Don't Settle For Boring: Customize Your Belongings!

The renovation of our powder room, which almost killed us in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, was largely completed before the holidays, but we're still putting on some finishing touches. Yesterday we added vintage shelf paper to the front of this boring, utilitarian cabinet from IKEA. We bought it knowing that we'd never leave it white. I found the paper on Etsy and we finally got around to affixing it with spray adhesive. Now I love it! You don't ever have to settle for leaving furniture (or clothing or shoes or anything else) the way you find it. Customize it! Find the right adhesive for your project, whether it's for fabric or rhinestones or food safe or heavy duty, and make it uniquely yours!

Customized cabinet - just add shelf paper!

Powder Room Redo: We Have A Sink!

After several weeks with no sink, the third sink we tried in our powder room worked! Paul valiantly installed it today, solving some plumbing problems along the way, and I'm so thrilled to have a sink again!  I will never take sinks for granted again.  All that's left to do in the powder room now is more tile cleaning, paint touch ups and decorating!  I'll definitely be giving thanks for the end of this project this Thursday!

Our wonderful, beautiful, fabulous, WORKING sink!

Powder Room Redo: Seeing Sparks!

I'm THRILLED to report that almost all of the tile is DONE in our powder room! All that's left is the tub surround, which needed a new backer board and which Paul is working on as we speak! After that, up goes the tile, then as soon as it's dry we can grout it all! Tiling the walls took forever, but I'm pleased to report that we got it done in under 24 hours. I cannot WAIT for this project to be over, but after this we're moving on to the fun parts: a new curtain, a new sink and hanging art on the walls. A lot of touching up and cleanup needs to happen, but that's okay - there's light at the end of the tunnel!

It's the 4th of July in our powder room!

Powder Room Redo: Wall Tile

All of this tile is about to go onto our walls! Wish us luck!

Powder Room Redo: Slow Descent Into Madness

Remember how I said that, just when you think your room couldn't possibly look worse, it does? Behold today:

Truth be told, it's not quite that bad right now. We currently have no commode OR sink in there, but it's cleaned up, the giant hole in the wall is filled and spackled, Paul is laying the floor leveling compound as I write this and I'm confident that we'll have tile tomorrow. Either that or we'll be abandoning this house tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Powder Room Redo: It Looks Worse!

Oddly enough, the more work that gets done in our powder room, the worse it looks! It's a strange phenomenon. But Paul has been prepping the floor all day, getting ready for the tiling process and, oh, boy, it's a process!

• Leveling compound
• Mortar
• Subflooring
• More mortar
• Tile (in what feels like the distant future)

I have tremendous hope that tile will happen this week. Stay tuned!

He works so hard.

I Can't Handle All This Improvement

If you thought our powder room looked bad last week, with exposed wallboard and holes in the walls, wait until you see it today:

Lovely, isn't it? Paul and the electrician opened up walls and ceiling for our new fixtures and it rained insulation. It was so messy I was coughing two rooms away! The good news is that we DO have power in there now. The bad news is that none of the fixtures are actually in place yet, so we don't currently have lights. SOON, I hope!

Powder Room: I'm Obsessed!

Here's a little more from our powder room demolition, to give you the idea of the scope of the destruction. I love the paint sample taped to the wall. It feels so optimistic right now. Eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize!

Here's what taking out your frustrations looks like!

Ex-wall board.