A little of this...a little of that

During the pandemic shut down, we've been continuing to work on our house, but it is getting harder and harder to stay motivated because it has been 8 months and we still aren't finished with everything. There is a lot to go, but we've decided to start working on the little things that keep us interested right now.

I've been coveting these chairs on Amazon since we moved into the house. I thought that they would be perfect for our sunroom. When we first moved in back in November, they were only $177, but I felt like that was still too much, so I waited. And then they proceeded to go up in price...and up...and up. I finally just broke down and did it because they were exactly what I wanted. 

I also wanted these log tables that I had seen on West Elm. I thought that they would be a great complement to the room, but didn't want to pay that much. Luckily, I live in the forest with a lot of trees that have fallen. AND my husband is a rock star at making things. I ended up with the gorgeous table below. It's got a ton of character and was exactly what I was looking for and he made it in a day! I was super impressed.

Old laundry room

New laundry room. We used the same laminate floor that we used in the kitchen. The counter is a butcher block that we purchased from Lowe's. The shelf is my favorite -- we went to a place called Indy Urban Hardwood. It is an awesome place where they have tons of trees cut in slices for you and they've dried them in their kiln, so you don't have to wait to use them.  The bottom of the shelf is rounded because it is the outside of the tree without the shelf. I really love the way the whole thing came together.

Old bathroom

New bathroom

The vanity is from Wayfair with the faucet from Home Depot. The mirror was ordered from an Etsy Shop and came really quickly. The light fixture is from Lowe's, and the shelves are from Amazon. 

Old mudroom

New mudroom

We got the counter and the bench as raw wood from Indy Urban Hardwood (and it has a beautiful live edge on it). It was stained, sanded, with multiple layers of polyurethane added to it. These are actually from the same piece of wood that we had cut for us at the store. My husband made the bench piece that the wood top sits on top of and the shorter cabinet is just an off-the-shelf one from Lowe's. 

Old deck. Note that there were several holes in the deck and missing pieces of wood on the deck down below.

New deck. We sanded and stripped the paint/stain that was on it previously -- scrubbing with a wire brush really stinks! But we also found that most of the deck is redwood, which is awesome. My husband did burn out the sander that he had, so I would definitely recommend renting a large floor sander to do something like this. We thought that the darker brown fit in with the woods a little more than the previous red color.

One of the things we enjoyed at our old house was a bar top that we had by the pool. We ate dinner out there all of the time. We didn't have anything like that here, and our bar top was too large for the upper deck, so we built this ledge. it is perfect for the two of us and we've had quite a lot of meals here so far. 

We've definitely been keeping busy during the pandemic...but there is still more to come!

Guest Bathroom Remodel

I haven't written in a while as we've been working on a large number of different projects, but we finally (mostly) finished one project...the guest bathroom!

To the left, you can see the before pictures. There was an old vanity from the 1970s, a toilet that had a date inside that said 1974, a textured wallpaper, and a little bit of mold.

The hubby was doing a bunch of work in the girls' bedrooms, so I decided to remove the wallpaper and get the walls ready to paint. As I was doing this, I discovered mold behind the toilet and vanity. The next thing I know, we've pulled out the wall, the vanity, the toilet, and the floor. I had only planned on painting, but the guest bathroom seems to go the way of the rest of the house!

I also wanted to get a new tub, but Hubby thought we could salvage it and he really hates doing plumbing, so no new tub for me.

We put up cement board since it is right near the bathtub and after much patching and sanding, we painted. We went with the same color as one of the daughter's room (Early Riser from Magnolia Farms), but with all of the patching and not having an expert drywall seamer, we noticed that it really showed any imperfections in the walls. It took a lot of patching and sanding to make it all look right, but we got there.

For the floor, we weren't finding anything that we really wanted at any of the big box stores, so we took a trip to Floor & Decor where they had a really wide selection of tiles. We decided to go with a ceramic tile because we both just loved it - Florentina Gray Ceramic tile. Maybe we liked it so much because we spent some time in Florence this summer! Whatever it was, we both agreed and we really liked the price of 99¢ square foot. With a small bathroom, we spent about $60 on the tile. We bought a darker gray grout and sealer and we were set to start tiling.

I won't go into all of the details of tiling, but I really hate it (even though the hubby does most of the work). It took us about three days to tile, let it dry, grout, let it dry, then seal the tile, but it was worth the wait and I really love it!

The vanity came from Indy Surplus Liquidators. If you haven't followed them on Facebook, it is definitely worth looking at. They buy truckloads of returns from WayFair or other companies like them and then sell them at a greatly reduced price. We got the vanity with a marble top for $250 (regular price at WayFair was $850). It has one small scratch on the bottom, but I can definitely live with that - it is covered up by the wastebasket anyway!).

The parents got us an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas, so a new light came from there. We purchased the new toilet from Costco (people rave about the Water Ridge Dual Flush toilet from the warehouse only) and got the new mirror from Menard's (Delta Mirrors).

We still have to replace the outlets and put covers on, and we want to add doors to the shower, but here is the (mostly) finished product.