Organizing a Bathroom Drawer

Wow... what a crazy 10 days it has been! I didn't realize how much the 4th of July was like Christmas, being that you are busy for like two weeks straight! In the past 10 days we have had 4 family events (I think... I lost count), made a trip to the zoo, went to a parade, had 2 baby doctor appointments that took up a whole day (baby is healthy and measuring right on track), and my daughter started swim lessons which is every evening for 2 1/2 weeks straight. Needless to say, I've been busy and exhausted! In between those events I had to take countless naps just to keep up. All of this is why I didn't get to post at all last week. I had to put my priorities first and spend quality family time. Which is what I hope all of you have been doing. :)

We are in the midst of about 4 projects all going on at the same time. Of course we've been super exhausted lately so it seems like they're taking forever to get finished. But what gets me excited to finish a project is having a deadline to meet. Otherwise I'm kind of in limbo and don't care too much about how long it takes to finish. We have scheduled a little get together in about 5 weeks at our house so now I'm all ready to get going on my growing to-do list.

Today I wanted to share a quick organizing project I did this past week. It was super easy and only took me about 10 minutes. I even did it while my kids were playing in the bathtub!

My bathroom drawer was starting to look a bit scary. Ok, it wasn't all that bad but it could have been better.

I'm pretty sure I picked up these organizers at IKEA. They are awesome. They connect together which helps them not to slip all over the place.

So I took everything out of the drawer and placed it all on the counter.

I also cleaned out the drawer because I may have had one million hairs a piece of hair in there.

Then I used my new organizing containers and began putting everything back in. Now everything has a place and it makes me smile every time I use this drawer.

Sometimes it's the little things that can make our day and the little things that keep us going.

Half Bath Inspiration

I am starting to mentally prepare myself to renovate our half bathroom on the main level. Ok, it's definitely not a full renovation because there's not much in there. This is on my to-do list before baby comes in November and I'm getting the itch to get started. It's the only room left on the main level that has not been painted.

I thought I'd share with you some of the inspiration pictures that have been going through my head the past few months while thinking about this project.

I love this powder room from Centsational Girl. The contrast between the dark top and the white bottom is stunning. If I had the time and energy I would definitely put up bead board on the bottom like she has but I need to make this a quick project so I'm keeping this in mind for down the road.

Cassie is not afraid of color and pattern (I'm super jealous because it scares me) and her bathroom is simply amazing. Never in a million years would I have thought to do something like this. It is beautiful.

I love stripes painted on a wall (which I still need to start in my daughter's room). A bathroom would be a great place for them. It would add some nice dimension in an otherwise boxy room. Virginia added these stripes on this wall and I love them.

My biggest problem with my half bath is there are no windows. Insert sad face here. :( A big part of me would love to do a dark rich color but I know in a month it would start to feel gloomy. So what about a pop of color?

 

{Yellow Bathroom}

Green bathrooms are very calming which would be nice because most of our guests use this bathroom.

{Green Bathroom}

 

But I'm totally a sucker for blue and this aqua color is gorgeous.

 

 

{Smokey Slate}

 

It actually crossed my mind to do a coral bathroom... for a second (again, scared by color). I found this one with stripes that's amazing! I'm not sure I'm this daring but maybe I should just go for it???

 

 

{Coral Stripes}

 

Because there are no windows, I started thinking maybe a very very light gray on the walls and then add in some color with a picture or fun hand towel. Jen is one of my favorite bloggers and this is one of her gorgeous bathrooms. It's simple and elegant at the same time.

 

 









{IHeartOrganizing}

 

There are just so many options to choose from. Stripes, solids, light, dark, medium, lots of color, a little bit of color, no color. How will I ever choose?!

 

I know you're curious what my bathroom looks like and I will definitely give you a sneak peak. It's also on my Home Tour page. Are you sure you're ready for this??

 

 

Yes, that would be a tree in the bathroom. Very overwhelming and maybe a bit frightening. It's time for this thing to go! Now I need to pick an idea I love (or at least like) so that I don't change my mind a week after it's painted. I have been struggling with this room and that's why it's not done. Which inspiration photo do you think would look good in my bathroom?



Bathroom Renovations: Master Bathroom: House #2

If you remember here I told you all about our main bathroom renovation at our last house. At the same time we also had our master bathroom renovated. This whole process took 2 months but felt like 2 years!

Our master bathroom started off as a half bath and completely outdated.

 



The master bedroom was HUGE. It's really hard to see it in pictures but I'll try to show you. It was wonderful to have all that space but most of it was just wasted. That door to the left is the half bath. We made a huge, gigantic, enormous change to this room and actually put the new bathroom where that closet is and also expanded it out into the room.

Yes that is my wedding dress in the closet and every now and then I try to put it on and walk around the house in it.

We created a huge bathroom with a walk in closet. Although if you remember me talking about the odd layout of this house, this bedroom leads directly into the office (which acts as a hallway to the kids bedrooms and other bathroom). So the closet area had to be a little odd shaped due to the location of the office, but we made it work.

I knew how I wanted this bathroom to look even before the renovations were planned. White, white, white and gray! A white vanity, the same white tiled floor as the main bathroom, a beautiful white and gray swirl marble countertop, a nice big tub for all baths I said I would take, and gray walls. We went all out in this bathroom and it was definitely the hardest room to leave.

Pretty much everything in this bathroom was purchased at Lowe's.

Look at how huge this tub is! And in the 8 months we lived here with it, I never once took a bath. What is wrong with me?!

We decided to go with an already built shower surround. Rather than spending our money on tiling the shower, we wanted to spend more money on a nice floor and marble countertop.

This tile is beautiful for a bathroom floor. It was just under $3 for a square foot at Lowe's. I went with a medium gray grout color that compliments the wall color.

The gorgeous marble countertop. I wanted to rip it off and take it with me!

I will say the one thing I regret in this bathroom were the double mirrors. I really feel that one big mirror would have looked better in this space.

We had a decent sized linen closet in there.

The master closet was connected to the bathroom so it was all one big area. This organizer was really nice. It was also purchased at Lowe's.

I ordered those towel hooks and plaque off of Amazon. It's hard to tell but they matched the vanity perfectly!

This view is looking into the bathroom from the bedroom. That long mirror is from IKEA.

The wall color is Repose Gray by Sherwin Williams. It matched perfectly with the countertops and grout. I am actually using it in the main bathroom in our current home.

Let's take a quick look at the Before and After!

Before...

During...

After...

We love this bathroom so much that we plan on using all the same materials for our master bathroom renovation in our house now. Although this time I think we'll do some of the work ourselves. That will be interesting!

Bathroom Renovations: Main Bathroom House #2

In our second home we had the bathrooms completely remodeled about a year after living there. One was our main bathroom that had some major issues. Once we realized there were water spots on the ceiling in our dining room (which is directly under the bathroom), it was time to do something about it. We contracted this room out because it was way over our heads for us to tackle something like this.

Before

 

 

 

I already had a vision in mind. I knew I wanted a dark vanity base with a white counter top. Brushed nickel finishes and white octagon tile flooring we found at Lowe's. Pretty much everything in this room is from Lowe's.

We had extremely low ceilings in most of our upstairs (all but our master bedroom). So when the contractor took down the ceiling we found out we were able to raise some of it. It made the room feel so much bigger.

After

The paint color is Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams. It turned out a bit more green then I would have liked but still a very calm and neutral color for a bathroom.

We changed the layout of this room. The vanity stayed where it was but we moved the toilet and shower and were able to add a small "closet" next to the shower. The new layout made the room feel bigger.

A close up view of the floor. I picked out a medium gray color for the grout. White would eventually start to look dirty and this was a nice compliment to the other colors in the room.

 

We were very pleased with how this room turned out. The bathrooms were definitely the hardest thing to leave in this house. But we took away a lot of knowledge about bathroom renovations that will help us in our home now and we actually plan to use a lot of the same materials.

It's amazing how a room can be completely transformed with some love and time (and money of course).