Baby Deer Wishes You a Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

We have a family of 7 deer that have been visiting us the past two weeks, ever since they discovered the new salt lick I mounted on a tree down by the old access road that runs behind our property. There are 3 babies, 2 juvenile males with little nubby horns, and 2 adult female deer in the family. But this morning is the first time I've been able to get a picture of one of the babies, because usually they're running around like crazy, chasing each other, jumping over the creek and being silly, while the older ones take turns at the salt lick. This morning though I finally caught a shot of a baby!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. We're in for another tiring and dirty weekend, working on the bathroom, removing the rest of the damaged sub floor, scrubbing/sanding any surface mold on the joists, pulling a thousand nails out of all of the studs to prep them for fresh drywall, and a whole bunch more tedious prep work. But I hope we'll have a bit of time to watch some of the Olympics this weekend too. What are you guys up to this weekend? Any home projects planned? Who is excited for the Olympics?

 

Downstairs Bath Renovation: The Demolition

AKA, we made our bathroom really, really messy!

This past weekend was demolition weekend, as you saw a preview of already.  But of course, I wanted a few "staged" photos of us doing the demolition (you know, not looking super grubby with dust masks on!), so Friday evening after we picked up our new utility trailer, we took turns photographing each other taking inaugural swings at the shower tile.

Yes, I totally cheesed it up for these photos :)

Our Newest Home Renovation Tool

I gave you guys a little preview of what we worked on this past weekend on Sunday afternoon, but before I get into the nitty gritty details of the bathroom demolition, I thought I'd start with last Friday, before we went to town with sledgehammers.

Early Friday morning, we got up early and headed to Uhaul, to get a trailer hitch installed on my husband's car. You can probably guess where this is leading....and yes, Friday evening we picked up our newest home renovation tool, a 5'x8' utility trailer!

Can I just tell you how excited we are about this purchase?! It is going to make our lives 400 times easier, because now we can take loads of trash to the dump (free for residents), buy and bring home furniture from the flea market, make huge trips to Ikea....and all at our leisure, without having to rent a truck or pay delivery fees! Plus, now we don't need to rent a dumpster for our bathroom renovation, which was going to run us $225, and they couldn't even put the dumpster up close to our house, it would have had to go on the street because our driveway is really long and narrow.

Live From The Bathroom Demolition

Just a little live mobile blogging preview of what we've been up to this weekend!

I can't tell you how long I've waited to smash drywall, and it is just as fun (and as hard of work) as I thought it would be. :)

Downstairs Bath Renovation: Design, Timeline and Budget Plans

You know, it's times like these that make me really glad I have a blog. It gives me an excuse to really put together a solid vision for our projects, which not only is fun to share with you guys, but it really helps in forming the design plans too! I'm such a visual person that an inspiration board is always a lot more useful than just lists of plans or products in Excel.

So here it is, one big post laying out all of the plans we have (so far) for our downstairs bathroom renovation.

First, the main inspiration board. Now that we're set with our vanity with marble counter, we're ready to move forward with the grey floor and white with light grey veins shower surround tile we'd tentatively picked out. Our walls won't necessarily be this exact color of green, but they will be a medium green on the top half, and beadboard wainscoting on the bottom half.

It's Here! Our New Bathroom Vanity Has Arrived!

It's here! It's here!

The new vanity for our downstairs bathroom renovation arrived yesterday afternoon, and we couldn't wait to get it opened.

We actually partially opened it up while the UPS Freight driver waited, just to make sure there was no damage to it in transport. But all was good on that end!

DIY Board and Batten Headboard

Hooray, I'm one small step closer to completing our guest bedroom, because we now have a headboard!

Well, we almost have a headboard, because I still need to mount it on the wall. But that requires my husband's help, since it's a little heavy. But just because it isn't mounted doesn't mean it isn't completed!

This is a project that would have been a bit easier if we'd had a truck or a good way of getting large pieces of wood home (although that's about to change soon!), but since not all of us have access to a large vehicle, I'll show you how I made this headboard with stuff that could fit in my little car.

A Painting Time Saver

Things are moving along with our bathroom reno planning. We've ordered a vanity and counter top, and are crossing our fingers they look awesome once they arrive (the counter is turning out to be the hardest thing, since no two slabs of marble are the same, and we really want one with lighter veining). We figured since there's a lot more of limited selection on the counter options in our price range, we'd nail that down first before we purchase our tile, since we can be a little more flexible with the tile selection. Good news though is that if this vanity and counter end up working out, we're already $500 under budget, whoo-hoo! But I'll share more details once they actually arrive.

But since we've been busy with bathroom planning, my other projects have slowed down in their progress. However, I wanted to share with you a cool time saving tool that was pretty helpful in my guest bedroom painting.

I first saw this edger tool on Lauren's blog, Oh Lordy! and had been intrigued ever since. And when I saw the tool while I was waiting for paint to be mixed, I knew I had to try it. Especially since it was less than $6, with one pad included.

Rolling With the Punches and Reprioritizing Our Home Renovations Plans

Well! We sure had an interesting weekend. Things are going to be shifting gears around here a little bit, with regards to what big home renovation we'll be working on next.

It all started with our main floor bathroom. Remember this post, where I showed you the bathroom in it's ugly yellow tile and pink flowered wallpaper state? And then shared our plans to first take down the wallpaper, paint and get new bath mats and accessories, to work with the yellow tile for now, until we're ready for a complete redo in a few years?

Well, we started on phase 1 of this bathroom update this past weekend, by taking down the wallpaper, after cutting power to the room and removing the light fixture, wall plates, towel racks and mirror.

The wallpaper removal went relatively smoothly, actually. You can see in this photo below how the wallpaper seams were already loose, which made things a lot easier. The thing you can't see though is the little bit of mold we saw under one of the seams after pulling it back a quarter of an inch a couple of weeks ago, which meant we wore masks and gloves while pulling down the wallpaper, since we'd be disturbing the mold.

Target Home Department Shopping Spree

Yep, the post title says it all, that's what I was up to yesterday! I picked up quite a few items we needed for our Guest Bedroom makeover, including new bedding, throw pillows, curtains and lamps.

From left to right: ikat pillows (on clearance, similar to these), curtain rod, lamp shade, teal lamp base, tripod floor lamp (I got two), white comforter, white grommet curtains, fun polka dot sheets, crochet pillows, ruffled pillow

Framed Chalkboard Basket Labels

Happy Monday! Did everyone survive the heat this weekend? We tried to stay inside as much as possible, but I couldn't resist a couple of quick trips out to our backyard to spray paint Friday night.

As I'd mentioned last week, I'm finally starting on organizing my craft space in my office. And while I'm still waiting on the new shelves to be delivered later this week, I was able to do something about all of the baskets that I ordered from Target (found here, not available in stores).

I knew to keep things really organized and easy to find, I needed some kind of label system for my storage baskets. I considered just doing labels I could print out on my printer, but those wouldn't stick very well to the canvas and woven baskets I'd purchased. And I also wanted something for my labels that would be easy to change. As I buy more crafting supplies over time, I wanted to have the flexibility to change up what's stored in each basket.

So my solution was chalkboards!

Little tiny framed chalkboards, made from dollar store frames.