Wow, what a crappy title for a bathroom makeover post. (Although the jokes do just write themselves.)
Remember back in June when I whined about working my tookus off (and showed proof that I had)? Well, this powder room was one of the projects we/I undertook to get a house ready for sale.
AND it’s a DARN good thing, too! Because it happens to be “Bathroom Month” for the “Where Bloggers Live” gang. Sounds like a celebration to me, haha!
(Also, “tookus” is correctly spelled t-u-c-h-u-s… Now you know.)
The house that needed to be sold belonged to a family member who passed away a few years ago. Mr was tasked with selling the house by early June…and I was tasked with finishing whatever it needed to get it ready. Sounds fair, right 🙄? Trust me…it’s WAY fairer than working on a deadline and in a small space with Mr… or vice versa.
I love Mr. …But there are times (like many, many, all the times) when I would rather just do something myself. Here’s why:
I read instructions. I never bicker with me. I think I am a genius, even when I am wrong…which I rarely am. I take all of my own never-ending, “helpful” suggestions. When I put a tool down and forget where it put it, I know who did it and just find it myself.
AND
I am exTREMEly patient, humble…and never annoying at all 🙄.
At the house, there had been a sewer backup into the ground floor powder room… which grossed its way into the ground floor family room, the ground floor closet, and…well the whole ground floor. Yuk. A remediation company dried up and cleaned the area, took out the carpeting, cut out the drywall in the powder room, and departed, leaving the entire floor looking, well. like doo-doo. (Ah, more high-quality bathroom humor).
Anywho… this was where we started:
If this were our house, we would’ve spend mucho time learning how to properly install drywall. Instead, we replaced the missing drywall, but skipped the taping and mudding and sanding because we had decided to cover the affected area with shiplap panels instead: a functional, cosmetically appealing, good-for-resale win!
Mr and I worked on the whole floor for a while last summer. And by “worked together” I mean, bickered but didn’t kill each other while removing the toilet and sink…
…ripping out the paneling in the family room, replacing the entire floor with Pergo…
Mr patching the drywall (which he did extremely well, btw…even without my helpful suggestions)
and both of us working on shiplap.
I got through most of it okay, but started to lose it when we got to the shiplap.
Mr and I do not speak the same English when it comes to explaining things to each other. It’s bizarre. “Front wall” to him is “back wall” to me. We have a LOT of fun together…but not with both of us working in a small place. And DEFinitely not when the one of us who doesn’t have a lot of spare time and thinks the entire job is drudgery appoints himself the crew chief, haha. FORTUNATELY, the crew chief only ordered a small amount of shiplap, so the project was put on a pandemic hiatus.
What? You think I should be blogging about how cherubs were encircling our head while we worked like those polite WB cartoon gophers:
Didn’t happen. “Real world,” remember?
But… here’s where we were at the end of that togetherness adventure:
Quite a bit of progress, actually! But this was the bugaboo for me:
Seriously? You cut the shiplap AROUND the shelf!!!
So, thusly, I cooed: “Darling… Honey… Sweetheart… you’ve got enough on your plate. You already did the hardest part.” Don’t waste your weekends on this.
“I’ll finish it when we get the rest of the shiplap,” I continued, knowing that as soon as he was out of view I could rip out those strips, take off the shelf, reattach the top of my head…then continue installing the shiplap to the top of the wall and around the rest of the room.
And so I did:
I had to remove the existing wallpaper then sand, patch, and scrub the walls.. Fun fun fun.
I didn’t feel like painting the walls, so I put up new wallpaper. It was my first time using “repositionable” wallpaper.
I liked that there was much less mess, but it’s tricky not being able to slide it around like traditional paper, imho. It’s MUCH easier to remove though, so it was the new stuff for the win.
I had to put some type of cap on the top of the shiplap, redo the shelf, add base molding on the floor (both inside the powder room and in the adjacent family room… as that wasn’t on the list of things we got to before I gave poor Mr the heave ho).
I used quarter round in the powder room
and wide, plain molding in the family room.
Again, since the house was going up for sale, I didn’t want to invest too much time on something the new owners may elect to redo later.
I goofed a couple of times, but I greatly enjoyed making the miters for the inside and outside corners. I am TERRIBLE at math, so getting this right was really satisfying!
Okay! Ready for my big reveal, haha?
Ta da!
Here’s a little “before and after” action (just for you):
And the family room….
Hope you enjoyed this little makeover photo dump (ew…that one went too far)! Check out more bloggers’ bathrooms with my friends:
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Em at Dust and Doghair
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Over the next few months, a group of six bloggers will be sharing their workspaces, their homes, towns and more!
Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!
My husband and I have remodeled a lot in our day and I have done my share of cutting and mitering trim. It brings me get great satisfaction because I too am NOT a math person. Oh, the sense of accomplishment when all the pieces fit together.
Anyway, your remodel looks great. The shiplap really gave the space some much needed character. It is so bright and simple. I love it!
Belated, but sincere “thank yous,” Linda!
Mr and I have been looking at new builds for ideas to update some of the trim, etc around our house. Of course we start coming up with too many projects we want to try, so we’ll see how it goes…BUT…there will likely be a lot of opportunity to practice some of my “makes-sense-to-me” math skills!
If you want something done right… The bathroom came out beautifully! I’m a little embarrassed for Mr. that he thought that shiplap shelf situation was acceptable. Good thing he has you to fix his “it’ll dos”.
He was just panicking bc he was out of time and wasn’t in the mood to listening to any more of my genius solutions. Ironically, popping the shelf was faster than attempting to carve around it. Plus, I get to be right in the end, as per uszh, so all good. 💁🏻♀️
I was ready for a nap before I read this, now I can justify one. I am exhausted reading what you did. And thinking about the math required for mitering the edges. Took a framing class once upon a time and calculating the miter where the sides of the frame met was torture. I can barely add. And then only to ten. Twenty in the summer when I can wear sandals.
Your spaces turned out so bright and clean and lovely. The butterfly art is so pretty. I like that one picture is hanging and the other is on the shelf. Have never wallpapered and probably never will. I can’t use tape of any sort…it sticks to everything but what I am trying to tape. Wallpaper just seems worse and more of it. But you did a masterful job.
Much prefer your shiplap edges at the shelf to the Mr.’s. PC can do anything but often times does it the fastest, easiest way. I have taken over the mowing because I can’t live with stripes of uncut grass between the swathes that have been mowed. I need to be careful or I am going to inherit more jobs. Hmm, Would that be good or bad?
Big hugs to you. Your posts are always so entertaining and impressive. I just wish there were more of them. But can see you have lots of projects that keep you busy. XO
Math is SO not my deal. The nice thing about some miters is the ability to fudge…or caulk. Hides many sins.
About the picture on the shelf: I was trying to minimize marking up or putting holes in the paper, haha. So. much for my vision, it was purely a functional decision. My Mr sounds like yours, generally very handy. It surprises me how clever and creative he can be as he is a numbers guy by day and usually those two things don’t go together well. It’s like straight lines during the day so he only wants to do curvy lines in his free time, haha. But that join was just a complete NO for me and I have a total inability to 🤐
So much happening this summer… a few big things are now behind us to maybe more posting and reading friends’ posts in the future!!! Hugs back!
“I read instructions. I never bicker with me. I think I am a genius, even when I am wrong…which I rarely am. I take all of my own never-ending, “helpful” suggestions. When I put a tool down and forget where it put it, I know who did it and just find it myself. AND I am exTREMEly patient, humble…and never annoying at all 🙄.” Yup. DEFINITELY separated at birth.
And the finished product – SO CHARMING! In that perfect clean and modern way, I love it. Well done.
And thank GOD you had the sense to pull out Mr’s VERY HARD WORK on the shelf to shiplap connection, ha ha. What is WITH men?? Sometimes they seem so rational and analytical…and then…THAT. Ha. (hope I’m not crossing a line here).
Great job, Em 🙂
“Yup. DEFINITELY separated at birth.” I can’t think of a nicer compliment!
The shiplap panels are prenotched and VERY easy to work with. I am thinking of using them here (some year in the distant future after completing all the other things on my list). I am a first-class contemplater. Fifth class finisher.
Yeah, couldn’t have left that shelf as was. (Of COURSE you weren’t crossing the line… I did put it “out there”). He had a small amount of time available and was freaking out about adding another task to the list. Just couldn’t see a different way of doing it at the time, haha. Plus we started it while on lockdown and going to the store for supplies was VERY inconvenient then.
(He will appreciate that I left out that small detail, haha. The things I’m willing to sacrifice for wordcount.)
First, I just have to say that it turned out amazing. You do fabulous work, Em!! The question is, did it sell already? (The market here is crazy, so I wonder if it is out there too?)
I do think all husbands and wives talk different languages. Didn’t you read that book? Men are from Mars….
Anyhoo…your humor was just what the doctor ordered.
OXOX
Jodie
http://www.jtouchofstyle.com
Thanks, Jodie. Actually, we closed out the sale the same day the post went live. It was a crazy week of moving out, clearing out, and cleaning..and I am EXTREMELY glad it’s done. Thank goodness for Bettye’s prophetic topic or I might have had to sit this one out. Yep, the market IS very good for sellers here as well. We had the house open for five days and had seven offers, so I was pretty pleased. We had gotten an estimate a few years ago, and it was terrible. A little elbow grease and spectacular timing made a huge difference.
And yes, I do remember that book…but of course I never read it 🤣 🤣 🤣
Lovely new bathroom! BTW this is how my cowboy and I do projects together too! 😱 Been married for 45 years and I think we’re getting worse! 😱 I blame it on Covid! Vee
I’m always happy to hear we aren’t the only ones who work together this way. It’s actually why I feel compelled to share the real deal. Occasionally driving each other crazy is all part of the recipe, haha. Teamwork makes the dream work, right?!
WOW, what a job – and it turned out GREAT. My son has just had to refinish two bathrooms in the house he’s renovating so I hear your pain.
AND, you and your hubby sound so much like us back in the day. We built an addition to our home back in the day and finished the upstairs ourselves. Some interesting conversations there.
Anyway, love the new bathroom and family room – great job.
Iris
Thanks, Iris… it made for a VERY busy several weeks, but I’m happy it turned out so well. It also may inspire me to do a little bathroom renovating here, haha.