Forgotten Fridays: Copycat Bathroom Art

So this is another one of those things I meant to post but never got around to it... and yes, I know today is Thursday. I meant to post this last week but I got too excited by the hallway's paint job. And I apologize in the advance for the cell phone photos. 

I recently added a bud vase (on clearance for $4!) with a fake succulent ($2 at Hobby Lobby) to our half bath. Originally I had on old vase that I had painted white perched on the sink but I never put anything in it. I had wanted to out a fake flower of some kind in there since I forget to water real plants. After (eight!) months of halfhearted searching I found this bud vase and added the succulent. I think the color and shape look way better than the old version and I really like the pop of green.>

Anyway this reminded me that I had meant months ago to post about the DIY art piece I made for this room but never did. Better late than never, right?

When we tackled the downstairs half bath we purchased a few frames to hang. We couldn't find enough (cheap) framed art so I decided to make something instead. I found this pin and thought it looked pretty easy to recreate.

Obviously I didn't follow the instructions to the letter but overall I don't think it turned out that bad. First I painted the canvas a soft khaki. Once that was dry I used a paint pen to draw the lines. I was actually really nervous to do this part but I figured I could paint over any huge errors.

Then I made the dots. I picked a several colors (in retrospect I'd only use 5 colors or shades of colors) that I thought would look good together and dotted away. I did go back and add dots where I thought it looked empty or a color was too concentrated. I also added branches if that area appeared a little sparse.

Here's the original next to my version.

This probably won't hang in our home forever but its a not bad for a temporary fix.

P.S. You can read all about our half bath makeover here.

Third Time's The Charm

First the BIG REVEAL!

Now let's back, back, back it up.

Jonathan and I started this project right after Christmas. We finished at the end of January. Yep, it took almost a month to update the smallest room in our house.

After Plan A- our pedestal sink idea- didn't work out, we opted to buy a new, smaller vanity and sink. We did some shopping comparisons and purchased one from Lowe's. We brought it home and left it in the box. In our dining room. With all of our Christmas stuff. For three weeks. You know while we did this and this.

It's kinda embarrassing to show the world wide web the hot mess that was our house but I keep it real. Our house looks like a disaster zone whenever we are in the middle of a project. This was not our best moment but at least we had an excuse to (keep on) eating on the couch.

We finally decided to get on it and do this thing in the last week of January. Jonathan got back into Handy Husband mode and installed the new vanity. Which he did pretty quickly while I said "I love it! Don't you?" several times.

He hung up the old mirror and we stood back to admire his handy work. And we were not impressed. The vanity was awesome but the mirror looked way uglier than it had before. Time for Plan B- to frame out the mirror a la a thousand Pinterest tutorials (you know, where you cut trim and glue it to the mirror).  We went to Home Depot, spent twenty minutes picking out trim and took it to get cut. Only to be denied. Apparently they (and Lowe's) can only do straight cuts and not the angled ones we needed.

We went back home to wallow in our my defeat. Until Jonathan said that we should just buy a new mirror. He had actually suggested this back when we started brainstorming for this project but I wanted to try to revamp the existing one. AKA I was being cheap.

Obviously that failed and back to Lowe's we went. After some late night wanderings, I selected a pretty new mirror.

Jon picked out a new towel holder. We also wanted a new stand alone toilet paper holder because we didn't want to make holes in our new vanity. Back home Jon installed the new mirror and towel holder. I used a floor vase ($8 from Target!) and stuck some twirly nature-y fillers (Ross is my BFF).

Next was the artwork. Jon and I each picked out a frame on our Ross trip and I made the canvas piece. The rug was a purchase off Joss and Main. Recently we added the glass shelf underneath the mirror to hold the soap and this adorable elephant ring holder my cousin gave us. You can't really see but its cute. Promise. I painted a salad dressing maker thing and stuck some flowers in it  but the door is hiding it. And we are done! It took forever but I am crazy proud of the way it turned out.

One more time- Before & After:

Unfortunately its hard to take good photos because the room is so small and there's no natural light. Obviously an orange bathroom isn't for everyone but we like it. And if we want to change it down the line, its nothing paint can't quickly change.

$350 + 3 weeks = The prettiest orange half bath you ever did see. At least in my humble opinion ;)

Orange You A Failure?

We painted our teeny, tiny half bath orange. Like trick-or-treat orange. And we freaking LOVE IT.

One day I looked at Jon and said "I think we should paint the half bath orange." Jonathan "hmmmm, yeah, that could be cool." And thus the orange bathroom was born.

Once again we have the awesome people at Design Seeds to thank for our color inspiration. And Pinterest. Thank you Pinterest a million times.

I found this Autumn inspired color palette board on Pinterest.



And this cool stencil idea.



Naturally, I wanted to merge both ideas and test it out in our half bath. Why? Size. Its a small space. I think bold colors look best in tiny spaces because they're unexpected and because it's easy to fix in case it doesn't go right. Not all of my bright ideas pan out. Case in point, this bathroom. But we'll get to that in a bit.

First Jon and I went our happy place! Home Depot (Seriously, they know us there). And began comparing all the orange paint chips against the picture on my phone. I wanted to go with a terracotta orange, lighter and softer than the orange we ended up with. Jonathan selected the Halloween (that's really the name of the color) orange. All you married people know comprise is key and since I pick the general design of our projects, its only fair that Jon has final say on the color and items that go into a room.

$30, my dad's (have you noticed he's the official helper?) help and a bucket of paint later we have a super orange bathroom!

In the midst of all the paint selection (it's actually a longer process that it would seem), I found a Moroccan inspired stencil that was almost exactly what I had envisioned. Hobby Lobby loves coupons so I got it for 40% off. I. LOVE. A. DEAL.

After the painted had fully dried I went in I tried to stencil the wall. I had read on a few blogs and DIY sites that some people had just used a paint pen to outline and color in the stencil lines. I have loads of paint pens left over from my sorority days and figured this would be a time consuming but not hard project. I was mostly right. It wasn't hard but it SO did not turn out like I thought it would. See?

It all looks good from far away. Up close it looks TERRIBLE.

I'll be honest. I hated it. Jon kept saying "it looks fine honey, just rustic." I'm not really sure what he meant but that's not what I was going for. So Jonathan painted over it. Just covered up my mess and moved on.

I think it looks better this way. Really though.

Fine! To be completely honest that's what I've been telling myself to help deal with my epic failure. We could have tried to make it happen by repainting the whole room white and then stenciling with orange paint buuuut that would have required more paint and putting off finishing the bathroom for another week. And neither one of us were willing to do it. I think Jonathan would have looked at me and said "You cray cray" (he likes to quote me). Plain orange it is!

Moral of the story: one bold idea at a time. We still get compliments on the color so we must have done something right. And I'm not totally giving up on the stencil. After my massive fail I asked Jonathan if we could use the stencil in the dining room and he asked if I was going to do it. Obviously I said yes but I'm not so secretly (this is online after all) hoping that he'll continue to be the best husband ever and help me out when the time comes. Don't worry Jon, we have plenty of time!

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.