the eternal bathroom project

We bought this house with lofty dreams of all sorts of things we could renovate and fix.  Seeing as how it had been vacant for over a year when we moved in, there were no shortage of projects for us to tackle.  Our ideas seem to be bigger than our motivation these days, but we are still plugging away.

About 6 months ago we were hosting a lot of family for the holidays so we figured what better time to add an additional bathroom to the house, right?  We’d never installed a bathroom but figured it couldn’t bee too hard.  We were naive and turns out the holidays are a terrible time to take on a bathroom addition (who knew?), but amazingly we had functional plumbing by the time they arrived…though not much else.  Here we are 6 months later and ALMOST finished.  Here are some before & after pics of our eternal bathroom project.

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No Cost Kitchen Upgrade

When the words “kitchen remodel” come to mind the $$ are not far behind, but with a little time and creativity you can make big changes to your kitchen without having to take out a second mortgage!  The easiest change we made to our kitchen was re-arranging the cabinet placement on the walls to create more visual interest.  If you have a long wall of cabinets, try raising the center sections to create a focal point for your workspace and give your kitchen a custom look.

kitchen cabinets before & after

How To:

1) Empty cabinets and unscrew the section you want to move

2) TIP: to hang cabinet level, use a level to place a 2×4 just under where you want the cabinet to sit and temporarily screw into studs.  This will create a level “ledge” to sit your cabinet on while you re-attach it to the wall

3) Re-attach cabinet at new height back into the wall studs.  Make SURE you hit the studs or your favorite plates may soon come crashing to the floor!!

BONUS: For more drama, we added a simple chair rail molding to the top of the cabinets and a smaller molding to the underside.  This creates an even more custom look while adding the illusion of height to the cabinet.  The underside molding is also a great way to conceal under cabinet lighting!

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