WHEN: January 2012
WHERE: The Brass Residence
Fashionably late. OK, just late.
I figured I needed to bring my blog into 2012 before spring rolled around. And since I'm struggling to blog anymore, I figured I could at least blog about those things taking precedence over my blog. Either that or surely watch my blog slip into an assumed "retired" or "abandoned" status.
Christmas is over. A new year has begun. The Packers are not headed to the Superbowl. We don't yet have children. We've recently become first-time homeowners...
....sounds like an excellent recipe to begin renovations!
That's just what we have begun here at the Brass household. We have owned our house for almost 5 months now, but have lived in it for almost 18 months. That has proven ample time for the 'honeymoon effect' of the house to wear off and led us to start complaining about the imperfections of the house, even though we know it's a blessing just to own a home (regardless of the economy). Now that we own the house and a new year has arrived, we have begun taking "renovations" seriously. I emphasize "renovations" because we're not necessarily tearing down walls here (an act which appears so innocent, simple, and inexpensive on HGTV). Thankfully, our house was built in 2008 and therefore needs little work in terms of maintenance, efficiency, or "safety", so our main goals so far are simply the aesthetics. Not to mention legitimate renovations would not be within our budget!
Our aim has been to paint walls (which are a buff color - in every room, floor to ceiling, on both floors), update furniture, replace hardware, and clean floorboards and other unsightly dirt-traps that have accumulated not only our dirt but the dirt of the not-so-cleanly owners before us. So that we didn't get in over our head, we decided we would start small on our projects. Neither money nor experience are in our favor when it comes to renovations, so we narrowed our plan down to what would be the least amount of cost and work. The small half-bath on the ground level was a perfect place to start.
The bathroom (about 6x6ft.) is the smallest room in the house and it seems apparent that bathrooms and kitchens are big selling points in a house (looking down the road). Those characteristics made the bathroom an obvious choice for us to try our hand in home renovations.
While renovations for this bathroom have been in our minds for a couple months now, we only began to act on those thoughts this past week. Saturday was the first real day of actual labor, after spending Friday night at Lowe's beginning to buy supplies for the "reno". We covered a lot of ground over this first weekend, but that's only saying so much for a room that's less than 50 square feet. Even still, it was encouraging just to get started on a project that was only in our heads up to that point, and it was nice to see progress.
Our stash of bathroom hardware we picked up last week.
This is how our downstairs bathroom looked last Saturday morning, before we began work on it.
The view from "the can" (I couldn't resist).
Building the cabinet in the garage. Any excuse to get out in the garage and work with my tools!
Measuring the wall for the cabinet
Hello, white!
All taped up and ready to be primed
We brought home over a dozen paint samples we were serious about to compare in the bathroom. We're both very indecisive and I don't think either of us have a good eye for how a 3x3" sample translates to an entire room. Not the best situation when renovating. :)
While renovations for this bathroom have been in our minds for a couple months now, we only began to act on those thoughts this past week. Saturday was the first real day of actual labor, after spending Friday night at Lowe's beginning to buy supplies for the "reno". We covered a lot of ground over this first weekend, but that's only saying so much for a room that's less than 50 square feet. Even still, it was encouraging just to get started on a project that was only in our heads up to that point, and it was nice to see progress.
These are the three final choices we had painted on the wall on Saturday night. I'm not going to give away what color we chose until it's up on the walls. (I'll leave you in suspense until my next belated post.)
We took turns priming the bathroom on Saturday and Sunday and got most of it done. I didn't take any pictures of that and was too lazy to take any last night when I was putting this post together. As you likely know, it's nothing exciting. It turned the walls from a buff color to white. Boring.
Stacie is planning on finishing the priming this afternoon and we would like to get it all painted this weekend. We hope to be done with everything by next weekend - but then you never know what might slow you down, related or unrelated.
So, as week #2 begins today, I am finally posting week one's progress. Hopefully I can get this weekend's progress up earlier next week. Of course, I see it as a success that I even got a post done before February!
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