Powder Room Reno Reveal!

So here it is- the powder room reveal! I know we promised you all this reveal over a week ago, but life got busy and we didn't get a chance, however I know that just helped with the anticipation...right? :)

In the end, we went with a "white" theme for this bathroom. To be honest, it made things easy (we both love white spaces, decor, etc) and in such a small space it made sense. We did try 2 light coloured testers on the wall, but neither of them seemed to be just right.

So we settled on white walls, cabinet and an interesting stone for the top. The accessories we kept simple, focusing on chrome and thats really all we needed for this space.

Lets take a look back at the before photo first:

and here is the after:

Much better! We had to work with the floors that we currently have (although we hate them), so that meant keeping the colours and palette simple. We also didn't want to choose a countertop that clashed with the floors.

We went with a basic vanity base from Lowes. From there, we chose a stone remnant that we liked and had it cut to size. We purposely did not make the stone go all the way to the wall on the sides. Reason for doing that? One day when we can replace these floors, we want to be able to slide that vanity out of the powder room and once the new floors are in, put it back. Cutting the top that way, will allow us to do that. A lot of people thought we were crazy for doing that (we had to fight with the installers!), but in the end, they loved the look of it, as do we. We also thought cutting it that way, made it look like a piece of furniture, which we prefer.

The stone we chose is a granite called "White Reef". We liked the cream, white, grey and green tones to it, and it seemed to blend well with our floors, which was another bonus. The stone will be easy to care for and the slab that this remnant was from, was actually 3/4 inches which we thought worked well.

We installed a new toilet and sink as well. The sink is a Kohler that we ordered from the same place we got the stone. We have the same sink upstairs in our small bath and love it, so that was an easy purchase. The mirror was stolen from our upstairs bathroom, and the towel bar and toilet paper holder are from Home Sense. The picture frames are from Ikea and to fill the frames, I quickly painted some initials (I, C and M) for now. The shelf above the toilet we bought at HomeSense, but modified with some trim and painted it the same colour as the walls..

The white colour we chose is Simply White by Benjamin Moore (everything white in our house is painted this colour), and it makes the room feel so much brighter.

Overall, the space feels much cleaner and fresher and I can stop feeling embarrassed about sending our guests in there!

Here's one more look at the before and after:

So there you have it!

Here is our Source List:

Countertop: Graniteworx- granite called "White Reef"
Sink: Kohler- Graniteworx
Vanity: Lowes
Toilet: Lowes
Faucet: Lowes
Light fixture: Lowes
Mirror: (stole from upstairs bathroom- purchased at Urban Barn sale years ago)
Soap dispenser: Jonathan Adler (gift at a Marilyn Denis show taping!)
Garbage pail: Walmart
Toilet paper holder and towel bar: HomeSense
White towels: Home Sense
Shelf above toilet: DIY project/HomesSense
Chrome Kleenex box holder: gift
Flower: HomeSense
Picture Frames: Ikea

Paint Colours:

Wall Colour: Simply White - Benjamin Moore
Trim Colour: Simply White - Benjamin Moore

If you want a refresher on how we got to this point, feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the powder room renovation. Also, if you have any questions on anything that we forgot to list, please feel free to comment below!

We hope you enjoyed our nice bright, white space!

Melissa and Ian

Powder Room Reno Part 2

We left you with this:

and we've come a long way since!

Next step was to choose a wall colour and add in the vanity. The wall colour was going to be picked based on the colours that were in the countertop that we chose. The countertop is a granite called "White Reef" and it has a bit of white, cream, grey and green to it. My initial choice was to paint the room "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore (the colour of all of the trim we've painted in the house), but Ian wasn't on board.

So we decided to look at colours that were light and bright but that would go with the counter. After painting 2 testers on the wall, I convinced Ian that "Simply White" might look the best and he agreed.

We chose to go all white, based on the fact that we wanted the counter to be the focal point and didn't want anything else in the room competing with it. As well, the space is small and we wanted it to feel clean and bright.

So the room was painted "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore and the vanity was installed.

We also added in a new light fixture about the vanity:

So we'll leave you with that for now.
Stay tuned for the final reveal post coming up next!

Melissa and Ian

Powder Room Reno Part 1

So here is what we started with:

It wasn't horrible. However, it was a a bit stuck in the 90's and not really our style. The sponge paint on the walls was going to be the first thing to go. Along- with the super old toilet that gave me the heebie-geebies.

So we started taking it apart...with a plan and a small budget in mind. We planned to overhaul this space for under $1000.00 and I think we did it! More on that to come later.

So first things first. We took out the vanity and had to move the pipes behind  it. We moved the pipes that we coming up out of the floor, so that they were coming out of the back wall. We did this so that we didn't have to cut a hole up into the bottom of the new vanity.

Once we did that, we had to fix the drywall on the back wall and add tiles back onto the floor where the vanity had been.

Since the vanity was going to be going on top of the tiles, we weren't worried about chipping out the half tiles and replacing them with full tiles. We just wanted to make sure that there were tiles under the vanity as the vanity is raised off the floor and some tile will be visible.

Once the tiles were grouted, Ian removed the baseboards and fixed up the drywall:

It was his first time doing drywall, so we figured a wall that would be covered up with a vanity was a good place to start! However, I think he did a pretty good job for his first attempt!

Next, we put the baseboards back on and added some chair rail (because we apparently, really like adding mouldings to rooms!)

We then removed the ancient toilet and prepared to prime the space:

And the priming began:

and once it was done, it was already a million times better than what we started with!

So that's where we'll leave this post at for now. Next we'll talk about picking a wall colour, vanity and all of the other choices for the room! Stay tuned :)

P.S. Dont forget to enter our Giveaway! There's only 3 days left!

Melissa and Ian

Painting the Hallway

We painted our hallway. I *may* have had a minor panic attack the day before the painting began, but thankfully it all turned out great.

Painting a hallway is a big commitment. Its not like a small room that's easy to repaint if you aren't crazy about the colour. On top of that we had to hire someone to come in and paint the open part of our ceiling (since we need scaffolding to reach those high areas) so we needed to make SURE we were happy with the colour...7 tester pots later and 3 days of debating we had finally chosen our colour.

From the day we moved into this house, we had planned to change the colours.

As you can probably tell from many of the other rooms in this house, we prefer light colours (blues, white, light grey's) so the dark, earthy colours weren't right for us.

Here's what we started with:

 

We also planned to change out the light fixtures, but I'll save that for another post :)

 

So we chose the colour Blizzard Fog from ICI/Duluxe paints:

 

 

Source

It has a light greenish- grey tone to it, but once we painted it on, we noticed a great deal of blue, which we were still happy with.

 

So here's how the hallway looks now:

 

 

 

 

 

We have a lot more to still do in this space (stairs are still a work in progress), as is the hanging lighting and we need to decorate the space, but it will all come with time.

 

You might have also noticed that the hanging fixtures that were there before are now gone. We had them replaced with potlights and love the look. There was a big debate on getting new fixtures or potlights, but we finally settled on the potlights. Our reasoning for this, was that the fixtures we wanted were almost $100 each and even still we didn't totally love them. So up went the potlights, down came the fixtures we highly disliked leaving us with a nice clean look in the hallway.

 

We still need to replace the large hanging fixture and we did purchase a fixture for this (which we've had for over a year), so we're excited to change that out and see how it changes the look.

 

For now, its so nice to walk into our home, into a nice bright entranceway...we love it.

 

 

 

Have any of you chosen to paint a light colour in your front entrance way? What did you think of it?

 

Melissa and Ian

 

 

 

Powder Room Makeover

First of all, we want to thank all of you for the lovely response we received to our last post. We truly, truly appreciate all of your support and can't wait to share so many of these projects we've been working on for the past while, with all of you. So thank you all, xo.

Something else we've been up to (along with all of the other projects going on) is to finally paint and renovate our main floor powder room.

The current state of this bathroom is not the greatest. I mean, it functions fine, but the toilet is old, the sink is starting to slightly rust and Im not even going to address the colours, since once you see it you'll know its not our style:

Plus we sold the toilet paper holder and towel bar on Kijiji over 2 years ago and haven't installed a replacement, so its not that convenient for our lovely guests that come over :)

It's definitely one of those rooms that we've been itching to make over since we moved into this house. Its another project we plan to finish before the baby arrives and since its such a small room, and we already have a few of the things we need, we figured we could fit it into the budget.

Ian challenged me to design the room on a budget of $1000.00 or less, and I'm determined to do it.

My inspiration for the power room is this room I found on Pinterest:

Source

We love the colours, the feel and it will go nicely with the hallway and the other colours in our home.

Although I'd love to do something with fancy tile and all kids of other things, its not in the budget and I need to find a way to make the room interesting without spending a lot. I think installing a chair rail will definitely help with that!

I created a quick inspiration board to lay out all of our ideas:

As you can see, we're still unsure of lighting options (I've posted 2 options), however most likely we will need to go with the long pendant since there isn't room on either side of the mirror for sconces...boo. We do have that long crystal light installed in our small upstairs bath though, and we love it, so it should do the trick.

There aren't really that many things we need for the space. We already have the new toilet, mirror and paint, so the vanity, lighting, fixtures and accessories are all we need.

For the paint we've chosen "Antique Sterling" by ICI/Duluxe paints (its just a bit darker than what we have in the hallway) so we know it will match well.

So on with another project...aiming to have this one done in the next few months, so we'll be updating you on the progress as we go :)

Melissa and Ian

p.s for those of you wondering about the stairs...they are still a work in progress! Hopefully I'll be able to update you all soon with a pic :)

Chair Update

Remember our vanity chair that we made over a whiiiiile back?

It started out looking like this:

 

 

and we made it over to look like this:

 

 

 

Well, we loved how that chair turned out, but once we got our headboard fabric something had to change. After searching for months for our headboard fabric, we figured it was probably easier to change the chair. So we did.

 

First we had it sprayed a different colour. We chose "Polar Jade" by Benjamin Moore:

 

 

 

The first time around I painted the chair by hand and was really happy with the paint and the results. This time, we decided to get it professionally sprayed. We figured since we were getting the nightstands done, that we might as well do the chair at the same time to save us money on buying a can of paint and the time. We didn't need to prime the chair since it had already been painted. The painter just gave it a light sanding and then it was sprayed. This colour worked perfect with our drapes, new headboard fabric and nightstands (which we had had sprayed in the same colour...post on that coming soon).

 

After spraying the chair, we reupholstered it with what we had leftover from our headboard fabric, "Fleur, Summer" from Tonic Living:

 

 

and soon we ended up with a chair that matched everything perfectly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chair actually looks a lot brighter in the pictures than it actually is. The colour is actually closer to the colour of the drapes which works perfectly.

 

So there you go. A quick and easy makeover that didn't break the bank.

 

Costs:

 

Chair- already owned (so FREE! kinda?!)

Paint and spraying- $60.00 Polar Jade by Benjamin Moore

Fabric- leftover from our headboard fabric (Fleur Summer from Tonic Living) (also free since we already had it)

 

Total cost: $60.00.

Woot!

 

Im thinking of adding some"bling" nailhead trim around the seat base where the fabric meets the chair...what do you think?!

 

Melissa and Ian