Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

As some of you may have seen on Facebook and Instagram Jonathan and I having been watching our nephew, Poseidon.

Isn't he cute? Here's another because he's adorable.

The first weekend he stayed with us it was obvious someone needed a bath (ahem Poseidon, "God of the Sea"). Jon took one whiff and said "you need a bath little buddy." I reminded him that one of our previous guests (Heidi, that's you!) had complained that the water was cold in the guest bath. Jonathan tested the water out and sure enough, it was still coming out ice cold.

So, on a weekend where he said he wasn't going to do anything house related, Jon had to fix the water temperature for our furry little nephew. I only got a couple of photos because it was really boring to watch, I was in the way and I wanted to play with Poseidon.

Who could resist this face over bathroom knob repair stuff? Not I.

Jonathan removed the knob and water spout. He looked inside the wall. And did more stuff that looked impressive from where I was sitting.

In the end he found that the hot and cold knobs were switched. Thanks again previous homeowner! Please note that was meant to be read in your head in a sarcastic tone.

Finally, the three of us gathered in the guest bath to get Operation Clean Dog underway. Obviously Poseidon did not like his bath. Not impressive for the supposed ruler of the ocean. Jon ended up doing the cleaning and I bribed him to sit with lots of treats. The treats only worked for a tiny bit. He would take the treat, sit and after 3 seconds try to climb out. Once we were done I dried him off and then we took him outside to finishing drying in the sun. Then he napped because baths are exhausting when you're a dog.

Jon's happy Poseidon is smelling better, I'm happy our future guests can have warm baths and Poseidon's happy we gave him lots of treats.

And yes I know I've included more photos of Poseidon than the actual project. He's way cuter that bath tub knobs.

Jon 1, House 0

Leaky sinks seem to be our thing. In the short time we've lived in our home we've had two leaky sinks (you can read about our stupid kitchen sink here) and one leaky hose spout thing. Is that what its called? I should ask Jon.... But our first leaky sink run-in was in the half bath.

The Man Cave bath may have been the first room makeover we did but our half bath downstairs is the room we've done the most work in. It's right next to the front door, a closet, and our stairs. This means it was built into the smallest space possible. We used me as a unit of measurement (that's how we roll in this house) and since I can't lay down completely in it, I would guess it's only about 3 and a half feet by 4 feet compared to my 5 feet height. Tiniest bathroom ever.

The vanity in the room was way way way too big for the space and I felt like the door was going to hit me in the back every time I washed my hands in there. If it was too cramped for me I can't imagine how everyone else felt using it. Thinking of ourselves and guests (and future home buyers!), Jon and I decided to replace it with a pedestal sink.

wouldn't a pedestal sink look so much better?

We checked the selection at Home Depot and Lowe's and Jonathan realized that it wouldn't be as easy as he initially thought. Once he removed the old vanity and consulted with Google he determined that installing a pedestal sink would involve opening up the wall and doing some major changes to the pipes.

See how small the room is? 

I was against putting a hole in our wall for something that we didn't absolutely have to do. Its a room we hardly use and its not like this is our forever home. Jonathan was all about opening the wall. Why? Because of the piece of tile sticking out of the wall. Yes, some previous owner had stuck a long piece of tile IN THE WALL to tilt the water shut off valves up. Behold the photographic evidence:

Look right behind the silver oval knob

Let's pause for a moment and shake our heads in disbelief. Done? Ok.

Jon wanted to redo whatever had been done previously because he figured that it probably wasn't done right. I thought that it was weird but it didn't seem like anything was wrong so why make a mess? We had already vetoed the pedestal sink idea. After a loooong discussion Jon pulled the piece of tile from the wall and left it as is. Don't worry, everything seems to be okay back there... Fingers crossed!

Back at Lowe's (Home Depot let us down, I took it pretty hard) we finally bought a new vanity and sink. The new one was just as long as the old one but not as wide so we gained about 4 inches in between the sink and the door. The only problem was the knobs on the water shut off valves were oval and long which prevented the new vanity from sliding up against the wall on the right side of the cabinet. Jon said he would replace the knobs with smaller new ones and that would solve the problem. Not so much.

Not lying when I said small!

He got to work switching out the knobs and it went like this: Jon replaces the knobs. Water back on. Drippity drip drip. Water off. Tighten stuff. Water back on. Leak leak leak. Water off. Home Depot. Repeat once.

Jonathan says:
"If I learned anything, replacing a compression ring can be a pain the ass. For those who don't know, a compression ring fits around the copper water pipe and is the go between for the water shut off valve at the end of the pipe and the nut that holds it. Well, after a compression ring has been in place for years... it doesn't want to budge. The only way to get it off is to cut the copper pipe behind the ring (easy way) or very slowly saw a groove into the metal ring until you can fit a flat head screwdriver into said groove and essentially twist the driver to snap the ring (hard way). Well, we didn't have any spare length on the copper pipes, so I had fun with the hard way."

At this point its almost midnight. Our conversation goes like this: Jon- "I don't know if I can fix it. I'm just going to put a bucket underneath the spout." Me- "Dude, there's a lot of water coming out. Don't you think the bucket will fill up while we're at work?" Jon- "Fine. I'll shut the water off." Me- "I still have to shower!"

Half an hour later I hear "JON 1, HOUSE 0! I FIXED IT BABE!"

I got to shower that night.

Our First Project

The guest bath (the one off the ManCave) was actually the first room we redid. It seems like such a strange place to start considering we don’t really use it. I’d like to say that I was trying to get everything ready for our eventual guests but in actuality we started in that room because it didn’t really need a whole lot. Thanks to our awesome friends and family we got most of the stuff for that room for our wedding. All we really had to do was paint and add some shelves.

Thanks to one of those Design Seed color boards on Pinterest I found the color palette we I wanted to use in the bathroom and the Man Cave. 

Since the entrance to the bath is inside the Man Cave it only makes sense that the colors should go together. I thought i twas going to be really hard to convince Jon to go with such a bold color but I was so wrong. In fact he picked the shade of navy we went with. 

Since this was our first paint job this is when we began to notice that the paint in all the rooms was badly done. I didn’t think it was possible to mess up paint this much but it is. The mirror, light fixture, sink, towel bar, outlet plates and bathtub all had dried paint on them. Lovely. It took awhile but we were able to scrub a lot of it off. We didn’t really want to replace anything major in here so we really tried to remove as much paint as possible.

We taped off everything and got to painting. I think this is the only room in the house that I actually helped paint. I use the word helped loosely because I’m not sure I was that helpful. If I remember correctly Jonathan had to go over my strokes… but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Fun fact- it’s really hard to paint the area behind the toilet. It’s also hard to paint up to the ceiling in the tub. Even with a ladder.

The paint in here is not even close to perfect. After we were “done” we knew that we’d have to go back and fix the lines on the ceiling. It’s been a few months and we still haven’t done that. We’ll get around to it one day. Maybe.

Once the paint dried Jonathan installed two shelves above the toilet for me. After he did his thing I was able to do mine. I hung up the shower curtain, put up the towels and made the shelves look pretty. It’s really hard to think of decorative stuff to put in a bathroom. I’ve never noticed what other people have in their bathrooms and I couldn’t really find anything so I made my own. The weirdest thing in there? The wine bottle thing. I stuck some curly willow from our wedding flowers into an empty glass wine bottle from our rehearsal dinner. We get tons of compliments on it so it must be nice. And it was free and easy. The round medallion metal thing is a recent addition.  I’m always looking for new house stuff!

I LOVE the shower curtain.

My favorite thing in the bathroom is the wee wee dance (what else would you call it?) canvas. Why? Because I made it and it's so funny.

My awesome friend Amy and her husband cut the silhouette on her cricut and I used a paint pen to color in the people. This is the view from the toilet. Totally appropiate right? 

Inspried by this version on Etsy

I wish I had a picture of the before when it was all white. Paint, shelves and one weekend made a humongous difference. Now for some guests!