Bathroom Revamp Part V- Paint progress + Some details

Well folks, the bathroom is very near completion, but I don't want to ruin the surprise until all of the pieces are together. Hopefully I will have a full reveal here on Monday, but for now allow me to whet your appetite with these fun details of the space.

When I left you last I was distraught over the paint color being too bold. Allow me to remind you:

 Well after some trial and error we ended up adding an entire quart of white paint to the remaining 1/2 gallon of blue.

As you can see...not much change, but we went with it. I'm still not 100% sold, but it is growing on me. Especially now that we are adding accessories.

Speaking of accessories one of my favorites went up last night. The clock! A clock in the bathroom is a must have for me. It can be small or big, I just need to know what time it is when I'm getting ready or I will be late for work. 

This picture also gives a pretty accurate idea of the paint color. It is so hard to capture true to life colors!

Here's a close up of the clock. I love how it is simple and sort of modern and funky. I've never seen one like it. It was a gift from my sister. (Thanks, Spanky!) It is from a company called Karlsson. It came with several other colors of cubes and you can arrange them however you want. I decided to just use four to keep it really simple. Mr. Mayhem decided that the cubes should be different heights and took the hacksaw to them.

The second little detail project that I finished up this weekend was painting the inside of the vanity!

I know most people will never see it, but I will every time I reach for my hair dryer, and it makes me happy. I included the middle photo only because I was so surprised when I pulled off the floral wall paper to reveal lime green paint wowzers!

Well there is a little tease for you all until I can post the final reveal, before/after post of the bathroom. Check back soon! We will be finishing the shelf above the door and framing the mirror, then it is all done!!!

Canvas mounted Photos

I had some friends over the other night to do some crafting. Our project was mounting photos on canvas. I'm really pleased with how mine turned out, and we all had fun crafting together. 

You will need:

• A photo and canvas about the same size. Mine were both 8"x10"
• Mod Podge
• A foam brush
• Pretty scrapbook paper
• Craft Paint
• A staple gun
• Ribbon

All I did was cover the canvas with a thin coat of mod podge even the sides and let it dry. Then I cut strips of scrapbook paper that would fit on the sides of the canvas (The sides that will be perpendicular to the wall.) And I cut the photo so that it would be slightly smaller than the canvas. About an 1/8th of an inch on all sides.

Then I used Mod Podge to stick the paper to the sides.  I put Mod Podge under and on top of the paper.

I did the same thing with the picture. Mod Podge under and over the photo. It will look cloudy before the Mod Podge dries. Don't worry, it dries clear. Then to cover all the seams I took a small amount of craft paint on a dry sponge brush and made a vignette around the picture. This is the only part I am not 100% happy with. I might work with the paint a bit more later to smooth it out or something.

Then I used the staple gun to attach the ribbon to the back to hang the canvas from. Here it is all finished and hung up on the wall in our bedroom.

Here it is with a little more context of the room. I love it!

Buffalo Chicken Calzone

I love Franks buffalo wing sauce. I love calzones. This recipe combines the two in perfect harmony. 

Here's what you need. 

• Frank's hot sauce
• A package of crescent rolls
• Ranch dressing
• Shredded Italian style cheese (or just mozzarella)
• Chopped onion (about 1/4 C.)
• Chopped green pepper (about 1/4 C.) 
• 2 chicken breasts cooked and shredded (not pictured, it was still boiling)

This is really an eyeball-it type recipe, put in how much you like. Add other stuff if you want. I think mushrooms would be an excellent addition. Mr. Mayhem, however, does not. 

Start by laying the crescents on a greased cookie sheet.

Then, press all the seams together as best as you can. It still falls apart a bit, but try to get the seams sealed. The lower left corner still needs some pinching.

Add the green peppers and onions. Again add the amount that you like.

Add the shredded chicken.

Frank's Hot sauce (really this order is arbitrary, just put the stuff inside).

Ranch dressing.

Cheese! Lots of Cheese!

Then, make little cuts along the side of the dough. I use kitchen scissors, and it is really easy. The cuts should be about 1/2-3/4 of an inch apart.

Then fold the strips over alternating.  Some might tear just press them back together.

Don't be afraid to stretch the pieces over the top. As you can see I had a small blowout on the left side. I just pushed the dough back together and wiped the sauce with a paper towel so that it didn't burn.

Here it is all done and ready to go in the oven! Bake it at 350 Degrees for 20-25 min.

In the end it looks like this goodness.

Let's zoom in on that beauty! Delicious!

This same concept can be applied to other fillings. We have filled it with pizza sauce and pepperoni, and that was delicious too! We have plans to try a BBQ Chicken version in the near future. You could probably also do it with a pizza type crust. We just really like the buttery, flaky crescent crust. Enjoy!

Click here for a Printable Recipe Card

 

Bathroom Revamp Part IV- Progess (sort of)

Well Mr. Mayhem and I were busy working away in the bathroom this weekend. First we primed the exposed drywall where the mirror is going to hang. I'm not sure why we did this, but it just didn't seem right to use mirror adhesive on naked drywall.You can also see that we screwed a small board to the wall. That is to help us adhere the mirror straight, where we want it, and give it support until the glue dries/frame is built around it.

Once the mirror was hung we took the wood down and put in the plastic clips for support. Those will be removed when we build the frame. We were going to leave the wood piece, but decided it would be in the way for the next step which is wallpaper and paint, so it came down.

We used the dining room table to cut strips the proper length. For example, from ceiling to floor was 8' so we cut the strips a few inches longer than that. Then, we rolled the strips backwards (paste side out) and submerged it in water (we used the bath tub.) We folded the pasted side together and let it sit for about 10 min. then we stuck it to the wall being very careful that it was perfectly straight. When it had dried some we cut all the excess off around the ceiling, windows, etc.

Here is an in progress photo. It is a bit hard to see but there is wall paper overhanging the window. We tried to cut with an exacto knife, and a scalpel like craft knife, but found that my rotary fabric cutter actually worked best. I had to get a new blade after because the old one was all gunked up with wallpaper paste.

Here is the first wall competed. I really love the texture.

We let the wall paper dry over night. The next morning we started painting and that is where things when down hill. Whoa! I was way off on my paint color selection. I usually have a good eye for picking paint colors so I'm not quite sure what happened.

Right now my bathroom looks like this....

I do not want to wake up in the morning to that. It is wayyyyyyy too bold and crazy. I wanted something more soft and spa like. It needs a second coat anyway so we decided to just mix in a bunch of white paint to the crazy blue that we have and see if we can't fix it the second time around. The plan is to paint it tonight. I'll keep you posted ;-)  You can see the cool linen-y texture in this picture better than in the picture of it white. Ignore the banana peel it is in no way related to this project.
Have you ever had a painting disaster? Picked a wrong color? How did you fix it?

Bathroom Revamp Part III--Roman Shades

     The first bathroom project is finished and installed! Hurray for new roman shades.

        

Here they are in the open position. Yes, we got some snow night before last, but sadly no snow day from school.

I made the roman shades using 1 yard of fabric, a mini blind set from Wal-mart, fabric glue, a glue gun and my sewing machine. (you can do a no sew version). I followed this tutorial from the blog 365days2simplicity.blogspot.com. She does it no-sew.

 

I cut the fabric to size and hemmed the edges. I did not hem the top and bottom because I knew I was going to hot glue it to the top and bottom of the mini-blinds. Then I removed all the mini-blind slats except 6. My window is 42" long so I decided I needed 7 6" slats. The bottom of the mini-blinds counted as one, so I left six other slats. (7x6=42)

Then I carefully glued the top, bottom and all the slats to the fabric every six inches making sure they were straight and even. I let it dry over night. The next day I hot glued the fabric around the top and the bottom of the mini-blinds. I did leave a bit of the top unglued, so I could slide it into the brackets to hold them up.

This is not really a complete tutorial follow this link if you want a more step-by-step how to for this project.

Well, the bathroom revamp is underway! Mr. Mayhem is doing some demo as I type. Stay tuned for updates! Any fun revamping happening at your place? Do share!

Love,
Natalie

Bathroom Revamp--Part II "The Plan"

Hello readers! I mentioned here that Mr. Mayhem and I are doing a little touching up to the upstairs bathroom. In the last post I chronicled the problems of the bathroom and things I want to change. This post is devoted to the plans I have been scheming to make those changes. I will also blog the progress to see if my plans become a reality or a real mess!

The main problem with the bathroom is a lack of storage.  I will address this problem in a couple of ways. First of all the bathroom is TINY, so adding any type of furniture/rack was out of the questions. There is zero floor space with the exception of the place in front of the vanity, but i need that space to stand for make-up application etc. I decided to instead add a wall cabinet. Similar to this one, but not exact.

The one I have is a hand-me-down from Mama Mayhem. It was oak with a little spindle railing on the top that made it look super country. After removing the railing, painting it white, and putting on new hardware it is looking much better. 

The cabinet has a towel rack on the bottom, but I have decided to use it for storage like the picture below instead of towels.

 

Are you getting my vision? Picture the little buckets hanging at the bottom of the cabinet. See cute, right? Less old-school country farm house.

Especially if you picture it with these beauties instead of buckets. These are from Ikea.  They are 5" and I love them! I guess will have to take a trip to the Twin Cities visit my sis and pick up three or four!

 

 To let you enter the vision in my mind, I have Photoshopped the two pictures together. I am not a PhotoShop master so give me a little grace, but this is what I'm picturing.  If I don't have stuff to store in them because it is all in the spacious upper cabinet, it would be so cute to have little plants in them!!

 

I especially love the janky hand drawn "S" hooks that the containers are hanging from in this picture. ;-) 

 The other storage solution that I have been schemeing is a shelf above the door. Like this:

Mr. Mayhem is pretty  handy with things like that so I will likely put him in charge of the shelf project. It will be awesome to have a convenient, out-of-the-way space to store towels and other odds and ends.

Speaking of towels, the towel drying situation is dysfunction number 2 of the bathroom. The solution due to lack of wall space for towel rods is this:

It is a double shower curtain rod. It can be used two ways. The first way is to use one rod for your liner and one for your shower curtain and the other way is to put the liner and shower curtain on one rod (like a normal person) and hang towels on the other rod. This is one of the few purchases I have actually already made. I got it at B3 for $32.00. It is usually $40, but I had a 20% off coupon.

Now to fix the ugly! First the new color scheme!

 

As you can see I'm paring a pretty aqua/teal green color with a pretty spunky orange. I love it. Most of the bathroom will be teal and white with little pops (hate that word, but couldn't think of a better one) of orange. (hint: the roman shade will be orange and white!)

Here are some of my color inspiration pictures. Yes, I know that is a laundry room, but I can still do the same type of color in my bathroom. I have not yet decided on the exact color, but it will be something similar to that laundry room. The other picture just shows a nice paring of orange and teal.

 Other than the wall color I also want to change the window covering. I'm going to follow this tutorial to make roman shades like this:

 Out of fabric like this:

I already purchased the fabric, so if you don't like it, don't tell me! :-) It is from JoAnn Fabrics. I don't know what it is called. I bought it before I was blogging.

The final two touch-ups will be the lighting and the mirror. In place of the ugly off centered light fixture I will be adding this beauty (again already purchased from here.)

The mirror right now is a boring old contractor's mirror with the little plastic clips around the edge to hold it on. I plan to add a beautiful, white, chunky frame to said mirror to make it look more like this except vertical.

So I guess what I mean is, it will look more like this.

Don't be jealous of my photo manipulation skills.  And when I say "I am going to add", I really mean I am going to tell Mr. Mayhem the plan and he will do the sawing/gluing/nailing that is involved. I'm not a woodworker and he loves projects like this!  

So that is the plan! Now it is just time to finalize then execute the plan! 

What about you? Any fun scheming and planning happening at your place? I like scheme and plan things even if I know it is never going to happen. I have remodeled the whole basement in my mind many times. Dreaming is fun!