Frost Yourself

Before I get to today’s post, I want to make a little plug. Tomorrow I am guest blogging on Wayfair’s My Way Home blog about something that recently occurred in our little house and some tips on when you need to bring in a professional for your DIY job. VERY exciting things happening at Operation Restoration! Now, on to today’s post.

A while back (I’m talking at least 8 months ago) Adam and I went to the ReStore in Roslindale to scope out what this store had to offer. It was a relatively new location so we went to look around and see what treasures we could find. And we found some goodies!

It’s safe to assume that we now have a full fledged door obsession. Almost every antique/thrift store or fair, we’re looking for doors to replace our plywood hollow core doors with period piece solid wood ones. We’ve had luck at the ReStore in Portland and you can’t beat the prices there. So when we came across not one but THREE gorgeous doors, we couldn’t walk away from them. Two of them were previous porch doors and one was half of a French door. Why were we interested in only half of a French door? Well, the section that had the gorgeous glass door knob fit our bathroom door frame. Is it weird that I wanted a glass paned door our bathroom door? Sure, it would make for awkward moments, but I had a solution.

I wanted a door that would allow light to pass through it because that part of the house is so dark and the bathroom window gets great light. The French door was a perfect solution, and the perfect price of $25! So, how do you make it so people can’t see you do your business without having the pay a lot of money for frosted replacement glass? Frosted glass spray paint!

The door itself needed a little TLC before I addressed the glass so I took off the hardware and got to bust out my trusty sander and went to town.

After a quick sanding and dusting, I was ready for some paint. I wanted to keep it white to go with the rest of the bathroom and brighten up the dark hallway so I used Behr’s semi-gloss enamel in Behr Premium Plus Enamel Zero VOC in Ultra Bright White that we picked up from the Home Depot. After three coats and the proper drying time (about 2-3 hours) it was good to go.

On to the frosting!

While we were at Home Depot we purchased RustOleum specialty frosted glass spray. Since we had no idea how this stuff would turn out, we did a dry run on one of the other doors we purchased that has glass panes. As a back up we purchased plain contact paper, but I really didn’t want to go that route as I was looking for a more permanent solution. We tested and perfected our process on one pane and after a couple of passes; it started to “frost up”! Let’s do this for reals.

We first had to give the glass a good cleaning and make sure that they were extremely dry before we could even begin spraying. Once we cleaned up the glass, we were ready to spray. Starting at the top, we went frame by frame, with nice even lines so it was more consistent. We read on the can that it worked best if you applied multiple coats while it was still wet. Sounds pretty good! We probably did about 10 coats. That might seem a little excessive, but I’d rather have a lot of coats on there versus not, just in case you could still through it. We left the door outside for 48 hours so it could properly gas-off, brought it back in and hung it up. I absolutely love it and am so happy that we went this route. It still lets the light shine through but you still have your privacy. Sorry for the night shots. They’re the best I could get!

Am I absolutely crazy for putting in glass as a bathroom door? Would you have a glass bathroom door? Fill me in!

***I am entering my DIY frosted bathroom door into the Creating With the Stars blog contest for a chance to compete in a four week, DIY contest.  I will most likely be soliciting votes from you in the near future. So, consider this your warning. 😉 ***

Busy Bees.

Well, we’ve been busy bees this last couple of weeks. We’ve grouted the shower tiles, had the plumbers come in and install everything and we’re working on the finishing touches. So, we pretty much have a functioning bathroom on our hands! How’d we get there?

Well, let’s back up to the grouting process, something I like to call “the dark times”. I could say that it went smoothly, but unfortunately it did not. So I’m going to be really honest here. I thought I would be a really great girlfriend and grout the entire surround. I will admit that this was my first attempt at grouting by myself, and I was definitely nervous. Of course, it didn’t help that I picked one of the hottest days in July to do it. So I mix everything together just fine, get my tools together to start grouting and get at it. Except it was drying fast…really fast. So fast that it started crumbling on me. I’m grouting, pushing it into the tiles as quickly as I could and trying my hardest. So I eventually get the whole thing grouted, and am about to start wiping it off when Adam comes in, sees that the grout has dried too quickly and not properly and it needs to be redone. An hour and a half wasted, materials wasted, a boyfriend that isn’t too pleased. The next night, I’m painstakingly taking the grout out of the tiles, just to do it again the next weekend, well, Adam did it the next weekend since my track record is sub par.

But on to the good things! How did the the grout turn out? Fantastic.

The plumber came and installed everything beautifully.

Adam’s Dad was kind enough to come to the house while the plumbers did their thing and in a few hours we had a working bathroom! A toilet that flushes! A sink with running water! A shower/tub that can used! No more showering in a tiny stall shower down a flight of stairs.

So, now we’re up to speed. We’ve spent our time mostly doing touch up paint, puttying of holes in the wainscoting (and sanding), and installing the shower rod. Everything went pretty smoothly, until we got the shower rod. It was tough due to the the cement board, but after some sweat (and surprisingly no cursing) Adam was able to get it hung up.

We needed one that was longer in length, so I jumped online and found a shower curtain liner that was 84″ long (thanks Amazon!). I also did some research for an actual shower curtain but haven’t been able to find anything that I’m really crazy about (pattern wise) and all that I came across is one that I found on Bed, Bath and Beyond, but it’s just a white waffle. I like it, because it’s simple and it would look nice in the bathroom, but I think I just want something..different.

Adam’s sister and her boyfriend just moved into a great loft in Brooklyn.  To help define space, they had the genius idea (and inexpensive!) way to do just that…painter’s drop cloth! So, I took their idea and I’m running with it. For as little as $10, I think I have my shower curtain! I love that it has a textured look to it and I can make it any length that I need it to be. With some iron on hemming material (I’m seriously lacking in the sewing department) grommets (thanks BVB and RVB!) I should be good to go! I picked up some greyish/metallic acrylic paint so I can paint on my own pattern. One in particular I’m interested in is a chevron pattern like this:

image found here

I also found these guys at a local sewing shop that I might attempt:

We’ll see. I’m defeintely going to play around with it before hand, like taping it up with some painters tape to make sure I even like it!

Well, I’ve rambled on for far too long. Has anyone attempted to make their own shower curtain before? Any tips will be greatly appreciated.

Wainscoting and Chair rail fever.

First. I’d like to say I’m sorry for the lack of postings recently. I’m blaming summer activities and the heat. Ok. Back at it.

Let’s chat wainscoting.  I’m kind of obsessed. When we first decided to do the bathroom, I instantly envisioned wainscoting, chair rail and crown molding. Add in some gorgeous trim and it would be my ideal bathroom. Well, I’m happy to say, that we’re almost there!

We’ve been busy working on completing the bathroom, and I’m happy to say that I think I can see the end of the road! It’s not just be closing my eyes and picturing how it could look…its starting to actually look that way in real life!

We went to our second home (Home Depot) and looked our options. We could go down  the really expensive solid wood (but beautiful) path or we could do a man made version that already comes primed and ready to go. As much as I would have loved to have the real deal, we went with the man made stuff since our wallets were speaking…loudly. MDF it is! And as we were loading panels (8 to be exact) into the car, I looked at Adam and said, “isn’t it funny how we took down paneling…and now we’re putting it back up?!” We were putting up something like wood paneling, but this is different. This actually looks good!

While we were in the molding department, we decided to pick up our chair rail that sits on top of the wainscoting. We went with something simple (and cheap!) and I think it looks so great. We were on a roll and even priced out our molding for the window and doorframe. Luckily the doorframe molding comes with a complete kit so all we have to do is match the window molding to it. Easy peasy.

Installation was actually a breeze too. We took some wood glue, slapped it on and nailed in some finishing nails and we had ourselves some wainscoting!

Adam putting the wainscoting!

So, it really didn’t take us that long to put it up. Maybe an afternoon? All I know is that it took longer for us to make the cuts than it did to install it.

And of course, I had to see what it looked like with all the fixtures:

God it looks good. Too bad everything had to go back to the boxes and wait until the plumber comes. HINT: They’re coming next week!

We’ve been really busy (and we will be up till next Friday) getting everything together and ready so we can FINALLY have a functioning bathroom. It’s been a year in the making, but it’s so worth the wait.

Swatches galore

I’ve been looking at swatches ever since we started demo-ing. I’m pretty sure I dragged Adam to the paint section when we went into Home Depot to grab a crowbar to tackle the demo. Needless to say, I was excited to paint. So,  after 8 months of working on this room, I can finally say that we’re ready to paint! As you saw on our last post, we primed the entire bathroom with Olympic’s no VOC paint and we’re going to use it again to paint the entire room. As for inspiration for the color? Can’t really pinpoint where I got the color combo from, but right now I’m really loving blues, greys, white and greens. I think it’s a really great color combination that could essentially work anywhere in the house. But enough talk about color combinations…let’s get on to the swatches!

From left to right: Shark Loop, Chambray, Serene Stream and Chalky Blue.

I started off really wanting something in the blue/grey family and thought that I would love shark loop, but once it got on the wall all I felt was “meh” about it. As soon as I put the other colors up on the wall, I had an instant favorite, but didn’t say anything until I showed them to Adam. Adam walked in and picked his favorite…the same one as me! It was such an easy decision to make, but I wanted to make sure that we really loved it so we lived with the color for a couple of days. I wanted to see how the color was in different lights at different times of the day. But in the end, we chose Serene Stream!! We’ve already picked up a gallon and I can’t wait to get started. I’m contemplating whether or not to use Shark Loop to paint the ceiling, but I think we’ll live with the white ceiling for a bit just to make sure.

So stay tuned to the next post…I need to get my paint on!

In the White Room…

Sorry for not posting in a while. We’ve been a little busy with this guy!
We adopted him from Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem on Sunday and he’s been taking all of our precious time, but he’s so worth it. And it helps that he’s so stinking cute.

Moving on from the cuteness overload! We’ve actually been quite busy in the Farrar/Van Buren household these past couple of weekends. We have finally primed the bathroom, meaning it’s ready to be painted! Since neither one of us had ever painted a room in our lives, it will be a learning experience. I learned that Adam is a messy painter and painting ceilings without an extension rod is tough and hard on the arms/shoulders/neck. But all in all, we got it done and it’s really starting to feel like a room, like a real room where we could actually use it!

We decided to use Olympic’s no VOC primer, and I absolutely loved it. It didn’t have that freshly painted smell that lasts for days, which means it’s you’re not breathing in those nasty vapors. Granted, it’s a little more expensive, but I think it’s totally worth it. Why breath in those nasty chemicals when you don’t have too? And an added bonus was that it didn’t take as long as we thought it would because it dried pretty quickly. We were able to put two coats on in about 3 hours, so not to shabby! We did notice that the areas that were covered in the cement board really soaked up the primer, but we actually only used one gallon to do two coats and some touch ups here and there.

Here I am painting away!
Once the primer was dry, it allowed us to see our imperfections. Walls that looked really great –smooth and even before we primed – had some spots with knicks and would need some patching. Not too many though.

Here’s a shot midway through priming…

Now all we need is some paint. I’ve picked out a couple of samples…so hopefully we’ll decide soon!

Mud, Mud, I love mud.

For the Maine readers, you’ll quickly realize that the title of today’s blog comes from one of my favorite childhood singers, Rick Charette! If you don’t know who he is, check him out!

We have moved onto the mudding phase! Taping the seams got us off to a good start and we quickly went to applying our first coat of mud. I’ve never mudded before in my life, but I took to it pretty well. I might have not used enough the first time around, but I definitely put plenty on the second time! 

I had another picture, but it seems like our flickr account is tired and isn’t functioning at the moment. Let me tell you…it looks fabulous.

Our next step is the sanding process, which we’ll probably start sometime this weekend. I’ll be posting some attractive pictures of our sweet outfits!

Ch-Ch-Changes

Lots of changes around here lately! First, you’ll notice that I’ve switched blog hosts. I decided to change from Tumblr to WordPress since WordPress allows me to get some stats and nerdy marketing things. And people can follow the blog more easily via facebook or an RSS feed. I’ll slowly begin making upgrades/additions as I go, but I digress. Let’s talk about about the progress we’ve made since the last blog post.

We have completed the drywall! It took all weekend, but we did it. And we couldn’t be happier! Take a look for yourself.

After doing drywall for an entire weekend, I’m all set with not doing it again for awhile. But man, does that look nice or what? We were pretty pleased and managed to do it with little bickering! Go us!

The bathroom is really taking shape, meaning, it’s starting to look like a real room! We still have a lot on the list to do, but we’re both really happy to have reached this point. I keep picturing myself just hanging out in there all day because it’s going to be the nicest room in the whole house. Adam will most likely have to drag me out once we’re done!

We’ve been up to other projects recently too, but no worries, I’ll be blogging about them earlier next week. We’re heading to NH to go skiing/snowboarding/see our friends new house and I couldn’t be more excited.

Happy weekend!