The Bathroom...Now

I plan to post after photos as soon as the wall paper is up and the bathroom is fabulous. Until then, here is the bathroom as it looks today (messy messy messy)! The shoe organizer is going, the fish are staying, and the black with sparkles wall is going. I did the black wall with a glossy finish black paint and while it was wet I tossed ceiling sparkle onto it. It's cute, but the new wall paper (featured in the picture that shows the toilet) is way cuter, and will be more original.The door is original to the house, as are the door handles. Acutally, all of our doors are like this, it's probably one of the features that made us really want the house. That shoe organizer is my "Holy crap, we're having twins, where are we going to put this stuff!" remedy for the too small medicine cabinet.

The floor was done by my father and Jay. I picked out the big Armstrong tiles and they put them in. It was a fix for a fabulous atomic asbestos floor that had been covered over with 1970's yellow indoor/outdoor glued down carpeting. Do I love it now? Some days I do, a lot of days I'm indifferent however!The too small medicine cabinet I was speaking of:
As I said in past blogs, the shower had fabulous chrome and semi-frosted glass shower doors, but while I was pregnant, I decided that a) I was getting too big to fit through and b)How the hell can I bathe two babies with these doors in the way?!? So we have a shower curtain. This one is from Target. I am currently searching for a vintage one on ebay. I found one that has matching window curtains, and is black with pink flowers. I don't know yet though. I am also planning on replacing that awful green bathmat sometime soon-it's just cheap and ugly!

I never promised you a rose garden...

So I may not have promised anyone a rose garden-but I found one!!  After 5 hours of cutting back and digging out over grown lilacs and rhodos, I found 3 thriving rose bushes!!!  I am no gardener, but I am determined to take care of these lovelies!!!  I also found BUNDLES of vintage gardening stakes in the shed--I'm talking vintage plastic rods, some of which have been topped with little rubber stoppers (to lessen the chance of small eyes being poked out!)!!!

Here are some crude photos!:

Onto other things...   This is my living room light fixture--It got painted on, so I need to find a new one, well more like a bunch of replacements actually.  

This is my kitchen light switch--the reason I need multiple switchplate covers for this crazy configuration!   If you have any, I'd love to take them off of your hands!!

Whew! It's been a while!

It has been almost 2 years since I've updated this blog, and I am ashamed!  I have the excuse of having twin boys this past August however!!   We are still plugging away at making the house fabulous however.

I am forever man-handling the closet that we call a bathroom.  I had to have the fabulous glass doors removed from the bathtub last spring, because whilst preggers, I could not fit through! It was a blessing really, because I would not be able to bathe the bambinos with those cumbersome doors.   I'm painted the horrible particle board vanity (we have the original wall mounted sink in the basement, but serious floor work needs to be done before it can be put back up) pink and added some green bubbles to it.  Here's how it looks now:

The door is askew, I have asked for it to be tightened to no avail, so I need to do that-today in fact!  I am just so-so with this vanity, it's a terrible cheap fix.  The pink doesn't match at all... I may cover it with the left over wall paper.  It's an eyesore indeed.

Also, despite saying that I would *NEVER* wallpaper any room (after I had to scrape terrible GOLD 1970s wallpaper off of just about every wall in this place), just last night I purchased this from Vintage Walls on ebay:

It is pink with gold shiny starbursts, and its just fabulous.  I want to find a great shower curtain to match.  I have a huge vintage pink metal hamper, but unfortunately it's 1/4 of the size of the bathroom, so that's out.  I guess this means more shopping... darn...

2 Posts in 1 Month!!

I've finally organized "The Office"... The entire computie set up is done, which was a project in itself because for some reason we keep wires and crap from things that we don't own anymore!
The office theme was originally going to be used for the TV room, but since our couch doesn't fit through the door to what was to be the tv room (now our bedroom), I moved that theme to the office and created a tv/living room (much to my disappointment-- I feel like I've really got something when the tv is not in the living room).

The office theme is just movie theater lobby posters and movie stills/publicity shots. The anchor of it all is the double sided movie poster for Ed Wood-- it just is fabulous and my day is made just by looking at how awesome it is on the wall-haha.

I also uploaded ALL of the pre and mid remodel photos of the house. I still have to find my battery charger so that I take photos of the almost finished work though.

Happy Friday!!

Updates!!!

Jeepers, it's been months... We successfully moved in, and have 3/4 successfully finished the bulk of the remodeling. I am still searching through boxes for my usb adapter so I can upload the pictures of "progress", so hopefully soon I can do that and take down the Christmas and Pre-Termini house pictures!!

We had to replace the electrical system, which consisted of the original 1954 fuse panel, so that was one of our major renovations to the house-- however for the piece of mind it gave, the dent in the wallet was worth it!

Our other projects have been the following:
Repainting the kitchen (which was all yellow with a black tile separator) in a varying shades of green design, while maintaing the fabulous black tiles. We stole the color scheme from the latest Big Sandy and the Fly Rite Boys album (Thank you fellas for having such fab taste!). It was a fairly easy project, but in the midst of it, we decided that the little person sized counter area that completely took up the space in the kitchen needed to go. So we got rid of that with the help of a trusted friend, and now we're waiting for the moulding for around the kitchen windows that went with the stupid counter top to be replaced... No big deal since we have no kitchen table yet-- our old one was too gone to bring in, so we just pretend the living room is also the eating area. We also removed all of the outdoor carpeting from the kitchen and hall area, and replaced it with black and "little green apple" vinyl tiles from Armstrong. It's the most amazing kitchen and hallway now. I can't believe we did it-- actually Jay and my father did the floors-- it's great!

Our bathroom, is a salmon-y pink with the navy accent wall (see previous blog entry) but we did the floor with matching pink and black vinyl tiles-- so the accent wall is slated to be painted a shiny deep black (slated for a later date as we're up to our ears in touch ups right now).

The living room, bedroom and office all had hideous 1970s wallpaper-- removing it and getting the rooms painted didn't take a heck of a long time, we had a lot of help... unfortunately once those rooms got painted, I found a full time job and the work I was doing in the day had come to an end. So we ripped up carpeting and washed the wood floors underneath, which brings us up to today...

The bedroom has been a holder for all of the boxes we've been too lazy to unpack. We were hoping to be able to have that floor refinished as the carpet padding was so old that it turned to a cement like substance, and had to be heat-gunned off of the floor... so the floor is stained in some spots-- so anyways we decided last week that we can't keep sleeping in the office- it's just too small and foolish-- so we bought a fabulous area rug at IKEA for like $45, and today we're movin' in!!! I am psyched!!

Anyway, pictures to follow, hopefully this week!!!

The Countdown...

We are cleared to close!! The date is set for December 29th!!! Jason and I are ecstatic. We usually want Christmas to last forever, but this year we just want to be 'done gone!

After closing on the 29th we're going to have pizza and beer/sodies at the new place to celebrate, and the next day starts the work...

The Work:
Removing the carpeting from the BATHROOM and Kitchen... I pray that there is something salvagable at least for a little while under the mold-trap carpeting, but my hopes aren't too high! From what I saw during the home inspection it appears that the bathroom flooring is hardwood (or possibly soggy wood)... either way it's a lot of work that I am **really really really** looking forward to doing!
My bathroom inspiration is the following:

The wall tiles in the bathroom are a semi-sparkly beige and the tub toilet and basins are plain white for now, but I will be painting the walls with same color shown here as well as the accent wall with the anchor. We plan to do the flooring asap so that will also have the same effect. I am quite pleased that Jason agreed to this scheme because I've picked out colors and schemes for almost every room and I always lean towards the real salmony pinks... he's a good sport!!

Our 2nd project is the kitchen, which at this point is a 1970s disaster. It's got lovely yellow walls with (fabulous) black plastic 50s tiles for a "chair rail" and white cabs with yellow doors... the black tiles are wonderful and go from the kitchen down the hall to the bedroom doors- that's staying. The kitchen colors are based on this photograph:

I plan to do the walls and cabinet fronts in the green color, with the red color only for the cabinet bases. I don't want to appear to have a Christmas Kitchen, so I may shoot for a more orange red than the one pictured-- also all of my kitchen stuff is the Lusterware red and white and my curtains are red and white gingham so that should add to the more Kitchen-y than christmasy theme!! Ohhh.. .and my chalkware fruit with faces... the little jerks, are will be lovely too... I absolutely can't wait to get them up!!

Packing, Waiting and the Worst Yankee Swap Ever...

Packing and Waiting...

The long awaited home inspection went quite well. I was happy to see that there were only 2 problems and they are easily fixable and will be paid for in part by the sellers... that was a relief as the home is being sold through a poa for a 90 year old woman (the original owner of the house). That was last Saturday. I've got most of our things packed with the remaining necessities still cluttering up the joint- easily boxed things so that is good. We hear from the financing on Friday and then from there we wait until the 29th to sign and grab hold of the keys!! It's the waiting not the packing and carrying heavy boxes that is killing me!!

The Worst Yankee Swap...

Saturday night is our 5th annual (as married folk-- it will actually be our 9th annual in terms of actual events) Christmas Party. This years theme is Christmas Island-- were we not moving I was going to do the place up Polynesian style with palm trees and hibiscuis flowers and water and sand... but we're moving so I'm just FORCING the guests to wear Hawaiian attire. I myself have a fabulous vintage Hawaiian strapless with matching bolero, so that was the basis of my theme.. haha

Every year we hold The Worst Yankee Swap usually around 9:30pm. Guests search far and wide for "the most horrible gift you could recieve at a yankee swap" and the fun ensues. Last years more notable items were castor oil, Undies from a florida tourist shop, a candy bar with razor blades in it (my contribution)... This year the swap gifts are sure to be sickening... I'm really looking forward to it!!!