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!

Vintage Frigidaire Oven

Right before we moved into our new home, I saw this amazing aqua Frigidaire oven on Craigslist and had to check it out. When I got there, I realized I was buying it from a soon-to-be neighbor (small world...!) and it was original to her 1950s home. A few months later, when we made our first attempt to hook it up, we were greeted by a blood-curdling sound like a garbage disposal grinding a piece of metal and one of the burners literally needing to be put out with a fire extinguisher. 😧  The wires were really old and shorted out, which had caused the fire. So my husband and father-in-law rewired the entire stovetop. Completely gutted! Then we removed a hanging cabinet from the other side of the kitchen and that wood was used to create a frame for the oven. The finishing touch was to add a bit of metal trim around the counter to give it that vintage look. Finally, the moment of truth came...drum roll...and it worked great!

In fact, we ceremoniously broke it in that very night with some pizza rolls.















Before...



...and after!

"Mad Men" Inspired Bedroom

Okay, let's face it. 72.5% of the reason I watched Mad Men was for the style. From the interior designs to the costumes, there was such attention to detail! One of my absolute favorites though was Joan's apartment. That coral/aqua combo is just amazing.

So I painted the walls coral (Benjamin Moore 2169-40 "peach cobbler") and I bought some fabric from Hobby Lobby for the curtains (a white muslin and "spearmint" cotton). I love it with the Broyhill Brasilia bedroom set we have and it just makes the room feel so happy when the sun pours in through that south window.

Of course, the walls and one of the corners feel a little naked, and I'm still short one nightstand, so we're not done yet! But boy does that color make a world of a difference!

Inspiration: Joan's "Mad Men" Apartment

Basement Flooring Makeover

We've been Airbnb-ing (yes, that's a verb now) our basement since May. It's an great space for it because they can come straight in through the back door and have their own kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. But the one catch is that the previous owner was a smoker and a cat owner so there was a smell to it, which led to pretty much all the complaints people had.

So basically...RIP old carpet. My husband's parents came over and helped us redo the flooring. They were amazing and we couldn't have done it as quickly as we did without them! We purchased a wood-style laminate called Tavern Oak from Lowe's, and some Killz odorless paint for the ceiling. The space looks and smells so much cleaner. I still can't believe we got this whole thing done in three days. We even added a baseboard, which the room didn't have on the concrete walls before.

In case anyone is interested, these are the things you need for a laminate flooring makeover:

• Laminate flooring (Tavern Oak was $0.85/sq ft)
• Laminate underlayment (to protect from moisture)
• Underlayment tape (to seal the underlayment edges)
• Shims (to allow space around the edge of the floor for expansion and contraction)
• Mallet
• Pull bar (this allows you to slide the planks together once the edges are locked)
• Circular or table saw (for cutting the boards cleanly)
• Trim for door thresholds (where the flooring changes between rooms)
• Jigsaw (for the odd edges that will be hidden)
• Measuring tape
• Pencil

First we had to remove the old carpet. We found linoleum tiles under that, so we took those off as well. 

Once we had the flooring removed, we started rolling on some of the Killz paint, but considering how large the room is and how much paint we would need to cover both the floor and ceiling, we opted to just paint the ceiling tiles. We figured the smell was absorbed in the tiles (and the carpet), not the concrete. And we were right. 

Painting the tiles not only helped with the smell, but it evened out the color too. From years of cigarette smoke, some of the tiles were yellowed. Now they look (and smell) nice and clean! My husband also swapped out the old light fixture for this new one which is more energy efficient. One thing we didn't realize though is that Killz is an oil based paint, meaning it doesn't come off easily like acrylic. It will get all in your hair, skin and clothes, so cover up if you don't want to be scraping off little dots of paint for days!

The next step is the put down the underlayment. This acts as a moisture barrier. We connected the strips with underlayment tape.

Use the pull bar and mallet to nudge the boards into place. 

You want to make sure that the boards don't go all the way to the edge of the wall by using shims as spacers. The floor is going to naturally expand and contract a little depending on the temperature, and that gap will get covered up by your baseboards.

You also want to make sure that you cut your boards so the edges are staggered. I like this laminate because it gives the appearance of several pieces of wood on each board, but it would still look funny and repetitive if we didn't stagger them. Also, don't forget to consider what direction you want your boards to face before you start. If we would have gone lengthwise, the room would have looked even longer than it already is. It can create an illusion that really works for or against you, so don't forget to consider that!

Here's a closeup of the laminate we chose. It's called Tavern Oak and you can get it from Lowe's. It has a really nice subtle warmth and variation in texture that makes the room feel really cozy. It's also a great price at $0.85/sqft.

When we needed to fit a piece underneath a door frame, we used the jigsaw to make a custom cut. 

For the final touch, we added baseboards around the entire room. We were able to nail in about half of them, but the other half of the room is concrete so we had to use Locktite to glue them on. Some extra bricks we had were great for holding them until they were dry. 

Gotta make sure those bricks don't ruin all our hard work!

Before...

...and after!