The Guest Bath Gets Decor::Part 2

Thursday I led you through the first half of my haphazard bathroom  decorating method.  Today, I'm going to show you how I wrapped it up. 

Tub wall before:

This bathroom doesn't have a shower in it because the fuse box is located over the tub.  These plain old sheetrock walls can't tolerate water, but we'll see if they can stand up to the Chadwick Decor Method.

Did I get carried away?

Once again, I made my way to my Free Frame Box and pulled out this.  A golden frame with a print in it.  Some people would probably leave this as is, however, I was in the mood to personalize and brighten a dark room.  For free.

And so, I grabbed a handful of paint chips and my one-inch circle punch and got busy.

 Using a ruler to make sure I applied them straight, I simply taped them onto the back of the print that came in the frame.

I put one thin coat of white paint over the frame to give it more of a white-washed, aged look.  It's actually my favorite part of the entire guest bathroom "decor redo" weekend.

Reassemble, hang, finished.

And there you have it.  One empty-walled bathroom got a bright and colorful facelift in just under three hours one Friday night.  Easy peasy.  Not to mention if I get tired of it anytime soon I'm at no financial loss since it was all FREE!

Friday Photo: Paint Picked!

Over the course of the week, we went from all of these paint samples to just these six that were moved around the room three times a day.  I kid you not.  I wanted to see what each and every one looked like every where in the room at three different times a day.

And after observing that and spending all that time moving little rectangles of paper around, Mr. Chadwick and I landed on this one.

Valspar's Sterling.  Obviously, this photo is a poor representation of the actual shade of gray.  Here's hoping it will photograph better once it's applied to our walls Wednesday (hopefully...barring any complications).  Now I just have to spend the next few days getting myself into the mind set to start taping...

The Guest Bath Gets Decor::Part 1

The other day, while explaining my process for selecting the paint for our kitchen, I pointed out that, while the guest bath doesn't need painting, it does need a little help in the decor department.  Or, rather, did.  Mr. Chadwick was yet again out of town this past weekend, and I needed something craft-inspired to fill my time.  Why not tackle this room?  While tidying up my work table I came across a couple of items  and found myself inspired.

We started with this look (which I'm sure you all find depressing):

Even this past winter it wasn't really the nicest looking wall in the house.

Pick this up

And one of those frames I got for free.  I chose a "3D" acrylic frame with a cardboard backing.

After ditching my wreath idea a few weeks ago, I decided to use these for something else.

I simply coated the top of the frame with glue and placed these across in straight lines.

A little less than desirable.  It's too small for the amount of space on the wall...

And...

Sigh.

I went back to the free frame box and grabbed this frame that came without a backing or glass.

After giving up on making these tubes a while back, one might be inclined to believe that I wouldn't want to make anymore.  And yet 85 rolled tubes and three hours on Netflix later I had the beginnings of this.

And yet it still felt off-balance.

Let's change it up.

Side Note:  Knowing that in this small, dark bathroom I wasn't going to get top-quality photos no matter what I did to my white balance, I opted for Instagram.  After all, if you're going to take bad photos, you may as well make them trendy.

It still felt incomplete.  See that space at the bottom?  It needed to be filled.

So I made thirty more tubes and glued them to wooden craft sticks.

Yay!  The space is filled, it's not a snowflake, and it was free!!

Now I just need to do something with the other side of the window.  It needs to be something different, however, because no matter how much I appreciate symmetry, even I realize when enough is enough.

Monday, I'll show you what I did with this empty space over the tub.

Hiding is Easier than Building

Let's talk about storage.  Again.  Here's what I've been doing for storage in the office.

The table helps keep it all in one location, but doesn't really do much for keeping it out of sight.  Enter the need for a table skirt.  Except that I didn't really want to sew anything and didn't have any fabric that I looooved and I didn't want to buy anything.  So, I pulled out a 1 yard remnant I'd had for a few years, measured it, pinned it with safety pins, and attached it to the table with velcro.

Looks good, right?  Well, that lasted all of about six hours.  When I went to bed, I noticed my fabric in a heap on the floor.

That didn't take long.  So much for the Velcro.  Fortunately we have a staple gun, so three quick clicks later (two days after the original collapse, to be exact), and we were back in business.

Not a perfect solution, especially seeing as to how I don't particularly care for the fabric, but it definitely cuts the visual clutter.  Floor-to-ceiling shelves are eventually in order for this room, but for now free works just fine.

Keepin' It Real

His clean laundry pile is taller than I am.

When "close enough" counts.

When you iron clothes Saturday night to wear the church the next day and change your mind.  Four weeks in a row.  And don't want to put them back in the closet to wrinkle.

Sometimes it's just easier to hide things.

Vertical storage would be awesome...

Dead, wilted flowers are better than none at all, right?

Every now and then, you just have to charge the weed eater battery in the kitchen.

Oh, dear.  Unfortunately we see this face alot lately...

Because every now and then you have to take a break from the daily cleaning and organizing to let things pile up so you have things to clean and organize...Am and I right, or am I right?

Little Man's Kitchen Corner

I spend a good amount of time in our kitchen every day.  Cooking and washing dishes, mostly, but those two things take up a large amount of time (remember, we still don't have a dishwasher).  Little Man loves to be wherever I am, but with such a small floor plan in that room, there's only so much space for toys and clutter.  Hence the reason I set up this little corner just for him.  

A dear friend of ours from church had several boxes of picture frames in a storage unit that she didn't want.  Would I like to come look at them and pick out as many as I want?  Yes, please!  (More on all of that in a later post.)  In the boxes were several clear acrylic frames with magnets on the back (eleven, to be precise).  We have a set of flashcards with letters, words, pictures, and colors on them that Little Man enjoys "playing."  He loves to play cards.  We tend to stick with the ones with the letters the most so I grabbed eleven of the picture cards that he doesn't know the words for yet and placed those in the frames. After using the ABC cards as much as we do, he now knows and recognizes all 26 letters of the alphabet, so here's hoping we'll pick up a few more vocab words.  Once he gets comfortable with these, I'll switch them out for new ones.  Eventually, I'll probably wind up using numbers or shapes.  

In addition to his picture cards there's a photo of him with his cousin and some small magnets he likes to tote around the house.  I'm actually pretty particular about the amount of junk that clutters up the fridge, which is why the front of ours is completely clean.  This keeps him occupied for long periods of time, though, so I'm learning to overlook it.

Directly across from the fridge is this shelf (hence the reason I can call it "Little Man's Kitchen Corner"), and it has two cubby holes dedicated exclusively to him.  My brother and his wife sent Little Man a set of play food and dishes for his birthday.  Big.  Hit.  First of all, anything from "Matt" is solid gold, which is why you see that apron hanging in the corner.  That was Matt's way-back-when, and Little Man adores it.  He spent an entire afternoon walking around in the kitchen wearing it over a pair of big boy underwear.  He likes to pretend that the stool in the above photo is a stove and spread his dishes and food out all over that while saying, "Stir, stir, stir" and "Mmmm...Yummy!"

If you have littles in your house, I highly recommend setting up a space in your kitchen that is just for them.  They will love it, and you will love the time it gives you to get supper on the table without forty thousand interruptions.  Not to mention the fact that it's super-cute to see them standing in the middle of the floor wearing an apron and big boy undies.

Friday Photo

Pickin' Paint

Now, while I'm still not quite ready to dig out the paint supplies for a big project just yet, I am ready to start deciding on a color for the kitchen.  I thought the best way to make sure we wind up with something we really love (at least for the next several years) would be to take several samples, tape them to the walls, and look at them in different lighting throughout the day over the next couple of weeks.  

After nearly half-an-hour at Lowe's this is a sampling of what I brought home:

Now, please don't think I've lost my mind when you see the color in the back.  I'm planning on using that as an accent color elsewhere in the house.  I'll get to that in a minute.  

Apparently, taping paint samples to the walls in contagious (perhaps dangerously so), because Little Man wanted in on the action. 

And I give you Gray

Gray

Gray, gray, gray, and gray

Grey and Grey (if I spell it with an E does it make it more exciting?)

Not very spell-binding, but, oh, think of the possibilites of gray!  I have always loved gray for walls because it gives a nice, clean backdrop allowing for exciting accents and trinkets (or Fire King dishes in the kitchen).  It will also look really spectacular when we have the walnut counter tops all the way around.

While I was at it, I went ahead and placed some in other rooms of the house.  I give you the den with a possible wall color

and hearth color (which is shockingly enough...gray).

 The guest bath is in need of some decorating only.  Not painting.  Which was a relief to Mr. Chadwick when he saw this paint chip taped upon the fuse box cabinet.  For some reason, it made him think a high school girl was going to be painting this space.  No idea why.  Everyone knows bright teal walls are super awesome.

I am vaguely aware of the fact that it is no longer winter.  However, I am also vaguely aware of the fact that I have nothing else to put here.

I present to you the Great Room in a deep shade of...wait for it...wait for it...GRAY!  We plan on putting white wainscoting on the lower half of the walls, also, which should take out some of that cave-likeness that might be an issue with such a large space of dark walls.

And Little Man's room in gray...

Most likely to match the kitchen.  Or at least compliment.

Over the next few days, focusing on the kitchen, we'll take down the paint chips we don't like and move around the ones we love to make sure they are equally appreciated in all the (few few few) light sources the kitchen has to offer.  Hopefully the first week in May will bring forth some taping, cutting in, and painting in gray.