Salmon and Aqua Kitchen

This weekend was a really snowy one here in Colorado, so we stayed in and did some things around the house. Stefan changed out some outlets...and I painted the kitchen!

Mid Century Bathroom Makeover, Part 1

We finally made a commitment about our bathroom redesign. Rather than be traditional 1950s, we went a little more 60s, influenced by this midcentury modern style we liked from this image below. So last week, with the help of our family, we set out to start with phase one: retile the shower. 

This is what our bathroom originally looked like. The tiles were a bluish gray and don't go very far up the wall. The room just felt dark and...bleh. 

A kind of useless...soap dish...thing?

These old fixtures were really giving us a hard time. Imagine the Inception "waaaaaaamp" every time you turn on the diverter.

Eventually this vanity will go too!

The original aluminum windows.

Sawing off the old wall!

 

Pulling off some of the loose tiles. 

Sometimes we'd get lucky and pull off a whole wall.

Back to Lowe's for some plumbing supplies.

After some troubleshooting and leaving it overnight to make sure there were no leaks, we were good to go!

These braces are apparently usually on exterior walls, not interior walls. Yay for having an extra sturdy house!

Adding the water-proof cement boards (You use these in showers, rather than drywall)

Cement board complete!

Filling in the gaps with caulking.

Starting the mortar!

Working our way up! We were soooo slow (that's what happens when you have two perfectionists.)

My husband, Stefan learned to use the tile saw.

After a day and half, we were finally getting the hang of mortar. But we were so tired already!

Have you ever done pottery? Then you understand that at a certain point of being covered in grime, you just learn to accept it.

Look at this lazy bun, just watching the show!

At this point, we were so exhausted, this was the only image we got of applying the grout. Wipe on, wipe off. 

I love this hardware set that we found. It's super streamlined and I thought it gave it kind of mid-century flair. It's a brand you can get a Lowe's called Jacuzzi (the Duncan set). 

The window got an upgrade too!

 

And here is our finished product! 

The last thing for this phase was to paint over that green with aqua. For anyone interested, this is Clark + Kensington (an Ace brand) 30C-3U, Fountain of Youth. 

This old radio I have doesn't work anymore, but the color was too perfect!

This weekend I also found some 50s curtain hooks at an antique store, and it couldn't have been better timing!

Here's the cute box they came in. 

There is a small cabinet behind the bathroom door, and it came with this super cool handle. It's the only one like it in the house and I love it!

I bought these handles awhile back from an Etsy seller. We will eventually use these on the vanity we are going to build to replace this one.

I can't help but keep these around for purely decorative purposes. I love the vintage packaging.

And lastly, this is our scale. It may be hard to tell from the picture, but it's a minty green. 

So this is the overall plan. Phase one was the shower tile. Phase two will be the tile along the half wall, phase three: the floor, and phase four: the vanity/sink. We learned a lot and are super proud of what we were able to accomplish. It's a lot of work, but really rewarding. Excited to get to the next step, but also SO ready for a break!

Aqua Laminate

The laminate countertop samples from Abet Laminati came in yesterday and we have a winner! We ended up selecting 486 in the SEI finish. (Their samples are totally free by the way!) It's almost a perfect match for vintage aqua appliances. Though it still may be awhile before we can get to this project, it's good to know we finally found a place that sells what we need!

Dreams of A Vintage Kitchen

Someone in my area is selling this beautiful, mid century kitchen (below) that I would absolutely die for. Wish I could just take the whole thing and put it in my house as-is!







Anyway, feels aside, I started thinking again about our countertops. Eventually, I'd like to redo them and wrap around to the stove area. But the minty laminate we have now with the gold speckles (though amazing) isn't made anymore. I'd love to go aqua like the kitchen above, but none of the major stores sell anything in remotely the right hue. They have one kind of cool Boomerang print, but it's a desaturated pale blue, and just doesn't work for me. Formica was still selling an aqua boomerang until just a few years ago when they discontinued it. I asked them about custom orders, but unfortunately I never heard back.



I think Retro Renovation is an amazing resource, but since some of the older posts can be a little out-of-date, I wanted to put it out there that the site Abet Laminati still exists and sells tons of great colors. I just ordered samples of 846, 486, 857 and 482, and I'll post an update on the colors when they come in. Fingers crossed that we can find a good aqua in there!

Vintage Coldspot Fridge

So excited! I just bought this amazing vintage Coldspot refrigerator for my birthday. We have to wait for some friends to help us get this thing out of the truck because DANG, it's heavy. But it's really in great condition and really spacious compared to some of the other older fridges that I saw.

The woman I bought it from was really nice and had it running for a few days before we came to pick it up. Everything was still working really well. It also passed the paper test. (If it falls out of the door when it's closed, you know the seal is bad and unless you really know what you're doing, it's not worth it.)

























I know what you're thinking. It's going to be a waste of energy. But after doing some research, it seems that refrigerators between 1960 and 1980 are the worst because that was when automatic defrosters were invented, but before laws were put in place to ensure efficiency. Prior to the 60's many refrigerators, like this one, didn't have an auto defrost. So that means I'm going to have to clean out my freezer every once in awhile, but that doesn't seem too bad.

I assume though, that despite the lack of auto defrost it's still going to take more energy than our 90's fridge that we currently have, so I bought a Kill-A-Watt meter to test it, and I'll post an update when we have a result! I'm really interested about what we find...for better or for worse!

UPDATE: To read my more recent post about energy costs, click here.

Aqua and Bunnies

Antique stores can be hit or miss, so I was really excited when I found a lot of great stuff today! In retrospect, I can see now that I had a theme going (yay for everything aqua and bunnies). Might I add, as a bunny owner, Easter is THE BEST. My favorite thing (even though his ear paint is chipping a little) is definitely the cotton dispenser. SO CUTE. It's going to go great in our pink bathroom. But I was also pretty excited to find these aqua Pyrex bowls (from the Butterprint set) that match one that my granny gave me, and a few other things that caught my eye, including a bookshelf for $3 😎. Yep, it was definitely a productive visit.

Ok then, off to decorate!