Bathroom Reno Complete!

In April, we had a contractor come out to the house and give us a quote on our master bathroom reno ideas and a quote on resurfacing the deck in the backyard.  I'll share an update soon of the deck (we love it!), but today is all about the bathroom.  Our general plan was to remove the tub and shower inserts, create a walk-in shower where the bathtub was, install wooden shelves where the shower insert was, and raise the vanity up higher and replace the counter-top.  To see the "Before" pictures and a peek at the tiles we chose, click here.

The renovation on both the bathroom and the deck was scheduled to begin on the Tuesday after Memorial Day.  However, a family issue from the contractor caused the construction to be delayed a week.  Therefore, it began on the Monday after Memorial Day, June 1st.  The deck was finished within a couple of days, and bathroom work began on this week as well.  They'd work on the bathroom demo during our typical afternoon summer rain showers. For a week and a half, they worked on the bathroom.  Then we had to wait for the tile company to order the granite for the counter-top, which took an extra two weeks.  The counter-top was installed on Tuesday the 23rd and the bathroom was finished on Friday the 26th.  We are so thrilled with how it turned out!  It's such a nice change to the room and certainly more comfortable to move around in.

We are also so relieved to be finished with construction!  Aaron was able to work from home for the first two weeks of the project, but he had to return to the office during the last two weeks, which meant the kids and I had to hang around the house during the day instead of venturing out to my mother-in-law's house for a change of scenery.

The fact that we're finally done and our vision has become reality is still mind-boggling to me.  I am not usually someone who handles change well, and even though I designed the project and chose the tile with Aaron and knew in my mind how it would look, it's still odd to walk into a room that remained a certain way for four years and see it completely different.  I know I'll get used to it the more time passes, and I know it'll be such an asset to us whenever we decide to sell.

Here's a look at some of the construction process.  I do have the photos of Day One where the walls were taken down to the studs, but it's basically that-- just studs, so it's not entirely interesting to look at. :)  Here's the rest of the project in stages.

This was the day they put up the moisture barrier walls and built the shower seat.

That same day, they sheetrocked where the shower insert had been and laid the mosaic tile we had chosen for the floor.  We thought we had some extra white 12x12" tiles, but found out that we didn't, so we had to buy a tile for the floor where the shower had been.  We tried finding a match to the tile we had on the rest of the bathroom floor, but we couldn't find any in the store so we took a risk and chose this gray & light brown mosaic tile.  The contractor loved it and was thrilled that we chose something different and interesting!  He has since told me that other customers are choosing mosaic tile choices for their own shower and shampoo cut-outs, etc.

This was taken a couple days later after I painted the sheetrock and he laid the baseboards.  He built these shelves and stained them at home, then installed them here.  They are eighteen inches deep and a foot apart from each other.  I can just barely reach the top shelf which is fine with me.  I made sure there was enough space between the bottom shelf and the floor so I could store a hamper down there.  

This is when the shower was fully tiled & the faucet installed. 

This was the day that the vanity was raised up four inches.  You can see the wooden riser, and I will eventually paint this white to look like baseboard.  My mother-in-law gave me the oil-rubbed bronze drawer knobs since she had several leftover from her kitchen cabinet knob change.

This is the day that the counter-top was installed.  We are so happy with the granite choice!  I gave the color family idea to the contractor (we wanted white, but not stark white, and not too much veining).  This piece of granite has the perfect amount of gray veining, and it's a very subtle gray/white granite which ties in beautifully to the wall color (Sherwin Williams "Sea Salt").

The contractor installed our sink faucets the next day that he was back at our house.  We ordered our faucets from Amazon which saved us so much money as opposed to buying faucets from big box stores.

The following day, he installed the shower door.  We had originally intended to go with a frameless shower door, but they were SO expensive and I had mentally hit a money-spending-block and could not possibly fathom spending extra money on a door.  I found a very good door at Lowe's for nearly 4 times less than the frameless door, so we were able to just pick up that one rather than ordering a door, and the contractor installed it for us.

We found out that the original mirror wasn't going to fit back in its place after the vanity was raised up four inches, and a four inch back-splash was attached.  I jumped on kirklands.com and happened to find a mirror that would fit and it was on super sale.  Aaron and I hung the mirror on Friday night.

Here's our shelves after I began strategically placing things on them.

We are so super thrilled with how everything turned out and it was an interesting process to see it all come together!

Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba

Beach Recap

Over Memorial Day weekend, we traveled to our very familiar beach town. We haven't been able to take the kids here since right before Hurricane Michael hit in September 2018.  As we contemplate ways in which we might rebuild on our family property, we knew we couldn't stay away til that was finished so we researched Airbnb's in the area and were so pleasantly surprised by the options. We actually were scheduled to go toward the end of March but Covid kind of messed up our plans and vacation rentals were banned for about 2 months.

We booked somewhere smaller for our Memorial Day trip but we do plan to revisit the place we originally intended to stay. The place we chose for this quick weekend trip was perfect for us and reminded us of our beach cottage in many ways. It was about a 10 minute drive to our beach property during the day but we'd head over there to enjoy the private beach and then return to the Airbnb in the heat of the day & again in the evening.  We only had to defend our right to be at our property once and all in all, we're grateful that the neighbors are looking out for the land and making sure squatters aren't taking advantage of the lot.

I didn't take too many photos inside the rental and moreso focused on how wonderful it was to be back on the property.

Muffins are a necessity for breakfast when at the beach!

We went over to the property very shortly after breakfast.

I brought some of our own sand toys from home, so each kid enjoyed digging and making sand castles.  We saw lots of pelicans and even about 3 dolphins on this day.

Holding hands!  So sweet.

Do you see Avery down there?  For some reason she thought I was way down the beach and decided to run after me.  Thankfully, her daddy is faster than she is and caught up with her shortly after I took this photo.

I was proud of both boys for getting in the water.  Avery was equal parts happy on the sand as well as where the waves would break.  She was certainly in her element.

In the afternoon, after Avery's nap, we returned to the property for a walk.  We didn't put on swimsuits for this, but we should have since every kid ended up getting in the water and we found out that Avery could swim when she accidentally fell off a shoal and kept herself afloat for the 5 seconds it took Aaron and I to get to her.

Noah is in front of Michael in this picture, but I wish you could see all three kids since it would make a wonderful Father's Day picture.  Aaron is such a great dad.

Super sandy, super sticky, super tired. This was on our way back to the rental for dinner. 

We left right after breakfast the following morning, but thoroughly enjoyed our trip!

Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba

A Painting Spree

Back in March, I decided I wanted to use my time wisely since I was going to be at home for weeks on end.  I chose to focus on choosing a paint color for Avery's room that added more of a "calm, beach atmosphere."  Aaron and I love the color of our bathroom so much (Sherwin Williams "Sea Salt") that we kind of wanted that same color family in her room since a lot of her decor is beachy and this will be used as our guest room as well as her bedroom.  We chose to find a color in the gray/green family.  It took me well over a month to pick a color, but I did eventually settle on one.  However, I still haven't painted her room.  My mother-in-law loves to paint, so she's going to help me and I've just been waiting for the right time to do it.  Avery has large pieces of furniture in her room, so it takes a bit of planning to get things going.  I have used various different paint brands throughout my home since buying it four years ago.  We've used Sherwin Williams and Valspar and some other brand that I can't remember right now.  This time, however, I chose to go with Behr Premium Marquee after my mother-in-law was able to paint a light gray over a bright neon green with just one coat in her home back in March.  I settled on "Arid Plains" for Avery's room (again, haven't actually painted in there yet), but I figured while I was buying paint for her room I should buy paint for the boys' room also since they have certainly left their mark on the walls over these last few years.  I chose to stick with the gray family in their room also and chose "Chic Gray."  Since their room has light pieces of furniture, I was able to move everything and paint it by myself over the course of a few days in May.  I'd paint a little bit each day and gave myself lots of grace while doing it.  It was a boredom buster for me and helped me feel productive at a time that could have easily been overly depressing.  Here's some photos I took in their room this morning.  These were taken without the curtains being opened, so the lighting is not the best.  I'm just so so in love with this color that I'm kind of debating painting my living room this same color later on this year.

It was so helpful to me to know that I would only have to do one coat.  After it was finished, I was so inspired by the color and loved the turnout so much that I decided to paint our hall bathroom in the course of one evening.  I taped up all furniture items (cabinet, wall shelf) and sides of the tub and towel holders and went to town.  It was a quick job and again, it only took one coat.  It used up the rest of the paint perfectly and I love love love how it turned out!

So up next will be Avery's room, which is a darker gray with a little more of a green tint.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba

Random Update

A lot has been going on over here during these past several weeks, so I thought I'd string several would-be shorter posts together in one update post.

During our first Christmas after we were married, Aaron received a very nice knife block.  We've used these knives for the past ten years and have always made a space for the large block on our counters.  In our current house, we have limited counter space so we chose to try something new.  We bought a wooden insert to put into a drawer and store our knives that way instead.  At first the insert was too long, but my father-in-law cut it down by a couple inches and now it fits perfectly and looks like the drawer was designed just for this.  We are able to fit most of the knives into the insert.  I store a couple of steak knives in the regular silverware drawer along with the knife sharpener and kitchen shears.  The super long bread knife is now kept with my other kitchen utensils in a separate drawer.

After seeing my Nana use a Swiffer Duster cloth in her van to keep it dust-free, I decided to do the same thing!  Every so often, I'll pull it out and give the dash a quick wipe down.

I store it in a little pocket underneath the dash.

Anytime I coach a team at church (cheerleading, soccer, etc.), I use a 5-gallon bucket to store my belongings and coach materials.  It also works as a make-shift stool during half-time etc.

I only bring essentials to the field: keys, sunglasses, wallet, and of course a face mask these days.

For our bathroom reno, we're going with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures.  Our current fixtures were chrome, so instead of buying new oil-rubbed bronze items, I decided to try spray painting our current ones first.  I chose the Burnished Amber finish rather than Oil Rubbed Bronze finish since the Burnished Amber was closer in color to the look I was going for.  Aaron and I were intrigued by the Forged Hammer effect, so we grabbed it and decided to see how it did!  I made sure to read the directions to verify that it would hold to shiny metal surfaces.

I unscrewed the towel ring and toilet paper holder and placed them on an unfolded cardboard box in the backyard.  One coat completely covered the toilet paper holder, and I only had to do a touch-up on the towel ring to get the underside of the loop.  I did accidentally spray my left hand while trying to put the trigger guard back on and I didn't end up getting the paint off until the next evening after trying so many different potential solutions.  Eventually the trick was orange pumice soap and a scrubby side of a sponge.  I was so happy with how the fixtures turned out and it was so worth doing it myself instead of buying new items.

I followed Andrea's recipe at Momfessionals for faux quiche one night for dinner.  I just used whatever vegetables I had on hand (broccoli, red pepper, tomato, yellow pepper, onion) and two slices of ham lunch meat.  This week we'll make this again and use a ham steak and cheddar cheese.

We were very happily surprised when we found a large blackberry vine growing over our fence from the empty lot next door.  The berries don't ripen at the same time, so we venture out there every couple of days to pick the ripe ones.  Avery takes it upon herself to grab the bathroom stool and help herself to a snack.  Again.  And again.

We had a lot of rain this past week due to the Hurricane bands, and I took this photo at the bottom of my mother-in-law's driveway one day.

We recently signed up for Misfit Markets to get a variety of fresh veggies delivered to us every other week.  This was our box two weeks ago; we'll get another box this week and it's so fun to open it up and see what's inside!  It's pushed us to try new things and it's nice having fresh fruit on hand for the kiddos.

Noah and I were trying to use up some of the citrus fruits we had received in a previous box, so we made an orange and lime cake.  Both boys thought it tasted okay (Michael said it tasted like Fruit Loops) but we were kind of tired of it after two days.

Some mornings call for a latte in a princess cup while reading old copies of HGTV Magazine.

I love capturing moments when my kiddos are kind to each other and using their imaginations.

Who knew waiting for a dentist appointment could be so funny?!  They are handling the whole "wearing a mask" thing very well and I'm super proud of them.

Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba