Bathroom Countertop Tray

Hey Friends! I seriously miss you all when I haven't gotten to post! We are finally almost all feeling better at my house. Wahoo! You all know what that means, right? More projects! Yay!

Today's project is actually one that I finished a couple months ago and has been working hard for us ever since! I'm not sure about you, but our bathroom counters tend to get cluttered really quickly. Hair ties, jewelry, hair products I haven't put away yet... You name it, it gets left out on the counter in a rush. I had to stop the madness and get some sort of organization going on!

I've had two little glass vases full of Q-tips and cotton balls out on our counters for years and love them. I think that was literally the very first idea I saw on Pinterest and copied! I wanted to keep those vases, but add a tray to ground them and give me space to set my jewelry and a bottle or two of frequently used products.

I was planning to DIY a little tray, but ended up finding an unfinished wood tray at Michael's for only a couple dollars after using a coupon. Score! I filled any rough spots and wood grain, then sanded it down nice and smooth.

After I got it all prepped, I gave it a couple coats of gray spray paint. Clearly, I'm not a good photographer while spray painting. That, or I really wanted to show you my hand. #notahandmodel

Now comes the blogger fail... I took a picture of the next step, but it has vanished! I can't find it anywhere. Thankfully, it's pretty self explanatory. I cut a piece of gray and white striped wrapping paper to fit the bottom of the tray, brushed some Mod Podge to the bottom of the tray, then working from one side to the other, gently laid the paper down, scoring it with a credit card along the way to get any air bubbles out. After the paper was completely down, I brushed a layer of Mod Podge to the top of the paper to give it a water resistant seal.

To further finish off my tray, I attached two decorative handles to the sides. I knew that I wouldn't be moving the tray except to clean, so I took the easy, lazy way out and glued the handles on. #rulebreaker  If you attach yours the normal, correct way so you can actually use the handles, be sure to sink your screws so that the tray lays flat on the counter.

I love that I have a designated dish for my jewelry when I'm in the shower and having the cotton balls and Q-tips out is super handy! It's also a great spot to leave my facial moisturizer out without it looking messy. Of course, nothing will help my continual cycle of finding a forgotten bobby pin in my hair while shampooing and trying to throw it over the shower wall and make it onto the counter. It always lands in the sink. Ha! Some people never learn...

What are your bathroom organizational tricks and tips?

Product Sources: 

Tray- Michaels

Handles- Lowes

Wrapping Paper- Home Goods

Square Vases- Walmart circa 2009

Jewelry Dish- World Market (only $1.99!)
Flowers- TJ Maxx

Linking up with Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, and many other awesome blogs!

One Room Challenge: Bathroom Reveal

I'm so excited for today because it's finally REVEAL DAY for the One Room Challenge! Wahoo! You can catch up on our bathroom remodel here: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5!

As a refresher, here's the 90's builder grade bathroom we started with:

Here's where we are now! I still can't get over the difference! HUGE shoutout to my hubby who worked like crazy on this bathroom! He's the best!

The new espresso vanity and bright white sink make everything look so fresh and crisp compared to that old honey colored vanity and yellowed sink! 

We said buh-bye to the old two toned towel ring by spray painting it oil rubbed bronze to match the fixtures. 

I love that the new vanity has legs. It makes it feel more like a piece of furniture instead of a plain stock cabinet. The bottom is actually a drawer that pulls out for added storage! 

The faucet looks so cool in here! It's such a great addition and adds some interest to the space. 

We love the way the water comes out! Isn't it fun?

The mirror is probably my favorite thing in the room! Isn't it gorgeous? I found it at Home Goods and snatched it up faster than you can say "Who's your Mama!"

For days after we hung up the mirror, I'd see it and immediately start singing Iggy's "Fancy" and dancing around. Haha! My husband is used to my antics. ;) 

I also found this frame at Home Goods for the artwork I made and thought it complimented the mirror perfectly. 

I still can't believe this light was only $25! Such a steal!

I have had my eye on this shower curtain from Target for years now. I love how fresh and clean it is while still adding a bit of color. 

Here's a shot of our new floors and toilet. The new laminate floors are so.much.better than the old, cracked tile we had before! And, check it out, we have real baseboards now instead of dated tile lining the walls! The floor truly transforms the space!

Here's all that we accomplished!

-Demo tile baseboards

-Rip out vanity, toilet, light, fixtures, and mirror.

-Paint. 

-Install new flooring.

-Replace baseboards. 

-Install new light. 

-Install new vanity and sink. 

-Install new faucet and fixtures. 

-Install new toilet. 

-Remove blinds and frost window.
-Fill nail holes in baseboards.
-Decorate

The only thing we didn't get to check off of our list was frosting the window. We are waiting until a day that we will be out of the house for a while, since the spray window frost is really strong. But, other than that, we were able to finish everything and cross this room off our list! We are SO happy with how it came out! I may or may not open the door just to a catch a glimpse of it every now and then. And I may or may not have done a giddy victory dance on the step stool as I was taking these pictures. ;)

Sources: 

Light, vanity, floors- Home Depot

Mirror, frame- Home Goods

Faucet, toilet- Lowes

Soap pump, vase (actually just a clear cup!), rug, shower curtain- Target

Shower curtain rod and rings- Walmart

Trash can, toilet paper holder- Marshalls 

Towel- Kirklands

(You can't see the trash can or the toilet paper holder in the pictures, but I had to include them in the source list because they were way cheaper at Marshalls than anywhere else. Be sure to check there if you're in the market for those items!)

Check out the other One Room Challenge room reveals over at Calling it Home!

One Room Challenge: Installation

*Affiliate link provided for your convenience. For more info, see my full disclosure here.

Hey, Friends! My brain is fried and I'm holding my eyes open with toothpicks at the moment. How is it only Wednesday?! Ha!

It's already Week 5 of the One Room Challenge! If you need to catch up, here's a recap of Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4! This week is all about installation and you can finally see the bathroom starting to come together and look like a real, operational bathroom instead of a construction zone! Wahoo!

With the painting, flooring, lighting, and baseboards in, we were finally able to get to installing the big stuff! The first thing to be installed was our $50 vanity. Yes, you read that correctly! We came across this vanity/sink combo on clearance for only $50 about a year ago at Home Depot and immediately scooped it up. We weren't ready to do the bathroom makeover just yet, so we stored it unopened under the house until our finances allowed us to tackle the bathroom remodel. It was SO exciting to pull the vanity out and get to use it!

I really like the clean lines of the vanity and the sink is sleek. The vanity has legs at the bottom, so it has more of a stand alone furniture vibe than just a regular stock cabinet. It has an espresso finish, but it is hard to tell in these pictures. Boo. :( Espresso wasn't my first choice for color, but it was so cheap that I figured if I didn't like it as is, I could paint it. Lucky for me, I like the espresso and don't need to paint.

After the vanity was installed, we got to work on the faucet. And by "we" I mean "he". I was busy chasing kids and cooking dinner, so Jeremy had to solo the installations. I owe him some fried chicken and fresh cookies, for sure!

I was planning to just purchase an inexpensive bronze faucet to try to keep our costs down. Jeremy has had his heart set on certain faucet for years, though, so decided to shell out the extra money from his saved spending money to upgrade the faucet. Since he was using his saved money, I let him do the faucet shopping. He knocked it out of the park! How cool is this faucet?!

It makes me want to play in the water! Haha! Here's Jeremy testing it out!

After the vanity was squared away, Jeremy got to work on installing the new toilet. I had my heart set on this* toilet (why in the world do I have such a strong opinion on toilets?!), but it was too expensive. We weren't originally planning on replacing the toilet at all, so we just couldn't justify the extra expense just to have a classier throne. Instead, we picked up this budget friendly model and have been happy with it so far. Our old one did not work well and the bolts were completely rusted through, so it is a great upgrade!

This was our first time replacing an entire toilet, so it was a new experience. But, it went without hitch and now we happily have an operational downstairs bathroom!

Here's where we are on our list! Get ready for the big reveal next week! I'm thrilled to finally get to show you all the pretty parts!!!

-Demo tile baseboards

-Rip out vanity, toilet, light, fixtures, and mirror.

-Paint. 

-Install new flooring.

-Replace baseboards. 

-Install new light. 

-Install new vanity and sink. 

-Install new faucet and fixtures. 

-Install new toilet. 

-Decorate (I'll show you that next week!)
-Remove blinds and frost window.
-Fill nail holes in baseboards.

Be sure to check out the other One Room Challenge rooms over at Calling it Home!


Linking up with Calling it Home, Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, and many other awesome blogs!

One Room Challenge: Flooring and Lighting

Hey, Friends! Hope you all are having a great week! I'm back for week number 4 of the One Room Challenge! If you need to catch up, here's a recap of Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3! 

This week, I'm sharing all about the floors and light! Our tile floors were 4 inch beige tiles with white grout and had seen better days. They were cracked in two places that spanned multiple tiles and the grout was dingy after years of use. Since we didn't have the budget or time to gut the tiles and install new tile, we decided to go with the Allure vinyl planks. They were easy on the wallet and could be floated over the top of the old tile. 

First we had to solve the issue of having only subflooring underneath where the vanity used to sit, though. We couldn't float new flooring over it without patching the subfloor first, or the floors wouldn't be level. 

We found a box of 4 inch tiles in the crawl space that were nearly identical to our floor tiles. We're not sure what the story is with the box of tile--it was left behind by the previous owner. But, they were the exact size of the existing floor tiles, so we were able to use them to patch the bare spot in the floor. We bought a couple subway tiles to fill the leftover gap and completely avoided the need to cut any tiles! 

Here's the floors, all patched up. It looks crazy because the colors don't match, but remember, this was just to patch and level out the floors so we could float the new planks on top. 

Side tirade-- I'm the worst at progress pictures! It's so hard to take time out of working to snap decent photos. I usually just quickly snap a picture with my phone and keep working, then kick myself later when the photos are sub par. I'll work on that. ;)

After the floor was patched, Jeremy was able to install the new vinyl planks. We loved that there was no adhesive to mess with! The planks are really thick, though, so cutting them with a utility knife like the directions suggested was pretty laughable. Jeremy ended up cutting them with his table saw for the straight cuts and his jigsaw with a laminate blade attached for precision cuts. That worked really well! The initial row was tricky, because he had to make precise cuts around the shower tile which went to the floor and the marble threshold, but once he got through that row, the process went much faster and easier. 

Once the floors were in, Jeremy installed new baseboards and quarter round to match the rest of the house. I can't tell you how much better it looks now than it did with the dated tile baseboards! Our house suddenly feels newer--it's like Botox for homes. ;)

We also installed a new lighting fixture! Our entire downstairs has all bronze fixtures, so we decided to carry the bronze into the bathroom. I found this Hampton Bay light at Home Depot for only $25 and was immediately sold. It may not be the fanciest or trendiest, but it has nice, clean lines and makes the bathroom look so fresh without breaking the bank!

I promise to get a better shot of the light when I reveal the bathroom!

To bring you up to date, here's our to-do list and what I've shown you so far:

-Demo tile baseboards

-Rip out vanity, toilet, light, fixtures, and mirror.

-Paint. 

-Install new flooring.

-Replace baseboards. 

-Install new light. 

-Install new vanity and sink. 

-Install new faucet and fixtures. 

-Install new toilet. 

-Remove blinds and frost window.
-Decorate!

I mentioned last week that we were actually farther along than this list shows because we were hosting a party and were trying to get the bathroom ready in time. Well, we made it and our guests had a bathroom to use! Whew! We are finished except for filling some nail holes in the baseboards and smoothing out a spot on the wall! I'm dying to show you the rest! Next week, I'll share all the vanity, faucet, and toilet installations and you'll really see it coming together!

Be sure to check out the other One Room Challenge rooms over at Calling it Home!


Linking up with Calling it Home, Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, and many other awesome blogs!

One Room Challenge: Paint & A Free Printable for You

We are still chugging along with our bathroom makeover for the One Room Challenge! If you need to catch up, here's a recap of Week 1 and Week 2!

This week is all about paint and sourcing artwork! I really wanted a spa-like light blue paint with green/gray undertones to compliment the shower curtain and rug I picked out. Here's my mood board for the bathroom to refresh you memory of our bathroom plans.

If you remember, it took me 8 paint color samples to finally pick a color for our living room. I'm so indecisive! This time, I was determined to just make a decision and go with it. I pulled a bunch of paint swatches, looked at them in the room and held them up to the shower curtain and rug, and researched the colors online to see how they looked in a finished room. Then, I made my decision and bought my paint without painting a sample on the wall. Want to take a guess at how that worked out? Yeah, not so great. :(

I picked Benjamin Moore's Ocean Air mixed in the cheap Glidden paint at Home Depot. I got all the cutting in done and stepped back to realize that it was not quite what I was going for. It was pretty, but kind of juvenile. I held up the swatch and the color was ever so slightly off. It was missing the gray undertones to tone it down a notch. Grrr.

Home Depot would not let me return the paint even though it wasn't exactly the same color as the swatch, but they did tweak it for me. I pulled some paint samples from my leftover living room sample palooza and tried them on the wall, then picked one that was closer to what I was going for in the bathroom. I took the sample to Home Depot and the man at the paint counter color matched it and figured out how much of each pigment it had in it, then used that information to tweak my paint color. It helped, but it's still not exactly what I wanted. Now it's missing the green undertones! But, I didn't have the time, money, or energy to repaint with an entirely new color, so I went with it. Here's a little peak!

*Side notes-- While they were tweaking my paint color, they told me that Glidden paint has a tendency to not mix colors perfectly. I was not impressed with the inexpensive Glidden paint and won't bother using it again. It was really thin in addition to the color mixing issue. Sherwin Williams and Behr (if I'm on a tight budget) are my go-to paints that never fail me, but I was trying to save money this time. #fail

Also, I just read this post by Meadow Lake Road on picking paint colors and thought she was spot on. Follow her advice, friends!

I also shopped around for a print to hang in the bathroom. I love the look of watercolor floral artwork mixed with pretty fonts and verses. I was having a hard time finding the perfect pairing of a verse I wanted plus watercolor that I loved.

Then, my friend posted an Instagram photo of 2 Timothy 4:17 and I knew instantly that it was exactly what I wanted. I decided to just make some artwork myself! I used her photo as inspiration for my text layout and purchased the same watercolor clipart featured in the artwork I included on my bathroom mood board. I'm no graphic designer, but I'm really happy with how it turned out and love the verse!

To thank you all for being such a great, encouraging group of readers, I'm offering you the print I made for free! Click here to download the PDF!

To bring you up to date, here's our ever growing to-do list and what I've shown you so far:

-Demo tile baseboards

-Rip out vanity, toilet, light, fixtures, and mirror.

-Paint. 

-Install new flooring.

-Replace baseboards. 

-Install new light. 

-Install new vanity and sink. 

-Install new faucet and fixtures. 

-Install new toilet. 

-Remove blinds and frost window.
-Decorate!

Now, full disclosure time... We are way ahead of schedule because this is our downstairs bathroom. We're hosting a birthday party in a couple days for Little Man and kind of need a bathroom for our guests! Ya know, it's the little things in life... Ha!

Be sure to check out the other projects over at Calling it Home! There is so much talent on display!


Linking up with Calling it Home, Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, Thrifty Decor Chick, and many other awesome blogs!

One Room Challenge: Bathroom Makeover Demo

Well, we've officially kicked off our bathroom makeover for the One Room Challenge! Bye, bye 90's builder grade bathroom! See week one here!

Here's a refresher of where we're headed with this bathroom! 

The very first thing we did was drill a small hole in the inside of the cabinet to see if there was tile underneath. Remember, because new tile flooring wasn't in the budget, if the existing tile continued under the vanity, we could install our new clearance vanity. If there was no tile underneath, we'd repaint the existing vanity. Guess what? No tile. Whomp whomp. 

We were immediately disappointed. It stunk to have a brand new vanity in the basement that we couldn't install. My brain immediately started trying to finagle a way to get new floors, but we don't have the time, energy, or money to demo the existing tile and lay new tile. 

But, then I remembered this post from Iheart Organizing and got super excited. Jen and her hubby laid waterproof vinyl floor planks that looked like wood. My brain went into overdrive and I started researching. Could we install those over existing tile? Yes, yes we can!!!

We headed to Home Depot and checked out the floor planks. We liked the exact ones Jen used, but they go down with adhesive and we'd need to rent a heavy roller to seal it. Then, we saw a slightly different version that doesn't use adhesive and was a bit thicker. It was about $13 more than the other version, but it was worth it on the install to us. It's really pretty and has a wood like texture! Best part? It's waterproof! So, for $58 total, we have new flooring to put down in the bathroom! Wahoo!

With the flooring figured out, we got to hacking at the bathroom! Jeremy tore out the vanity and sink and ripped out the dated tile baseboards. Then, he patched the walls and I came behind him and smoothed it all out. 

Here's where we are today--demo is done and we're ready to paint! Yay!

Check out all the other ORC Participants over at Calling it Home!

One Room Challenge: Budget Bathroom Makeover

Have you followed or participated in Calling it Home's One Room Challenges? They're so fun! In a nutshell, you have 6 weeks to makeover one space in your home, blogging updates on your progress once a week. I've followed along in the past, but never participated. But, that's about to change! Yup, I'm taking the challenge!

Boy, do I have the perfect candidate for a makeover--our downstairs bathroom! It's straight out of the 90's, folks. The tile is cracked, there's an outdated tile baseboard, builder basic wood vanity, very yellowed countertop/sink, two toned fixtures, and an awful paint job we inherited with the house. 

All we've done in here is hang a shower curtain and a hand towel and replace the warped vinyl roller shade with 2" blinds. We went all out, huh? 

Now that you've seen the before pictures, here's where we're headed! 

Here's our to-do list: 

-Paint the walls a light blue gray.

-Take care of the vanity. Plan A is to replace the vanity. As long as the tile extends underneath the existing vanity, we will be able to rip out the old vanity and install our new one which looks similar to the one pictured in my inspiration collage. Plan B is to paint the vanity. If the tile doesn't extend, we won't be able to install the new vanity because there would be exposed, bare floor under and around it. In that case, we will paint the existing vanity. 

-Replace lighting fixture. 

-Replace or paint towel ring and toilet paper holder. 

-Install new faucet. 

-Accessorize with new shower curtain, rug, towels, and colorful artwork. 

-If we can pop off the tile baseboards without damaging the floor, we will install new baseboards. 

I wish we could replace the tile floors and toilet, but that's not in the budget right now. So, we'll call this Phase 1 of the bathroom remodel. Eventually, for Phase 2, we will replace the tile and toilet and call it complete. The shower is original to the home, but it's in great shape and neutral, so thankfully we don't need to mess with that! 

Be sure to check in every Thursday to see our progress! What room in your house would you most like to makeover?

Linking up with Calling it Home, Savvy Southern Style, Remodelaholic, and many other awesome blogs!