A Bathroom Refresh and How To Remove Crackle Paint

Every winter I like to do an indoor home remodeling project.  We've lived in our house for almost twenty five years now, and let's just say, it was starting to look pretty dated and needed a "refresh".

 The past five years or so I've been pretty busy turning my son's old bedroom into a Beauty Room, transforming my daughter's old room into a Guest Room, giving a fresh look to our Master Bedroom, and even adding a Bedroom to My Living Room. This winter I really outdid myself, as I not only finished painting my entire sunroom and craft room white (more on that in a later blog post) but also giving a very dated bathroom a fresh look.

This year, I had only planned on painting the sun room and the craft room white to match the family room that I had painted the previous year.  All the rooms are open and connected to each other, so I really wanted just one cohesive color.  Well, even though that was a big project as the rooms are quite large with high ceilings, I ended up finishing it a lot sooner that I thought I would;   SO, I decided to scratch another room off my "To Do" list, not realizing how long this small room would take to finish.

Before I show the "Before" picture, here is the remodeled version:

BEFORE                                                    AFTER

Now you're probably wondering why this little room took me so long.  It's because when we bought the house I "Cracked" the walls with Crackle Paint.  Ugh!  It was one of the biggest mistakes of life.  At the time everyone did special painting effects on their walls and the "Tuscan" look was really in style.  I thought it would be really cool to have walls that looked like they were cracked with age.  

But the crackling effect was a disaster as the room always felt and looked dirty.  And worse yet, every time someone showered the hot steam would cause the paint to peel off the wall.  If you look on the left side of the picture where I handwrite the wore "Before", you can see the peeling paint.  The middle and right of the picture is what the walls looked like as I was painfully stripping layer, after layer of paint.

To remove the crackle paint, I first googled "How to remove crackle paint".  The advice was, "Just scrape the old paint off and prime over it.".  I tried it, and the second I primed over it, the paint cracked again.  In the picture below, you can see what the wall looked like when I first just used a putty knife to scrap away the old, flaky paint.

Well, scraping and priming didn't work, so onto Plan B.  I did more research and was told to use paint stripper on one post but other posts said "Don't use paint stripper, it will destroy your walls!".  I felt I had no choice, it was either paint stripper,  or cover the walls with wallpaper.  So I bought the gentlest stripper there is,  Citris Strip.  I had to paint the stripper on THREE TIMES, and use a heavy duty paint scraper after each coat.  In the picture below you can see where the brown paint is that's after two layers of stripper, and the green/yellow color is after three layers of stripper.  

Once the walls were stripped of paint as much as possible (even after three attempts, I still couldn't get all the paint off), I then used a paint thinner to remove the goo left behind by the stripper, and then I had to sand.  It was a very long, tedious process and I wanted to burst into tears and cry multiple times.  The only way I got through it all was I kept picturing in my mind how beautiful the room would look when I was done.

The picture below shows the wall after the process was finished, and waiting to be primed.  Notice, how after all the stripping and sanding I STILL could not get all the brown paint off the wall, but I crossed my fingers, and went ahead and primed the walls anyway.

When I was done priming the walls, only a few spots continued to crackle, so I took some Spackling and applied it over the crackling paint, and that seemed to do the trick.  No more cracked paint!

After priming, I painted two coats of semi-gloss "China White" on the walls, and did a high-gloss white on all the trim and the interior of the closet.  Even though I never changed the flooring, the sink, cabinet, or fixtures, it felt like a brand new room!  The room now feels so clean and fresh.  The tired, dated, dirty old look was gone!

Now let's take a tour of my new bathroom shall we!  This is the room if you were just entering it from the hallway.  I did not buy any new decorations for this room, I used old decorations I already had.

The room faces west and has two large windows that bring in a lot of light, so I hung a plant in the window.  The chair was always in the bathroom, but it used to be white, and I painted it with black chalk paint to match the picture on the wall and the lighting fixture.

I kept the same bath rugs as I did not think they were ready to be replaced yet, plus, my cat loves them and I knew he would not be happy if I got rid of them 😀.  But, I did get new window curtains, a new shower curtain, and new towels.

I love the look of hotel bathrooms, they always look so fresh with all white linens, and I wanted my home bathroom to have that same "clean, fresh feeling".  I found this white shower curtain at Home Goods.

The lace panels inside the windows have always been there, and I kept them for privacy reasons,  but the white curtains are new and are from TJMaxx.

The round table was also always in the bathroom, I just added some new decorative pieces like a mirrored tray, a trinket box, and an African violet.  All these items were actually in other parts of the house, and I just relocated them.

I did pick up a new ivy plant from Walmart.  The macrame hanger I already owned, but I purchased it from Amazon.

The beautiful light this room gets, plus the steam from the shower, make the plants very happy.  

The pretty little pot the African violet sits in is new this year from Michaels.

The only new fixture to the bathroom is this wall mount lighted magnify mirror.  Every time we stay in a hotel room, I would fall in love with these mirrors and wished I had one of my own.  So I looked on Amazon and found this one!  

I cannot recommend this mirror enough!  It lays flat against the wall when not in use.  When you want to use it, just pull it out away from the wall.  It has two sides:  one is magnified and the other is not.  Both sides light up.  

The shelf and all the decorations were already in the bathroom, I just moved the decor around a little and gave the shelf a fresh coat of white paint.

I basically use the shelf to store Q-tips and cotton balls in antique containers.  Also on the shelf are decorative soaps and air freshener along with a couple of decorations.

On the wall to the left of the toilet is an old picture that has been hanging in this same spot ever since we bought the house.  I've always loved this picture, and I saw no point in replacing it.

I think this Bathroom Refresh is a great example of how you don't need to do a big remodeling project to update a room.  The bathroom has the same flooring, cabinet, counter top, mirror, and light fixture it always had...but simply painting the room a modern white and adding fresh window treatments and a new shower curtain, brought the room out of the 90's and into 2021!

I couldn't be happier with my new bathroom.  I love how bright, clean, and fresh it looks.  I love how the sun streams through the windows, and how happy my plants look in the space.  It was really worth all the effort and time to transform it.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

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A Bedroom In My Family Room?

Many of my regular readers know I've been going through my home room by room redecorating and updating them.  As I design the room, I'm not just interested in updating the decor, but making the space more practical for my new stage of life as an empty nester.

The room we chose to update this year was our family room.  It's a large, long room and it has always been an awkward space to decorate because of the length and the lack of light.  In the two "before" pictures the room is decorated for Christmas, making the room appear even more cluttered.

This is a view of the room if you just walked inside.  A large mammoth entertainment center covers one long wall (remember when these were all the rage?).  The walls are stucco with a faux painting of gold and creams.

This is a view of the room if you were standing by the Christmas tree looking back.  Again, it is very cluttered because I had to make room for a Christmas tree.  But I really want you to notice the French doors, as they play a huge role in the renovation project.

The Reason

Now, before I begin my tour of the beginning of our renovation project, let me explain my reason why we decided to do what we did.  As you know, we are empty nesters.  We have three small bedrooms on the third floor of our house with a narrow staircase leading to them.  When the children and grandchildren come home to visit, they usually stay about a week and average about three or four visits a year.  The last time they were here, we didn't get much sleep.  The crying grandchildren woke us up at night and Ashley, who doesn't like the mattress in the guest room, requested to take our bed.  So we gave up our queen size bed for Ashley (I know, what a princess).  But now my husband and I were sleeping on a full size bed and we weren't comfortable as we kept hitting each other all night.  Then Jason, Ashley's husband couldn't sleep with the baby in the master bedroom, so he went to sleep on a sofa in the living room.  Of course we then teased Ashley the next day and asked her how she was enjoying that nice, large Queen size bed all to herself while her elderly parents suffered on a full size bed.

Now there are two other reasons we wanted a bedroom on our main floor other than guests:  accessibility for old age and air conditioning.

 We were concerned as we age that we may not always want to or even be capable of climbing the stairs to the master bedroom.  It would be nice to be able to stay in our home as long as possible by making it more "old age friendly".

The last reason is that our home does not have central air.  We have one small window air conditioner that miraculously cools the entire main floor to our satisfaction, but the third floor is hot.  The lack of central air is usually not a problem for us.  We are outside more than inside during the summer and neither my husband nor I even like air conditioning.  We are able to sufficiently cool our house with box and ceiling fans.  However, every year we get about a three day heat wave, which makes sleeping upstairs very uncomfortable.  On those days we sleep on mattresses or cushions on the floor on the main level.  We thought it would be nice to have a real bed for those hot summer days.

The Problems

Now that you know why we wanted a fourth bedroom in our home,  let's discuss the problems with creating a sleeping space in a living room.  The main problem we had to deal with was how to create privacy without losing the light.  The living room is a dark balcony space that overlooks a sunroom.  There are only two windows on the east side of the house.  I did not want to just wall a portion of the room off and lose all that light.

The second problem, was losing too much space for a bed so that there wasn't enough seating space.  The bedroom portion of the room had to remain as small as possible so that our family still could gather together in this room.  I should also mention that I have three total living rooms in my house, so I'm not really giving up a large space for large gatherings.  I have a small sitting/living room open to my dining room, and a very big open sunroom that was large enough for my daughter to be married in.  I only needed enough space for the family to comfortably watch TV in this room.

The Solution

Now that you know the reasons we wanted to renovate this room, and the problems we had to overcome, here is how we solved them.

The first thing I did was to paint the walls pure white in a semi-gloss finish to brighten the room and reflect light.  The white instantly updated the room and made the woodwork pop!

After months of thinking, talking, and researching, we decided that a wall of glass that created a partition but still let light in would be best solution.  We used the existing French doors to the room.  Hubby simply took them off their hinges and made a wall with them.  Then we purchased Plexiglas and hubby made two sliding doors that operate like the popular barn doors in Farmhouse style homes.

Here is a picture of the the room still under construction.  The French doors were made into walls to section the room off.  I stained the new wood surrounding the doors black.  Later I would stain the area on the outside of the black "Early American".

My husband created a sliding barn door system all by himself.  He did not purchase one of those fancy, expensive kits.  We left the wheels and nail holes all exposed for a modern industrial look.

The clear Plexiglass slides directly behind the French doors so you can't even tell it's there when the glass is open,

As I stated earlier, the room is actually a balcony, so we wanted to close off the opening to the sunroom below for sound privacy.  We decided a bookshelf would not only be very practical but very pretty as well.

Here is a view of the Plexiglass doors closed.  Now I know most of you are wondering about privacy.  As of now, privacy is not an issue.  We have a pocket door attached to the main living space of the house that we can close anytime my husband and I want privacy.  If more privacy is ever needed, I could also put a rod behind the doors and add a curtain that I could open and close.  My husband and I have been using this room for a month now that the kids have been living with us, and we have not felt privacy to be an issue yet.  I also realize that if I ever have guests use this room, they may want more privacy so I would definitely hang drapes for guests.

A view of the room open with the doors behind the French doors.

Here you can see what the doors look like closed from inside the bedroom looking into the family room.

The Bed

For the bed, we wanted the largest bed possible without sacrificing space, so we decided on a queen mattress.  I ordered a fabric headboard from Wayfair and we attached it to the wall.  Then my husband built a wooden platform that a mattress could sit on top of.  There is plenty of space underneath the bed for under-the-bed totes.

In this picture you can see the shelving unit my husband created.  He put bead board paneling behind the shelves.  I painted the shelves a bright high gloss white.

Now I know you're anxious to see the final results but I don't know when I will be able to show them to you as just days after we almost completed the room (I still have to polyurethane the glass doors) the Apocalypse happened and my kids moved in with us.  It was actually PERFECT TIMING,  but I never really got a chance to decorate the room the way I planned so I haven't taken pictures.  However, I will say that the room is working out perfectly for our now multi-generation household.  Because there is a living space right next to the bedroom it's as if my husband and I have our own "Master Bedroom Suite".  The kids have the entire third floor of the house to themselves.  Each grandchild has their own bedroom.  We share the bathroom, kitchen, and dining room, but at night my husband and I can retire to our "suite" and have time to ourselves before bed.  It couldn't be more perfect!  

The funniest part of this whole story is that I always felt led by God to do this but I didn't really know why other than the reasons listed in the beginning of this post.  Every time I would tell people I was putting a bedroom in my living room they looked at me as if I were nuts...including my own kids!  I would reassure them that we would make it look spectacular and not weird, but no one believed us.  So far I only had one friend and my kids see the room since the pandemic occurred, and everyone now agrees it's the coolest thing ever.  Before the room looked very dated.  Now it looks hip and cool, like a New York City loft;  and it's not even decorated yet, plus we still have some of our old furniture!  I was planning on carpeting over the tile, and buying new decor and furniture, but now that is all on-hold until we see what the future holds.  For now, the room is perfect as it is!

If you really want to see "After" pictures without it being completely finished just let me know in the comments and I will post a few current shots.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

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A Farmhouse Tiered Tray

 When Valentine's Day weekend was over, I took down all my Valentine decor.  I looked at my now empty tiered tray and thought "Now what?".  Even though Easter is only about seven weeks away,  I wasn't quite ready to pull out the Easter bunnies and eggs yet.  I would have done a winter themed tiered tray but all my winter florals are packed away with the Christmas decor and there is absolutely nothing left in the stores;  they have all moved on to spring already.  So,  even though it doesn't make a whole lot of financial sense as the decor in this tray will probably only be up for a few weeks, I decided to go with a farmhouse theme for my tiered tray.  And I'm so glad I did, because I actually think this is my favorite theme ever!  Even though my house is kind of on the "grand scale", I do live in a farm land area and I see cows and other animals almost on a daily basis;  so I think my farmhouse theme fits in quite well!



EVERYTHING you see in this tray, including the tray itself, I purchased at Hobby Lobby.  It is all part of their spring collection, usually located in the front of the store.

So let's begin the tour of my "Farmhouse Tiered Tray" shall we?

The top tier of the tray features a galvanized sign that I hung from the top of the tray.  I also placed a little ceramic house.  I didn't realize until I got it home that the little house also lights up, which I think is super cute!



To the left of the house I put a ceramic cow and to the right I set a stone bird on top of a cupcake holder.





On the lower level of this side of the tray, I placed a ceramic pig and a miniature milk can.  I always use painted wooden blocks to lift items up in the tray.


 



Isn't this pig the cutest?  I just love him!

To the left of the pig I placed another galvanized miniature, then I filled it with ivy and pink flowers to match the pink pig.

In the third and final section I have a blue and white ceramic dish that also has a cow image on it.  I placed an antique jello mold that I already owned inside the dish and then filled the empty spaces with ivy.

On the top level of the third side I placed a galvanized metal bucket and filled it with ivy and white florals.  It sits right next to the bird on the cupcake stand.

 

 You can find all these items, except the antique jello mold, at your local Hobby Lobby store.  The lace tray that the tiered tray sits on is from Ikea.

 

  Every time I walk into my dining room and see my farmhouse tiered tray I smile.  I'm so happy I spent the money to decorate my tray during these gloomy final winter months before Easter.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!