Boys Bathroom

Mirror was installed in the boys bathroom this morning.

Once the mirror went up it became obvious we need to tile around the window - finish that entire wall in tile. sigh.

I love the floor tile, even though the black grout is super dirty and turning white.  I need to get a scrub brush since the grout is sunk into the floor, not level with the tile, and debris gets trapped.

The tub is the bomb. It is six feet long with drain and filler in the middle, allowing a child to sit at each side. The hand held shower should come in handy for washing the kids.

The cubbies make me happy! The shelf is a beautiful solid piece of wood. The sconces are vintage from etsy.

I want to love this room, but, in equal parts I like the wall tiles and want to rip them out. I guess it's not the tiles, it's the thickness of the grout. The grout is too chunky and way more graphic than I had intended (or maybe I was just wrong). I guess that's something I can and will get used to. The real 'problem' is that the black grout emphasizes the chipped edge of every single cut tile - every tile that is not whole is chipped/frayed at the edge. I don't know what they can do about it. We will wait until September and see. I can probably get used to this too. Is it normal?

ps. The sink is on back order.
pps. Likely using this light

Primping and Preening

I have been switching things up, moving things around, freshening paint, you know, being a busy little bee. When the boys go down for bed I go into full on try-this-try-that-stand back-take-iphone-pic-switch-things-try-something-else-then-put-all-the-extra-stuff-back-away mode.

Here are a few changes:

1- Hung a second framed postcard in the bathroom - the higher one. Why didn't I do this sooner? We had the matching frame just sitting in the storage room - duh!

I also switched back to a white shower curtain and donated the busy print shower curtain to goodwill. I liked the wild yellow green and blue ikat print, but it really wasn't me...I was inspired by blogs. I say that's like it's a bad thing, but, I am happy I gave it a shot! Inevitably, I was going to switch back to something neutral.

2- Switched to the grey rug in the foyer. The cream one needs to be taken in to the dry cleaners after all the snow we had last winter. Maybe it's a little too early to speak about winter in the past tense, there is still snow on the ground, after all!

3- Shopping and putting together some bright spring outfits...(camera worthy bright spring outfits)
 
4- Herb garden on the kitchen window shelf! The herbs are from Loblaws ($2.99, or maybe $3.99, I should have paid more attention...they were $3.99 at metro, I noticed)...they are a little yellow so I better get cooking!!

5 - Ditched the tray of cooking oil, salt & pepper and other miscellaneous things that was sitting on the counter next to the stove. (For now, you can see it in the house tour) I remember when I set this up! I was so excited! It was something else that I saw on a blog. I even ordered the vintage tin tray from etsy specifically for this purpose! Except, when I took a good hard look at the kitchen the other night, I knew I had to tuck the clutter back away. I stashed everything the cupboard immediately above where the tray was. Everything is still very accessible.

I also bought some new wooden spoons. My little guy loves to play with spoons, whenever he sees me stirring something he begs at my legs to be up. He only knows a handful of words, 'HOT' is one of them!

6 - Using the covered dish from last year's Blogpodium Swag bag. The dish is from Chapter/Indigo and is a great size to secretly hold my Nespresso pods. My previous apple shaped dish was pretty cute, but didn't have a lid.

7 - Painted the stairwell in the basement as well as the desk/wall under the stairs. Fresh and white and clean! A few hours (no taping, no drop clothes) and it was done! Now I will want to repaint every time the walls get scuffed!

8 - Taped a bunch of new roads on the toy mat. At first I went all random, and then decided to try and make a pattern...I like it! It's graphic!

The IKEA slide has been downstairs since the fall, I am not sure I mentioned it? I haven't met a kid that doesn't love it! The IKEA circus tent comes out periodically, then gets folded up and put away when the boys start to ignore it.  Right now the game is to zoom hot wheels down the slide into the tent. Hours of fun! (ok, minutes of fun!)

9- Hung a small painting over the thermometer. I thought since it is almost time to turn the furnace off anyways (not really, I wish!)...ok, maybe this was only temporary but I love it!

Ask me what's up!  I'm begging to be asked!

Bathroom Makeover: Before & After

I am finally ready to show you the upstairs bathroom again! The goal was to make this room look better.  I think we managed that.  Changing the fixtures (sink/toilet) was pretty much out of the question.  We are considering a major gut/demo and do-over in the future (not the near future), so this before & after became a decorating challenge.

Here is the after:

and here is the before (when we bought the house):

and what I started with a few months ago:

Goodbye dark grout lines! Goodbye white shower curtain! Hello little baskets! Hello ceiling light!  Hello cabana stripe hand towels and navy carpet!

At first I couldn't handle the bold shower curtain...it overwhelmed me.  Then, as I was going through my closets, emptying out everything for the garage sale, I realized that I just couldn't bare to give it up.  So I tried the curtain again and it stuck!

I had planned on putting up a faux roman blind.  It was really cute but it blocked too much light.  So the blind came down.

Other stuff: We hung a metal hanging fruit basket over the shower curtain rod to hold all of my son's toys.  The basket was from goodwill.  The light fixture, new wicker garbage pail, toilet paper basket and step stool were also thrifted.  The shower curtain I picked up from ebay.  The hand towels were on sale at Bed Bath and Beyond.  The bath mat was from The Bay (on sale).

I hope you like it!!!

Update: Since 2011 we got rid of dark bath carpet (gets too wet with the kids) and only use the small bath mat towel thingies. We went back to a white shower curtain because pattern makes my head explode. The shower doesn't work, the toilet requires plunging and animated language to function fully.  The grout renew on the grout lines has held up perfectly!  

Using grout renew to make our dark grout, white

BEST PRODUCT EVER!!

(Grout Renew in Snow White from Home Depot)

Possible light for the bathroom

 Do you think this will work in the bathroom? (My better half found the light at a huge rummage sale...this was totally his score..and I LOVE IT)

...the reason I hesitate is because its SUPER GLAMOROUS...and because it needs to be rewired (that takes extra effort)

Thanks for all your input on the bathroom...you have me geared up for a mini makeover...

Update: I just stood in the bathroom and held the light over my head...I can swag the chain so the light hangs directly center of the window...I think this might work!


Dimensions:
Fixture: 27" from ceiling plate to bottom of the glass (chain needs to be shortened or drape/swag it)
Glass: 71/2" x10 1/2"
Chrome part: 9 1/2" x 4"

Deciding if white grout lines are better than dark

Barb suggested we regrout the the floor tiles in the upstairs bathroom, using white mix... So I taped white masking tape over the dark grey grout lines to see what the room would be like with that dark grey grid pattern removed...this is what we would have (only skinnier, because the masking tape is double the thickness of the grout)...doable? liveable?

When I walk into the bathroom it feels MUCH BRIGHTER AND FRESHER!   Re-grouting might be an 'easy' fix

Do you think its worth going through the effort? Lets face it - if we decide to rip out the floor in order to lay new tile, we will end up ripping out everything...that's how we roll!

Upstairs Bathroom

This morning, I pulled out the drill and installed this $13.99 towel ring (from Canadian tire)...I wasn't up to the task of drilling into the tile, so I went above...It makes me very happy (its level-ish)

When we renovated the entire house (before we moved in), we left this bathroom alone because it was fine (we changed the sconces, and put in the medicine cabinet - home depot special)  ...the room wasn't great, but we felt (I felt) that it was good enough.   Well, it turns out that its not quite good enough, but, that's a story for another day...

I need a new light fixture (anything would be better than this one)...roman blinds might make it more cozy?...I like the white shower curtain but wish the rod was much closer to the ceiling (the tiles stop short of the ceiling too)...the fixtures are GARBAGE (we could potentially change just the fixtures)

Not sure if I should try to decorate the hell outta it...or start calling contractors to get a quote? What do you think? What small improvements would you make to this room?

p.s. this is the only bathroom upstairs, we don't have an ensuite

Organizing the window shelf in the bathroom

This was our upstairs bathroom window before:

And this is the after:

I taped a sheet of newspaper up back in April after our neighbors cut a new window in the side of their house.  It took us 4 1/2 months before we got around to buying and installing some frosty sticky film.

(We have only one tiny bathroom upstairs ...the shampoo and soap need to go up and out of reach!)