Plans for the Master Bath

We've been planning to overhaul the master bedroom ensuite bathroom for a couple of years. It's a very tiny room (about 5'x8') and everything in it is over 15 years old. The grout on the floor and in the shower is starting to break down, the shower area is like a little cave, and the drywall below the shower door has completely fallen away and the metal is rusting.

Are you ready for some truly scary pictures?

Horrible, right?

Our plan is to take out the shower wall completely and replace it with a glass wall - this time with a sliding door instead of one that opens outwards. Something like this:

This will give us a little more floor space - right now you have to close the door to get to the medicine cabinet, but you want to leave it open to air out the shower - and it will let the light from the window into the shower area.  Also, since the glass wall won't go all the way to the ceiling, there will be more air circulation and hopefully it'll be easier to keep the shower clean.

We're going to replace the vanity and have the entire floor retiled. We saw this Godmorgon vanity at Ikea and liked that it mounts to the wall so more of the floor is visible (making the room look larger).

We liked that it had drawers instead of the usual two-door set up, and the sink/vanity top is all one piece with plenty of flat surface space (the picture above shows the Braviken sink; we'll be getting the Odensvik). We may or may not replace the toilet - there isn't anything wrong with the one we have other than hard water stains - but that'll be something to decide at the end. They aren't that expensive, so it might be nice to have an entirely new room.

After what seems like too long talking about what we'd like to do, we decided that we would hire the work out. We know we can tile, we've done it before in our first house, but we don't have the time to do it properly. This year has been very hard with family illness, and we seem to only have a few hours a week of actual free time. A job that would take a contractor less than a week would probably take us months - just ask us about our kitchen. Plus it would be nice to know we have a guarantee/warranty if something were to go wrong (we're not plumbers, for sure!)

So, with all those decisions made we headed off to the tile store. Talk about overwhelming! So many choices and we had no idea what we wanted.  We saw plenty of tile that we kind of liked, but nothing that spoke to us, until we were nearly in the back corner of the showroom. We fell in love with this 8"x20" wall tile in a greyish beige called Splendida Turtle. (Even the name is perfect for us.)

Once we had that, the rest became much easier. It was awesome having a salesperson help us - she ran all over the room with our wall tile in her hands, comparing it to samples until we were happy. We decided on plank style tiles for the floor - they give the appearance of wood - and 2"x2" tiles for the floor.  This is what the floor tiles will look like, though we chose a shade lighter:

We brought home samples of each, just to make sure they would actually suit the room. Here they are all together. I like that the floor and wall tiles will be similar, though the floor tiles aren't as shiny and have a bit of roughness to them.

Now the next step is to hire a contractor. And order our tile!

Lighting: Take 1-2-3

Do you have a hard time choosing lighting for your home? I do. Almost every room in our house needs to have the lighting replaced, but when I wander through the stores I can't find a thing I like. Or it's more than I'm willing to pay. And then when I do finally pick something out, there's a good chance I'll change my mind about it in a few months.

Take our basement bar for example. You could start with the fact that I wish we didn't have a bar, but tearing it out and re-carpeting the entire basement is not in the plans. There are three pendant lights that hang down over the bar, and from the day we moved in we've had problems with them.

(Unfortunately, or fortunately, this is the only photo I have of them. That is not my bubble gum machine - nor my book on the Lotus.)

The middle light kept burning out. After replacing the bulb over and over, Tom discovered that there was a bad connection where the socket meets the bulb. He searched but he couldn't find a replacement socket for it.

So the hunt for new ones began. Neither of us could agree on a style, until we happened upon these ones by accident while shopping for something else at Rona (the Canadian version of Home Depot).

We both kind of liked them. And they were pretty inexpensive. So we brought them home and installed them right away. You can extend them to about 3 feet, but because our basement ceiling is pretty low we kept them short: the shades were larger than the previous ones and no one wants a big light in their face.

But it wasn't to be. I knew right away that they were wrong. Again there was just that "something". I'm starting to think it was the brushed nickel finish. It was too sterile. The wood of the bar and the stair rail is a warm cherry shade and metal just didn't go.

I was despairing that we would ever find something nice. Then I found the ones. These cut-glass mosaic style pendants were hanging out at Home Depot. Just minding their own business. The reddish tone coordinated perfectly with the bar, and the finish was black instead of nickel.

We hung them this past weekend and I'm in love. We ended up hanging them lower than the last ones - they look so much better that way. The description says the glass is brown, but when they're lit up the colour is definitely red. The wires still have a little kink to them, but they should straighten out with time.

Pretty, right? They give the room a warm, cozy feeling - kind of like a neighbourhood pub would have. If your neighbourhood pub had empty wine bottles and a box of Kleenex. Sounds about right, actually.

So sometimes you just have to keep trying until you find the right fit. Because once you do, you just know it.

Anyone want to buy some barely used brushed nickel pendant lights? 

I have several to choose from!

Refinished Deck Furniture

Now with the deck cleaned, we could get our outdoor furniture back out there. Yes, back out there. Over the summer I have been slowly stripping the wood, then staining and sealing it. I did all of the sanding on the deck, but once each piece was stripped I took it to the garage for refinishing. So the deck has been a bit empty for the last two months.

The furniture came in a honey/reddish tone with beige seat cushions.  Kind of bland and vanilla, but it did look nice when it was dressed up with pillows and throws.

That served us well for a couple of years, but the elements took their toll on the finish and it was starting to peel. The wood that was no longer sealed started to weather in an uneven way, so that we had grey patches mixed with the original honey colour. And a bit of mildew.

I booked a couple of vacation days and got to work removing all of the stain and whatnot. Lucky for me it ended up being two gorgeous days in the high twenties (Celsius) where I could work on my tan while I sanded the heck out of that furniture. I took each piece right down to raw wood. I even discovered that the top of the coffee table was cedar (as I tried unsuccessfully to remove the red tone. Duh!)

Here's my sleepy helper. She's not a fan of the noise. But she matches the Ridgid colours - new mascot perhaps?

Once everything was completely sanded and wiped down, I stained each piece with two coats of Minwax stain in Red Mahogany. Just gorgeous. If these pieces were inside my house I would have just waxed them to a soft glow and let them be, but because they had to withstand our ever-changing weather, I needed to apply polyurethane. Three coats just to be safe.

With all those slats there was a lot of drip-through to the other side. By the time I got to the second piece I'd learned it was best to apply a coat to the underside, flip it over while wet, and then wipe off the drips on the top side. Then when you apply the poly to the top, you can wipe the drips underneath, but if you miss a couple it's no big deal because no one will see them. That's my theory anyway. And if you're that person looking under my furniture: just stop it right now.

Also, you'll get a smoother finish if you sand between coats with the highest grit paper you have. Some people are lucky and don't need to, but working in our garage, which isn't pristine, there were always a few rough spots from dust and/or bubbles. But if you sand after the first and second coats, your third coat should be nice and smooth.

Along with the loveseat, chairs, and coffee table that came in a set, I also refinished the two side tables so that the entire area is cohesive. In fact, they are the same shade as the fold-down bar we made last year. How's that for tying things together? There is a method in my madness.

The contrast between the wood and the cushions is much more noticeable now. It stops those big squares and rectangles of beige from looking blah and invisible. I replaced the green and blue accents from before with brown and orange. Cute little lumbar pillows, right? And it all coordinates with the umbrella now, which was kind of the odd man out before.

I so dig the glossy look of the tables. And I'm not normally a fan of polyurethane - just check out my numerous other posts about waxing refinished furniture for proof. I watched the rain bead on the tabletop the other day and just smiled.

I set up the area with a little impromptu party - pickles, cheese, salami, etc. - and fizzy drinks of course. And then took a million artsy pictures of the glasses.

In fact, I took so long that the other three "people" living in the house decided to start the party without me.

 But they're so cute, how could I be mad?

Cheers!