Weekend Warriors

Have you ever seen the show “Weekend Warriors” on HGTV? Well if not, it is about the do-it-yourself trend with a look at people planning, doing and completing weekend home-improvement projects. Before moving into our house, we were glued to HGTV watching every program imagined. We used to watch “My First Place”, “Property Virgins” and any first time homebuyer program. But since moving into our home – the programs we watch have changed to “Color Splash”, “Curb Appeal”, “Design on a Dime”, “The Stagers” and much more. If you ever need any ideas or motivation to work on your house, HGTV seems to always be there for us.

Since we had some major change of plans this past weekend, we decided to just stay at home and work on our house. The last time we spent an entire weekend working on our house was before moving in – so it has definitely been a while. It was nice to run some errands and have “us time”.

As most of you know, the one thing Will and I desperately needed was our hallway bathroom to be remodeled. Since we can’t really afford new bathroom vanities right now, we had to come up with another plan to keep us happy. So we went to Home Depot (our favorite store – the reason why we went there twice this weekend), picked out a paint color, a “hotel style” shower rod, and a new towel and toilet paper rack. We also swung by Target (our second favorite store) and picked up a shelving unit for over our toilet and a new rug. We already had our cabinet hardware that we purchased from Target, as well.

So at 7am on Saturday morning we started our hallway bathroom remodel. Will first had to take apart the toilet, in order to paint behind it (some people would just paint around it, but we try to do things correctly, as much as possible). While he was doing this I put the first coat of paint on the vanity cabinets. In all, the vanity required 3 coats of paint total. Then we had to tape off some of the tub edges and cover the floor in plastic.

On Sunday we woke up bright and early again and put the toilet back together, painted another 2 coats on the vanity cabinets – and then assembled the room. We installed the shower curtain rod, the towel racks and toilet paper holder. Will finished off the remodel by building the cabinet around the toilet. It doesn’t sound like much work, but definitely was.

On a side note: Will’s co-worker told us about the most amazing edging tool ever called Shur-Line. This thing is a painter’s dream – had we had known about it when we first started painting, it would have been amazing. Taping off ceilings can be quite a task… and it never comes out just right – there is always some type of touch-up required. Using this tool can cut down your painting time because you don’t have to tape off the walls. It also creates really clean cut lines – I sound like a commercial, but no joke – it is a must if you are painting walls!

Anyways, since I know you all love the before and after pictures... here they are:

Before – Old white washed wooden cabinets

After – Chocolate brown cabinets

Before – A light fixture from “That 70’s Show”

After – A more modern style light fixture

Before - remember these hideous curtains? Oh man, are we glad to see these gone.

After – our biggest accomplishment in the house so far

Will and I are very happy with the way it came out. The bathroom looks brand new and we can’t wait for our guests to come check it out. Let us know what you think! We’re slowly making progress on our home, but things take a lot longer than you would think!!!

We can’t wait to see everyone on Saturday! :)