RENO WEEK 2.1

In an effort to put up something shorter in nature I am breaking this week into smaller updates :)

TUESDAY: Murph got to work on removing the carpet and remaining trim in our family room and Nic was super sweet and brought us over some seriously delicious lasagna and salad. What a blessing! It was nice to catch up and enjoy some good eats. We also got some news from NFM regarding our flooring and now install won't happen until the last week in February. BUMMER! But this will allow us to fully finish our cabinet and drawer fronts before the flooring goes in, and I won't have to vacuum for the next few weeks ;)

WEDNESDAY: We tackled getting another coat of paint on the cabinets and they really started looking the creamy white we were envisioning. I was afraid it was going to take 5 coats at the rate the paint was covering (the idea is thin and smooth) but 1 or 2 more should do it. It is actually going on super smooth and I'm hoping the fronts go just as nice!

Coat 2 is up!

We won't be doing much on Thursday or Friday since we have dinner plans both nights but hopefully we will wrap up the base cabinet painting and get the kitchen somewhat back to functional over the weekend. And then the real challenge begins with the rest of the cabinet painting!

We've also decided on a new bathroom vanity that we are going to assemble ourselves. I was not super impressed with anything we were finding in stock merchandise at the big box stores so taking this post from YHL as inspiration we have decided to use a desk vs. a nightstand and retrofit it to meet our needs.

Nightstand turned vanity at YHL

We originally were going to stick with a pedestal sink but decided a little storage and counter space would be a good idea. So after scouring the internet we landed on an black writing desk and rectangle ceramic sink with bronze faucet, that will be only slightly smaller than the vanity we had in there originally.

Our new vanity, sans computer of course

This vessel sink won't be as dirty looking as the old one, and has that "farm" style I love,
not to mention a new ORB faucet!

There are several reasons we chose this setup:

• The original vanity was too standard for our (my) taste, had been painted, and was ugly, with an ugly counter top and terrible sea glass vessel sink. Like most of the original finishes it didn't match the style of our home.
• Since the bathroom is on an exterior wall our water lines come up through the floor and that cannot be changed so we needed something that would be easy to install around those water lines. I am almost positive the original cabinet was put in first and then the plumbing was run through it, we needed something simple.
• The drawer will be cut down on the inside to still function and hold any little things we need there in the future.
• The shelf is going to be flipped and will be at the front instead of the back allowing us to cover our exposed water lines with a basket and give us another little storage spot.
• We will be installing a chrome plated drain as well so the plumbing won't look cheap
• Making something ourselves is cheaper than getting something from a big box store. Most of the vanities we liked ran around $250-$300 just for the base, not including the sink or faucet, and we grabbed all three on Overstock.com for just under $350 after free shipping and a 10% off code saving us well over $50.

I'm sure this will be a somewhat challenging project for us, and I know it's not something everyone will love but I am excited to see a "custom" project in our house!

Eventually we will replace the ivory toilet with a white one and add some other accessories, I'm thinking of a making a mirror similar to this one, but that will be a ways down the road! Until then we will keep our focus on the basics, like how the heck we will assemble this crazy sink idea :)