Vintage Bathroom Makeover {Part 4}

 

 

Happy hump day everyone! I hope that you are having a fantastic day so far. Things are fab here! I survived the "Great Disaster Room Cleanout of 2014" and will show you the updates this week. It is amazing what 14 hours of hard labor can do for a massive mess! So that is one step closer to being really moved into the house...and I am so excited! I wanted to stop by today to show you where we are with the guest bathroom. Last time we checked-in, I showed you the floors, wainscoting and subway tile shower surround. So today, I wanted to show you the latest version since all of the "hardscape" is in and we are now just left with accessorizing. Happy days!!! As a reminder, here is the upstairs floor plan before we started the renovation and the guest bathroom is highlighted in yellow: 

 

As I have previously mentioned, one of the main reasons for our renovation was to update and enlarge our tiny bathrooms. Although the bathrooms had a fun vintage look, it was not the look we were going for. Here is what the vanity area looked like before the renovation:

 

 

And here is what the shower/toilet area looked like:

 

 

So as you can see, super dark and super tiny!!! In order to make it so that two people could get ready at the same time, we decided to make a separate vanity area and a separate shower/toilette area. Here is the floor plan for the remodeled second floor and the new bathroom is highlighted in yellow:

 

As I previously mentioned, we were going for a 1920's vintage feel with carrara marble, white subway tiles, and dark cabinets. This is the original mood board that I made for the bathroom:

 

 

And here is how she turned out! This is a view looking into the vanity area from the shower/toilet room:

 

 

We have a double vanity on the right side of the room. And on the left side, we have two floor to ceiling linen cabinets. This is a fairly tight space, but between the vanity and the two linen cabinets, we have a TON of storage!!! We also added the white wainscoting to give the room a tailored look and chose a cool grey to play off of the carrara marble counter tops.  One of my favorite features of the bathroom though is the basket weave tile "floor mat" that we added in the vanity area:

I absolutely LOVE the way that it turned out!!! To me, the floor gives a super retro vibe and is a fun surprise. And please excuse the quality of the following picture, but here is what the bathroom looks like when you enter from the hallway.

You can't tell from that picture (because I was using my IPone), but there is about an 8" space between each side of the vanity and the wall...so the vanity actually looks like a piece of furniture as opposed to a built-in cabinet. Now moving onto the shower/toilet room.  In the shower I chose white subway tile for the shower surround, a large goose neck shower head (because there are many 6'4"+ men in my family that will visit), and a hand shower that I can use to more easily bath children (once they join the picture):

In the middle of the shower, to break up some of monotony of the subway tiles, I added a framed herringbone feature. 

 I am so excited with the way it turned out! I think it is super elegant with a splash of fun. And on the back side of the shower we added a train rack to hang robes and store towels for our guests:

 

 

The train rack is so pretty!!! It makes me not want to hang a shower curtain so that I can see it all the time.  And as you can see from the picture above, I also added a little bench at the end of the tub. I thought this would be a great place to sit when bathing kiddos and also will be a nice place for them to store their bath toys. So there you have it folks! I still have a ton to do with all the accessorizing, but have made huge progress! And speaking of progress, lets check out a couple before and afters shall we?!?!?!

And one more of the shower area! So much better!!!!

 



 

 Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!!!

 

Fireplace Makeover

 

Happy Friday! I hope that it has been a great week for everyone! Tomorrow is the first day of college foot and I couldn't be more excited (especially since Mr. Manziel is good to go and can start the second half of tomorrow's game - SCORE)!!! So fingers crossed that it will be a good game and not too sweltering hot (Bahahahahahah...not hot in College Station in August, good luck with that one). So much is happening at the house right now trying to get it ready for our move-in day. We passed the plumbing and electrical inspections today - WOOHOO!!! We also started the fireplace remodel. Here is what she looked like originally, right before we started the remodel:

 

 

The first problem was the massive hearth that stuck out about 16" from the front of the fireplace and wrapped around the side. Unfortunately, that was just way too much valuable real estate being wasted for me, so out it went! The second issue was the weird large cubbie to the right of the fireplace. Being from Houston where we might get one fireplace-worthy-day a year, Matt and I had no idea what that space was used for...and thought it was just a strange cubbie. We lived in the house for three years before one of my friends that lives up north happened to stop by and informed us that is where you are supposed to store your wood. Seriously??? How much wood does one person need (that's what she said)????  Here is what the fireplace looked like after we removed the hearth and added built-in cabinets to the right in the old wood storage cubbie.

 

Oooo, and gotta give a quick shout-out to the new floor color. I am so digging the dark chocolate brown. Yummy!!! So now back to the fireplace, the third problem came to light as the remodel progressed.  Although the Old Chicago brick was great in the house originally, it did not play well with our new cream walls, dark trim, and dark wood floors...it just came across too orange'ish-pink'ish-salmony (if that's even a color).  We first pondered white-washing the brick, but felt like that still wouldn't fit in with the rustic-glam look we are going for in the living room.  So we decided that our best option would be to cover the brick with dry stacked limestone. This picture below gives you an idea of what I am envisioning - a combo of elegant and rustic (and P.S. I L-O-V-E this living room, it is FAB!!!):

 

Here

So here's the game plan to beautify the fireplace and bring it in line with our current decorating scheme:

1. Remove massive hearth

2. Pick out limestone

2. Cover Fireplace with dry stack limestone

3. Add new rustic/reclaimed wood mantel

4. Add plug and cable for future TV

 

Our slab of stone arrived yesterday.  We chose a cream limestone overlay that will sit right on top of the existing brick. It is reading a bit yellow in this picture, but is much more cream in real life with just a bit of Edward-style sparkle (mmmmm....gotta love some good ol' fashion vampire sparkle): 

 

So now that we have the limestone and have removed the hearth, the next step was to cover the existing fireplace with a layer of skim coat to give it a nice even base for the limestone to overlay.  We also added a plug and a cable cord so that we can put a TV above the fireplace if we want in the future...and in the meantime, they will be covered with a painting, so our guests will be none the wiser of the electrical storm going on just out of eyesight.

 

That is as far as we have gotten.  I will pop by next week with an update on the final product.  I hope that everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend!!!  Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

 

Selecting the Stain Color for Our Wood Floors

 

Happy Hump Day everyone!  I am so excited because Mattey-boy finally gets home tonight after being in the Deen for the past two weeks...and it looks like this might be his last trip over for quite some time (for those of you who don't know, he has been spending about 3 weeks+ each month in Aberdeen, Scotland since March for work and his tour-of-duty is finally over)! Yippy for me!!!  While he has been gone this past two weeks, I have moved onto our next major project at the casa, and that's refinishing our wood floors. This is a pretty huge undertaking and has a lot riding on it (literally) because we have wood floors in EVERY SINGLE ROOM of the house (other than the bathrooms and laundry room - I showed you the details here)...and let me tell you, that's A LOT of wood people! Although the vast majority of the floors are the original floors that were installed when the house was built in 1967,  we have expanded the front of the house, relocated the stairs,  moved a ton of walls, and also added on a whole new bedroom during this renovation....which means that we had to install new floors for each of these locations. Easy-peasy, right???? Just go pick up some matching floor at the flooring store and you are good to go?!?! Well, unfortunately, that is 100% wrong in this case. So let me explain, here is a picture of how the floors look currently (with a whole lot of drywall dust and apparently some kind of water (I hope) drop...yummy):

 

 

So, asides from all the drywall dust, we have two major issues.  First, flooring companies no longer make wood floors with the cute little pegs at the end...apparently those pegs actually held the boards down (and are more expensive) so have become obsolete.  Second, 47 year old floors are super tricky to match because 40+ years worth of love gives them a depth and character that you can not recreate with brand new, out-of-the-box wood floors...no mater how much they hand scrape them.  So our solution was to hunt for reclaimed wood floor that were the same or similar vintage...and we totally scored!!! Although the salvaged floors were completely different colors than our current floors, they are real wood and can be sanded down and restained to match.  In the picture below you can see a sample of the newly installed salvaged floors (the ones on the left side of the square) next to our existing floors (the ones with the pegs on the right side of the square), with a sample of stain that matched the original color...pretty impressive if I do say so myself!!!

 

 

So now that we resolved the "how do you match 47 year old floors" issue, it is time for the fun stuff - picking the stain color!!! Fun, fun, fun! The color of our original floors (as you can see in the picture above) was a redish-orangish-brown with dark pegs.  Although it looked super pretty, we have both been leaning towards the idea of darker floors throughout the house (1) to go with the dark trim that we have downstairs and (2) because we think that it feels just a bit more dressed up.  However, I didn't want anything that was too dark, because I didn't want to loose the pretty wood grain and variations in each of the boards. So I thought maybe a dark walnut stain mixed with ebony. I explained my vision to the floor guys and then played Goldilocks for the afternoon wading through the seven samples that they provided:

Starting from the bottom row on the right and moving clockwise, we had

1. Antique Brown (too light and too yellowish-brown)
2. English Chestnut (too light and too orange)
3. Spice brown (getting darker, but not dark enough...although I loved how it really brought out the grain)
4. Coffee Brown {closed grain*} (love the tone and the effect on the grain, but still just a hair too light for my taste)
5. Coffee Brown {open grain*} (definitely good on the darkness, but it felt a bit flat)
6. Ebony {open grain*}(too dark because we completely lost the wood grain)
7. 50% Coffee Brown & 50% Ebony {open grain*} (WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!)

 * Open grain means they wipe the wood with water before applying the stain to open the grain so more of the color soaks in...it makes a huge difference.

 

I absolutely fell in love with the 50% Coffee Brown-50% Ebony combination because (1) it provides the deep brown tone that I was envisioning with the Coffee Brown; and (2) the ebony stepped in to highlight the beautiful grain in each of the boards.  Here is a close up of the color (although the picture above it much more accurate depiction of the color...the color in the picture below is darker than the color in real life and there is more contrast)

So that is one more check on the ol' To-Do List!!! So exciting!  It is going to take the floor guys 10 days to finish the floors, but all the stain and first coat of poly should be down by Monday.  So stop by back to see the update!  I hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your week!!!

Oh, and just cause I am excited and because it's Thursday...I think it is time for a little Carlton!

 

 



What Goes Up (My Walker Zanger Tiles)...Sometimes Must Come Down

Happy Thursday everyone! The weekend is almost here, so time to get ready for some fun! We are going to watch Bob Schneider tonight (he's one of our all time favorites!) and we have some birthday gatherings to attend this weekend...so it should be a busy, but fun one for us. I wanted to pop in real quick before the shenanigans start and give you an update on the master bathroom. As I mentioned in back in April, renovations do not always go as planned, and sometimes you can hit a bump in the road. So far our biggest bump was the H-U-G-E error that the builders, engineer and inspector made with the structural support for our house that could have caused the whole thing to come crashing down if any wind picked up...Eeek!!! Although that was more of a Mount Everest sized bump, we have had lots of other smaller bumps throughout this year-long renovation (some mountains and some mole hills). But we have somehow managed to either fix them or come up with work-around solutions...so my advise when doing a renovation, always try to stay nimble and look at those bumps as fun challenges to overcome instead of disasters that can ruin your day.  Our latest bump was the feature wall of Walker Zanger tile in our master bathroom shower. We were super excited to see it once it was installed, but when we got to the house, we realized the final product was not what we had envisioned.  Here's a picture of what it looked like installed with some notes highlighting the issues:

 

 

The first issue was that the area with the Walker Zanger Ashbury Tiles were too small (we'll call them the "Walker Zanger squares")...I love this tile, so wanted to have as much of it as possible on that wall.  Second, the field tile (which is the travertine tile) was not centered on the Walker Zanger squares.  I am totally "Type A" and saw this as soon as we walked in the room.  Although it might not seem like that big of a deal to some people, I knew this would drive me absolutely batty every time I saw it.  And the third issue is that the space between the two Walker Zanger squares is too wide. Although the Walker Zanger squares are centered above and below and the chair rail, this made the bottom Walker Zanger square feel too low and stubby.  But the good news of this pic is that our tub has arrived!  It hasn't been installed, so isn't in the correct location, but I am in L-O-V-E with this cast iron beauty! I don't know about you, but I think that claw foot tubs are super sexy, MEOW (see there is a silver lining to every storm cloud)!!!  But I digress, so here is a basic sketch of how we plan to fix the tile issue:

 

 

1. Widen the Walker Zanger squares by 2.5 tiles on each side

2. Make the top Walker Zanger square go all the way to the top tile

3. Make the space between the two sets of Walker Zanger squares smaller

4. Center the field tile (i.e., the travertine tile above and below the Walker Zanger squares)

 

So here we are today at the beginning of the "fixing stage" with the border tiles removed. Breaks my heart!!!

 

 

Oh well! The quicker we rip this band-aide off, the quicker we will be one step closer to finishing this project. Good times!!! So that's all for now. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Thursday!!!

 

 

 

 

Vintage Bathroom Remodel - Part 3

Happy Monday everyone! I hope that you had a wonderful and relaxing weekend. Things were busy here in Houston, but very productive at the house. As I mentioned last week, not only is painting in in full swing at the casa, but the tile in the upstairs guest bathroom is finally being installed and I am super excited to show you how it is turning out! Back in May, I introduced you to our oh-so-loverly guest bathroom and gave you the low down on my plans to give our tiny little "Ode-to-1960's-Wallpaper-and-Tile" guest bath a cool vintage makeover and bring her into the 21st century via the 1920's.  I also showed you the newly installed cabinets in my Vintage Bathroom Remodel - Part 2 post here. But, just to jog your memory, here is the layout of the original bathroom below highlighted in yellow:
 

As you can see, it was a small three piece bath with a single sink, a toilet and a five foot tub.  And here are some shots of the bathroom in all her 1960's wallpaper and tile glory:

 

The first picture shows the view into the bathroom from the hallway.  And this next picture is a view of the toilet and tub (with my back towards the vanity):
 

Although the bathroom had a fun 1960's vintage feel...it was the wrong era for my vision and just too small.  In order to allow two people to get ready in the bathroom at the same time, we decided to expand the bathroom so that we would have a vanity room and a separate shower room. The floor plan below shows the new bathroom highlighted in yellow (with a pocket door that can separate the shower room from the vanity room).

 

After resolving the space and layout issue, my next task was to create a mood board so that I could see how all the different design elements worked together. This is my original mood board that I created for our "vintage guest bathroom (circa 1920) with a hint of modern flare":

 

 

One of the major design elements that I wanted to incorporate into the vanity room was a "tile floor mat" using a combination of basket weave carrara marble tiles and 12"x12" carrara marble tiles.  The "tile floor mat" in this picture was my original inspiration for the space:

 

 

However, in order to work for our guest bathroom, I had to modify the design of the "tile floor mat" from a rectangle to a large "T" shape. This drawing shows the placement of the vanity and linen cabinets as well as the layout of the "tile floor mat" in the vanity section of the guest bathroom:

 

 

And here is how the floor looks installed:

 

 

I am so excited how it turned out and absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!!! It is exactly what I envisioned and feels so crisp and clean! Here is another view where you can see how the floor works with the vanity, linen cabinet and wainscoting:
 

 

Happy days, happy days, happy days!!! The shower room section of the guest bathroom was too small for a similar floor mat; so we decided to carry the 12"x12" carrara marble tiles throughout that space. You can see the shower room highlighted in yellow below:

 

To keep with the vintage feel in the shower room, I chose white subway tiles for the shower surround.  However, with the white carrara marble floors and white subway tiles, I was afraid that the space might end-up looking a bit too institutional with all the square lines. So, to break things up, I added a herringbone feature to the back wall of the shower surround, which is illustrated in the drawing below:

 

I also made sure that the herringbone feature was centered on the pocket door between the vanity room and the shower room so that our guests would see it regardless of which part of the bathroom they were in.  This is what she looks like installed (and please note that the herringbone feature is centered on the door, I was just standing at the wrong angle when I took the picture):

 

Again, I am LOVE with how it turned out!!! The white subway tiles are so bright and cheery and the herringbone feature adds just enough interest and spice keep the space from being boring! Here is a close-up of the herringbone feature.  J'adore!!!
 

I am so giddy-like-a-school-girl with how everything is coming together!!! It totally makes all the heart-ache and stress of this year-long remodel fade into the background when I get to see my visions come to life!  Here's to hoping that I am going to be as in love with the rest of the remodel as things continue to progress!!! I hope that you are enjoying the progress and updates as much as I am. But before we go, let's have one more look at the the before and after (well, progress) pictures!

 



 

SO much better!!! Thank you so much for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

 

UPDATE: CLICK HERE TO SEE AN THE FINAL BATHROOM!

 

 

 

I have linked this post to Our Delightful Home, It's So Very Cheri, The Blackberry Vine, Him & Her, Funky Polkadot Giraffe, A Stroll Thru Life, Today's Creative Blog, Coastal Charm, A Diamond in the Stuff, Ladybug Blessing, A Bowl Full of Lemons, Elizabeth & Co., Hope Studios, Sugarbee Crafts, Nap-Time Creations, Salt Tree, The Winthrop Chronicles, My Repurposed Life, For the Love of Family and Home; Design, Dining and Diapers

 

Walker Zanger Ashbury Tile - Master Bathroom

Hi everyone!  Hope that you are having a great short week so far.  Only one more day till the July 4th holiday and long weekend starts. I cannot wait to celebrate! Yesterday, however, I received an early present that definitely helped to kick-off this week with a bang...our Walker Zanger Ashbury tiles FINALLY arrived after three long months on back order. But boy oh boy were these babies worth the wait...they are absolutely GORGEOUS! I am in L-O-V-E!!!

These little beauties are going to be installed on a feature wall in our master bathroom shower.  I love the Moroccan shape and the soft turquoise color will go great with our travertine tiles.  Here are some awesome inspiration pictures of how you can use these tiles.  First, they are phenomenal in a shower:

Here

And look amazing as a bathroom back splash:

Here

They look pretty sweet when used for a kitchen backslash too:

Here

 Or, if you don't want to use them for the entire back splash, they look great behind the stove and create a wonder feature wall:

Here

I absolutely cannot wait to see what they look like installed in the bathroom! Tile is supposed to start being installed this Friday, so hopefully I will have some picture updates for you next week.  Take care and have a great Tuesday! Thanks for stopping by!!!