Home Improvement

My mint tiles

OK, guys. I have a new obsession and that obsession is Restore. Habitat Restore, to be exact. And it is amazing. AH-MAY-ZING!

My neighbor first introduced me to Restore in Baltimore and then Restore came to Columbia! Are we lucky or what? (Hint: The answer is yes!)

I go there pretty often now and had to share my newest find: Mint Green tiles!

{A Smith of All Trades} Tiles_Dirty Tiles

I scored about 50 of these beautiful tiles for $.25 a square foot. Yes, $.25! I paid $4 total 🙂 Love it!

As you can see in the photos from the store, the tiles were pretty dirty. I scrubbed the tiles for over an hour and they cleaned up beautifully.

{A Smith of All Trades} Tiles_Clean Tiles

Neither of those photos do the color justice, but this one is a better representation:

{A Smith of All Trades} Tiles_Color Shot**drools**

You might be wondering why I bought tiles? Well, for my birthday gift next month we are going to redo our master bathroom.

Here’s a couple of not-so-hot pictures of our bathroom. It’s teeny, so it’s hard to get the whole thing in one shot.

Out bathroom looks a little different now with a shower curtain and a few pieces of art hung on the walls. But it’s nothing spectacular.

Here’s what I’m thinking….

{A Smith of All Trades} Tiles_Sketch

Yes, it’s a sketch. And yes, this will likely change. But anyway… I am thinking a faux wainscoting treatment to the bottom half in white with a neutral color on top. We’ll replace the vanity to get something a little larger in the space, update the medicine cabinet and the lighting…. and then add the mint tiles as accent tiles. Like I said, the final product probably won’t look a thing like this… but this is my inspiration for now.

{A Smith of All Trades} Tiles_Bucket

And for $4, I was willing to take the risk that these beautiful tiles will fit into my not-so-final master plan.

Happy Tuesday!

Home Improvement

Family Room Bathroom Renovation Reveal

Our bathroom is finally finished! I say “finally” like it took ages, but it really only took us about a week to do — not too bad!

I decided to tear down our bathroom about a month ago when I just couldn’t take it anymore. The rest of our house looks pretty nice, but the bathroom was just yucky. Not to mention it was especially gross compared to our beautiful new family room. So I tore down the ugly brass fixtures and the old mirror.

Then my step dad came over to help us remove the vanity and the toilet since we had no experience with plumbing at all.

Afterwards, the hubby and I went shopping for a new vanity, toilet and light fixture. After shopping around, we found what we wanted for a decent price and scooped them up. Then I got to painting.

I stayed up until 1 a.m. painting our bathroom a light purple, Behr’s Silent Ripple to be exact.

Then the boys got to installing our new stuff! So exciting.

Doesn’t he look so hot with his headlamp on?

It felt so great to have our new stuff installed, but the bathroom still wasn’t complete. I needed a vanity mirror, but the hubby didn’t want to buy one. We also needed a new towel bar and shower curtain. I got those at Wal-Mart.

For the mirror, I had two options: First, I could redo a mirror my best friend gave me for Christmas. It was big and bulky and kinda ugly, but it could work. Or, I could use the builder-grade mirror that we took out of our master bathroom when we installed our medicine cabinet.

I figured to give the bulky mirror a try before resorting to an ugly, frameless mirror. So I taped it and took it out back to spray paint it with primer. I broke the top part off so it would actually fit in between the vanity and the light fixture. Then I taped off the mirror and sprayed with Krylon Primer. I barely beat the thunder storm before pulling the mirror inside to paint it white.

Three coats of white paint later…

I loved it! Bye-bye, builder-grade mirror!

All of the pieces were ready to go, so I installed the towel bars, hung up my new shower curtain, popped some curtains into the window, hung some artwork and placed our new mirror. I’m in love.

And for the final reveal… **drum roll, please**

Now if that’s not a cute bathroom, I don’t know what is! I love the dark espresso of the vanity against the light purple walls. I love that the curve of the white mirror meets up perfectly with the faucet. I love the bright white accents and the subtle bird theme in the bathroom. Love. I love love love it. It is SO much better than before!

Life

Tea Rex

Hmmm… wordpress doesn’t seem to like me today. Hopefully this post works on the second go-around.

Happy Monday! I am incredibly fortunate to not be at work today, but rather taking another continuing education course at a local community college. In May I took Intro to Adobe Illustrator, and this time around I’m taking Intro to Photoshop. Holy moley — it’s awesome! I’m super thankful to have gotten the opportunity to take this class. Hopefully this will help me at work when I design stuff AND on my blog, so my photos can be extra pretty!

OK, two orders of business for this post. One, a quick bathroom update to keep you on your toes. And two, the funniest little gift that I finally got around to using.

Bathroom update: Brian and John worked like crazy last night to install the light fixture, toilet and vanity in our family room bathroom. I wanted to help out a little more than I did, which was barely at all, but the boys were bonding and the bathroom is pretty small. I’ll have to chip in more on the next bathroom. All we need to do now is pick out a mirror (Can you say Home Goods?) and install the towel rack I bought yesterday. With a few little decorations, it’s going to be adorable.

Now onto my funny gift. My friend Amy gave me the cutest tea infuser for Christmas and I just now got around to trying it. It’s such a funny idea and I pretty much giggle the entire time I drink my cup of tea.

Blog world, meet Tea Rex!

Isn’t he hilarious? You pop off his little, squishy head and pour in loose tea. Then he chills at the bottom of your mug!

Once he’s all loaded with tea, you plop him into your mug and loop the chain around your handle so you can scoop him back out super easily.

Douse it in water, and you have delicious tea that you can chuckle at while you drink it! The Tea Rex and the mustache cup… I have the most comical beverages ever!

If dinosaurs aren’t your thing (which is weird, but I’ll let it slide), there is also a tea shark, a tea submarine, a tea duck, a tea robot and a tea diver! Too funny! Anyway, I’ve pretty much shared with you the most epic gift ever. Buy lots for Christmas and birthdays and such. You are welcome.

Have a great week!