Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A Parisian Bathroom - Before

It was actually my little sister who dubbed it the French bathroom, so I take no credit for that. It wasn't even on purpose! Things just sort of turned out that way.

Our ENTIRE house was painted what I lovingly call institutional beige when we moved in, with the exception of the dining room. Why the former owners lived here for so long and only painted one room, I have no idea. But that just means there are more rooms for me to paint!!! The picture to the left is what our bathroom looked like before it's makeover, plain and boring! Something had to be done, and done fast.

Luckily I had a nice set of guest towels and an extra shower curtain laying around that needed to be put to good use. And so it began. It took me literally 2 minutes to pick out a paint color. Usually I'll pick out 5 or 6 I think Add ImageI like, buy 3 or 4 samples after the DH picks out his favorites, and slap on some randomly painted squares that are left up for weeks on end while we decide which shade is perfect. Nope, not this time. I picked out one color, and ended up loving the end result. That will never happen again I assure you!

But before I get to the end result, let's talk about prep work which is SUPER important. First, everything gets removed from the room, which luckily for me that didn't include a whole lot of work! This does however include removing any outlet and light covers, towel racks, and light fixtures. I wasn't able to remove the light fixture without the risk of shocking myself to death, so I just left it there! The hand towel bar required some fancy screwdriver for it's removal so I left it there too. I also patched up any holes in the wall, and fixed a few nail pops.

Next came the taping, which is the MOST important step. You may have noticed that I did not tape off the ceiling. Most people do, unless they are painting the ceiling the same color as the walls, but I don't. It seems as if I have a steady enough hand that I can paint a straight enough line on the ceiling that doesn't require many fixes in the end, so I usually skip this step. I also didn't tape off the tops of the door frames since you can't really see if my line is straight or not from standing on the floor.


Now that the prep work is done, time to start painting! When it comes to picking out your paint, make sure you get the right finish. I always use an eggshell finish for our bathrooms. Eggshell has a very slight hint of shine or gloss, which makes for easy cleanup of messes. It also doesn't soak in moisture from the steam of your shower. You could use a semi-gloss, which hold up just the same as an eggshell, but I'm not a fan of glossy paint.
Just before you go to pour your paint into your tray, poke a few holes in the lip with a screwdriver or drill. This will allow the extra paint that gets caught in the lip to flow back into the can, that way the paint won't spill over the edge as much when you're pouring your paint. It'll also make it a lot easier for you to open up your paint can later on when you need to do some touch ups.
Since this bathroom was so small it took me no time to complete two generous coats. I even had enough paint left over to use in our powder room!!!! Check back next week for my reveal!!!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Here's wishing a day....

It felt great to spread out all of my card making supplies onto my desk this afternoon and just create! I can't remember the last time I didn't clean up after I was done making a card, or carefully choose which supplies I wanted to use so as not to have to put too many things away when I was done using them. Yup, you guessed it, the housewarming party is done, all of our friends have seen the new house, now it's time to just live in it! (pictures from the party to come!) So, here's my card I created using this week's Jen's Sketch for you to try. I realized last week after I hung my new card display board on the wall in the newly painted office that my stash of cards has severely been depleted over the last few months of not having any time to create anything new. My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so this beauty might go to her, we'll see though.
There are TONS of layers on this card, and lots of yummy patterned papers from my still favorite stack! After I had everything all laid out the way I wanted it, my card just didn't look quite right using Jen's sketch by the book - so, I turned it on it's side, and voila, much better! But with all those layers I needed to add some depth, so I popped my image up a bit to add some nice dimension.
The image and sentiments on the front and inside of the card are all from MFT - 'You Take The Cake' set. I love the way she turned out - I colored in her dress with my new stamp markers, and paper pieced the cake with some coordinating paper. I dug into my coveted Prima flower stash for the green flower, and punched out a pink paper flower for some different texture. The flowers are topped off with a teeny tiny button, that was a pain in my rear to thread with the silver thread I had on hand. But I managed, and all turned out well. And did I mention - half of the paper I used sparkles?!?! LOVE!
Overall, I'm pretty darn happy with this one!