Alright! Time for that long briefly awaited post on the downstairs bathroom. The downstairs bathroom is the one that gets used most often (mainly when people are over to hang out). When we bought our house (way back in 2007) the bathroom was painted a light blue color, with white beadboard on the bottom half and white and black linoleum floors and a white ceiling that appeared to have been "wallpapered" with a fake tin/embosssed paper. The bathroom also has the typical builder's grade oak vanity and a pretty fabulous mirror (can't believe the previous owners left it, I sure won't!). 

Immediately after we moved in we painted the bathroom a chocolately brown color. It kind of reminded me of hot chocolate and what can I say, brown was THE color back in 2007. Or at least in my mind it was.

Here's a picture of the bathroom painted brown (sorta - I forgot to get a picture before I started cutting in):

The brown worked pretty well for us at the time, but after more than 4.5 years of looking at it I was kind of tired of it. My friends and family who know me will agree that my keeping something the same for nearly 5 years is close to a record. Since we were already planning to redo the upstairs bath (more to come when it's complete), I figured I might as well update the downstairs bath. Luckily DH agreed and we both agreed that gray would be a good choice of color for both bathrooms.

Three samples of paint that we chose between:

I realize in these pictures you can't see much of a difference in the three colors, but trust me, once there was enough difference to make me happy we tried samples. For instance the bottom color, in both pictures, was actually DH's favorite on the paint chip. Once it was up on the walls we felt it was too dark. Both of our bathrooms are pretty small and neither have any windows, so there is a huge lack of natural light. We decided to go with the middle color - Behr Ultra Silver Sateen. Part of my reason for liking it is because it came across as the truest gray (not purple gray like the bottom color; not greeney gray, which the top color tended towards).

Bathroom after one coat of gray (you can see some of the ceiling texture in these as well):

As you can see, just one coat of the light gray paint made a huge difference. And so, that's the start of the downstairs bathroom update. Next I'll show you the final results, including the faux tin ceiling I painted (with some reluctance from DH).

The Project List

My intentions in starting this blog was to document some of the projects we are doing (and ones I want to do) around the house. First up was replacing a toilet in our upstairs bath. Of course things are never as simple as they appear. After realizing we had a leaky toilet (crack in the tank) I got to thinking. If we have to take the toilet out anyways to replace it, why not get rid of the yucky linoleum floors that are in that bath. One thing led to another and next thing I know, I've convinced Dear Hubby to call up his father to come help us demo that bathroom, put in new tile, and likely a new vanity. Unfortunately, I have no pictures yet, as we seemed to lose motivation and are still currently with just one bath. Of course I decided since I was going to repaint one bath, we might as well repaint the other, so I do have pictures of that, which I'll put up tomorrow.

The purpose of this post is to list out the projects I've got planned and will be posting about. So without further ado . . . The Project List:

1. Update the upstairs bath

- New flooring

- Patch drywall - we actually ended up hiring this out, drywall patching = not our forte

- New paint

- New toilet

- New vanity (or freshly painted old one)
- New pictures/accessories

2. Downstairs bath freshening

- New paint on ceiling

- New paint on walls

- New pictures/accessories
- Stain or paint vanity

3. Shutter table (this will take some explaining in a post when I get around to doing it)

4. Reupholster living room chair (fabulous find at Eyedia)
5. Convince DH to let me paint some of the living room a different color
    I managed to talk him into a lovely gray color (Tern Gray from Porter Paints).

6. Complete wall of silver serveware in the kitchen

7. Gardening projects (always so much to do in the yard)
8. Hire painter to paint stairwell and upstairs hall
9. Paint down stairs hall
10. Paint eat-in part of kitchen under chair rail same gray as living room

So, as you can see, I've got quite a list and I'm sure more projects will be added to it as others are completed.

Teaser: Tomorrow's Next Week's post - making a "tin" wallpaper ceiling look real.

So I want to start a blog . . .

I decided after reading numerous posts out in the blogosphere that it would be fun to start a blog of my own. Since I feel the first post will probably be the hardest (how do you start off a blog, what should your first post be about, etc.), I decided to just dive right in. So, here it is - I'm starting a blog. At this point I'm not sure what this blog will turn into or what it will be about. I do know it will likely be a lot of posts about decorating, DIY-ing, etc. I may even throw in some of our everyday life into it. I guess all that's left to say is kick back, grab your favorite frosty beverage and enjoy.