the entire store anyways, i was perusing this & that while i searched for what was on my list. as i walked thru the lighting section, a fixture caught my eye. it was the alang to be exact.

{ikea alang}

simple, inexpensive & light diffusion (one of the bad things about the current fixture is the harsh light since the bulbs are exposed). i tried calling aaron a few times to get his thoughts on the fixture, but he wasn’t answering. so, after i had collected all of the other ikea goods i needed, i back-tracked to the lighting section & picked up an alang. i figured i could always return it or use it in a different room if aaron didn’t approve.

well, aaron liked it enough to at least try it, so down came the old one & up went the new.

{installation}

installation went fairly quickly & i am glad aaron was here to do it since it involved unattaching & reattaching the electrical wires.

i think the alang is a vast improvement over the original fixture – don’t you? we haven’t done much work to the bathroom, but have big (painting) plans for it to be completed over the thanksgiving holiday! once we get the ceiling (it looks white in pictures but it is a smidge yellow), walls & beadboard painted, this bathroom is going to look so. much. better. further down the road we want to replace the beige sink with a vanity, the toilet & have the tub painted (we have beautiful blue tile on the floors & in the shower that we would hate to see go, so it seems like painting the tub white makes the most sense).

{the before & after}

this is a pretty small upgrade, but it is still one more thing off the big ole’ checklist (i.e., the never-ending, constantly-being-added-to, how-are-we-going-to-pay-for-this checklist)!

thoughts? have you been updating fixtures in your house lately? where are your go-tos for light fixtures?

a few updates to the bathroom.

this isn’t going to be a very exciting post, sorry in advance, but i have had a few requests for updates to the house, & one of the rooms that has received some attention in our first month as homeowners has been the bathroom.

here she was before (she being the bathroom of course) in all her beige glory. we have grand plans to do a total bathroom remodel (to include replacing the toilet, sink & bathtub) but for now, we are living with the space mostly how it was.

{the blue tile on the walls of the shower & the floor are beau-ti-ful!}

a few things that had to go, however, were: the magnifying mirror next to the medicine cabinet (neither aaron nor myself have any desire to see ourselves – or our pores – on that large of a scale), the oval shower curtain rod, the metal grip bars in the shower, & the two glass shelves that flanked the entire wall on the right side of the medicine cabinet (not pictured).

so, here are the updates. {sidenote: when i took these pictures it really was bright, but i guess bright is a relative term, especially when you consider the grey-ness of seattle. i apologize for the dark photos. but at least i didn’t use the flash (apparently that is a big no-no in the photography community).}

{former home of two glass shelves. aaron patched the wall & i painted. the two light rectangle patches are where we patched & painted. yep, paint finish fail. it is actually the same color, just a different finish & we didn’t realize until the paint was already on the wall as the paint can was incorrectly marked. so, we need to find some art or something to hang on that wall. any suggestions for bathroom art?}

{the new shower curtain rod. the old one was oval & meant to be used with a clawfoot tub, so there was about 3/4 of the rod that was never used as it was inside the shower. aaron replaced it with this curved shower rod & it is awesome! at first i thought he was going a little overboard with the curved rod, i mean, it is a pretty small bathroom, but just those extra few inches make a world of difference. i highly recommend using a curved shower rod if you are replacing an old one.}

{we, & by we i mean i, needed more storage space in the bathroom. i don’t feel like i have a lot of stuff, but the medicine cabinet was not going to cut it. so, i picked up this ikea cabinet. i liked that it had glass shelf space & hidden shelf space. plus, it was a great price! {sidenote: i originally put the little plastic legs on the bottom of the cabinet, but it was really unstable, & since we couldn’t attach the cabinet to the bathroom wall, because of the wainscoating & trim, we just opted not to have the legs.} until we are able to replace the sink with a vanity, this storage will work perfectly.}

{also, i added this sign just so that we don’t end up having to replace our old sewer line sooner rather than later!}

other than hanging some art (& a clock!) & painting (our blue tiles are awesome, but do not look awesome with the yellow walls), we probably won’t be doing much to this bathroom for some time. we would love to update the fixtures (in white), add a vanity, & radiant heat in the floors {wishful thinking, i know. at least a heated towel bar?} but that will all come in time.

have you done any updates to your bathroom?

Category: bathroom

my weekend in pictures.

a fresh coat of paint.

let there be (better looking) light.

a few updates to the bathroom.