Charm is More than Beauty- Built-ins and Closet

One of the things that I love about the basement are these two little built-in shelving units.  This is the best "before" picture that I have- there is one on the other side of the room too.  I thought that they were so cute, and added a little bit of charm to this older home.

Once I painted the walls, I realized that the wood tones wouldn't work with my color scheme in the basement.  I wanted to stick to grays and whites to make it as bright as possible.  The backing was painted an off white which just looked dirty.  I wanted to use the same white semi gloss that I had used on the bathroom door.  While I was at it, I would redo all the window trim work, and other door in the basement.  Consistency was the goal!

 I got to use what has quickly become one of my favorite tools- my sander!  I pulled all of the shelves out, and a few hours later, they were all sanded and ready to paint.

As you can see, this color wasn't the clean, crisp look I was going for... so my bright white was ready to go!  I taped over the old hardware, because I decided I just wanted to reuse it to save money.  Maybe eventually I'll replace it.

 Two coats later on the shelves and built in, and it already looked so much newer!  I love how they pop against the dark gray.

I hadn't gotten around to painting the closet side wall, so I did that at the same time.  I picked a lighter gray on this wall- it's actually the same color I used in all the upstairs bedroom.  At first, I wasn't sure I loved the dark gray wall, but I think it gives some contrast to the room.

It was also time to paint my brown window trim in the bedroom, and touch up the other trim and doors.  

Inside the closet got a brand new coat too!  I paid my bathroom contractor to come back and build out a real closet for the room so that it could be used as a bedroom.  The other closet is a utility closet, and therefore not useful for clothing purposes.  I bought a simple closet organizer I have installed in a previous home, and installed it in the closet.  Though a small closet, it will hopefully be enough storage for whoever wants to move in.  We decided to not do a closet door due to the size of the bedroom.  This way, a bed can be placed with the headboard against the wood wall, and they won't have to worry about having trouble getting in and out of the closet because of a door swinging into the bed.

Almost all set for a renter!

Flooring is the Foundation of any Beautiful Room- Start with a Great Floor, and the Rest will Fall into Place

No one can forget the beautiful flooring choices that the previous home owner made in the very brown basement...

After a little paint and white washing, the basement was already looking much better!  But the flooring was making it really hard to focus on anything else.

I knew I wanted a gray floor, so I did some research.  I found that it was best to do laminate or vinyl down in the basement due to moisture.  I had decided on a vinyl floor from Floor and Decor, so one day Joe came over with his little helpers to go pick up the floor.

But when we got there, there was a laminate gray that caught my eye.  So now I was stuck and needed to make a decision.  We lined up a few of each board on the ground, and Millie tap danced on both.  She picked the laminate for us, and we liked the beveled edges of it that made it look more like real wood.  We also picked up the moisture barrier as well.  This was the floor that we picked.

When we got home and got everything offloaded from the car, Joe impulsively started ripping up the old floor.  The first few tiles came up super easily, but as everything else in this home has proved to be, it got much more complicated!  We discovered that in some places there was a second layer of flooring, where it was much harder to remove due to the excessive amounts of glue.  I painted the ceilings and swapped out the light bulbs and lens covers on the lights, and it was already looking much brighter!  It was so nice to be able to paint the ceiling, and not have to worry about ruining the floors with paint dripping.

After we got the main floor torn up, it was on to the den.  Joe did this one day while I was at work, and sent me a text to let me know he left me a present in the basement.  This is what I came home to!  Ha!

Clean up was annoying, but I finally got everything up and out of the house- and the garbage crew did just pick it up from the curb (even though their website says you have to schedule a special pick up- I have found they will take anything if you leave it on the curb with the rest of the garbage without an additional fee).  Joe said it was really important to get every last little piece cleaned up so that you wouldn't feel the imperfections underneath the newly laid floor.  So lots of sweeping and vaccuuming!  Once that was done, he started by laying the barrier in the bedroom.  He said it required a lot more cuts than the other room, but that the flooring we picked was some of the easiest he had laid.

He placed spacers in between the wall and the floor to allow for movement... he actually wound up using some flooring samples I had laying around instead of his real spacers!  The bedroom was done in a few hours.  He came over later in the week and was able to knock out the larger room while I was at work- I came home and couldn't believe the difference!  There were still spacers and it needed molding, but it already made a dramatic difference.

It was time for me to get to work on painting the molding and quarter round- pro tip- don't paint on paper drop cloths, or you will be peeling paper off with your fingernails forever!  After this discovery, I used some wire shoe shelves I had laying around to set up the garage as my painting area.

We had to special order the bullnose for the little step up to the bedroom.  This gave the edge a clean, finished look.

After Joe put in the molding, I caulked for what seemed like foreeeeever.  Note the shoes that are off, and the excessive amount of paper towels used for this job!  Don't track that all over your brand new floors!

The room looks great with the new floor all nice and clean, and the new curtains thanks to Tessa!  Look for a blog on how I updated my fabulous built-ins and lighting.

Happiness is a Long, Hot Bubble Bath

This was one project that makes you realize that just a couple low cost projects can make a complete change in a space!

Once the basement bath was underway, Joe was over helping me out with some little projects, and said something about how bad the floor in the upstairs bath was.  Since it wasn't a bathroom that I used very often, I kept trying to close the door and ignore it.  But as I was showing the bath to rent the room upstairs, I was more and more bothered by it each time.  So, over winter break, as my house was already in shambles from my wall paper stripping/painting and the basement renovations, I kept staring at the floor.  It probably wasn't as horrible as I made it out to be, but around the toilet, you can see that they used a different peel and stick tile, which made me assume that they had some issues with the toilet leaking at some point.

On New Year's Eve, I got brave and started to peel up the corner of one of the tiles behind the toilet- I figured if I messed it up, I could just put a trash can on top of it :P  I wanted to see how easy the tiles would be to get up- this one peeled up a little bit, and then snapped in half!  Well, I guess I made the impulsive decision to do the floor.  Luckily I had a lot of leftover tile from the basement bath, so at least I wouldn't have to buy that.  With the THIRTEEN different types of floors in my home, I knew I wanted to do all the bathrooms with the same floor tile for more consistency.  And at this point, I figured, that tile came up pretty easy, this would be a piece of cake.

I was wrong.... that tile was the only part of that floor that was easy to demo.  After my ever faithful Youtube search, I removed the toilet (another very difficult task for a party of one, and quite possibly the grossest thing I have dealt with in this home- read further to find another nasty thing I came across in this bathroom), and threw it in the tub.  It was so heavy, there was no way I was going to get it down the stairs to the curb by myself.  I then shoved a cloth I would never use again into the sewer drain to keep the fumes from getting into the home.  Then I went to work on the black vinyl.  After it took me an hour to just get up one tile, I stopped and did some more research.  There was such a ridiculous amount of adhesive used!  I found some tips that said to try a hair dryer or a wallpaper steamer- since I just got the steamer, I decided to give that a try- and it worked soooo much better.  But, I was still left with lots of stickiness, and another fun surprise- another tile floor underneath!

The vanity remained through this process because I could not get the plumbing disconnected.  I kept trying to salvage the P trap, but it was so badly corroded, that I just didn't even feel like dealing with it.  The next layer was tonssss of fun.  I couldn't figure out what it was made of because it looked like linoleum, but was hard as a rock, almost felt like a really thin ceramic tile.  As I kept slowly chipping away at it, my dad calls and says, "I hope it's not asbestos tile."  I must have spent hours googling asbestos, trying to figure out if I was going to die.  As a last ditch effort, as I kept thinking about how I had totally destroyed my bathroom, I decided to try the steamer on this layer- and believe it or not, it started to come up easier!  Only to reveal another layer...

This layer made me do a double take.  I wasn't sure if this was a different kind of subfloor, or something else.  I took a peek under at the threshold, and could see the subfloor was beneath it.  I realized that I had to get the vanity out if I was going to go any further- it was installed on top of these layers.  I finally just decided to saw the pipes and rip it out of the wall- that I would just replace the drain pipes.  It is here that I discovered another surprise- this was the other super gross task.  This is what I found underneath the vanity when I ripped it out- dirty men's underwear, magazines, and tampon applicators.  For real?!  There must have been a leak at some point, and this was their solution.

Once I got the vanity out, the wood layer was pretty easy to pull up with a crowbar.  Then I could see the subfloor which was badly stained.  I had Joe take a look at it for mold and other bad damage, and he said that it was in good shape, just stained, not crumbling.  So real quickly, I ripped out the chair rail, used some joint compound to repair, and then painted the room.  This way I wouldn't have to be painting once the new floors were down.

I couldn't reach the skylight area, so it's remaining the old color for now.  Most of the time there is enough sunlight coming through the window that you don't even notice- eventually I'll have to get someone in to repaint it.

We went and picked up some Wonderboard.  We got this laid pretty quickly and easily, and let it set overnight.

Then we got to work on measuring and laying the tiles out.  We did this before we laid the thin set.  I had gotten a cheap wet saw off amazon, which required some extra effort on Joe's part to cut, but it turned out great!  And check out his awesome work outfit.

Once all the tile was cut, it was time to start laying it for real.  This part was a little scary because those air pockets create such a super amount of suctioning, that it was super tough to get them back up if they were just slightly misplaced.  I learned about the leveling clips, and how and where to place them.  The tile went down pretty quick until right at the doorway.  The pieces closest to the door were smaller, and one cracked- so we called it quits and Joe fixed it the next day.

After the clips were removed, the tiles looked great!  A million times better.  I had a vanity picked out, but happened to be on Craigslist one day in the middle of renovations, and came across this awesome dresser for only $65.  After a fail on getting a custom dresser vanity made for the basement bath, I got really set on trying to use this for the bath.  It sat in my entryway for months while I figured out what to do with it!

Next up was the toilet.  After carefully reviewing the directions, we began the task of installing the toilet.  The wax ring is still sooo gross!

Checking that the toilet is level.  This is something I would have never thought to do.  We did have to use a few toilet shims.

Now, the vanity wound up being a bigger obstacle than I had hoped, but the final product turned out great!  We did cause some water damage in the dining room, and needed to call a plumber, but Joe did a great job of setting the sink and plumbing.  I love that we were able to save the top drawer for storage.  The bottom two drawers are now hinged with shelves.  The vanity and shower curtain add just the perfect amount of color!  And I love how high the bowl sits on the dresser.