Home Improvements

I've sufficiently recovered from my initial home makeover of painting the whole house. In fact, I've missed the busy-ness and satisfaction of the job. So I've made myself busy finishing off the smaller details of the house that I didn't get the first time around. But first let's appreciate the juxtaposition of my life. 

The first makeover started in the downstairs bathroom. Here's the before:

And here's the after! I am eventually going to add two thick, wooden floating shelves above the toilet, but until then let's appreciate the hours of Sharpie-ing I endured. 

That's right. The design is done in gold paint Sharpie. I'd like to thank my sponsors, level, top knot, and touch-up paintbrush for making this project possible. 

Next up: Laundry room! I was so excited when I saw this house had an actual laundry ROOM and not a laundry closet. Granted, the room could be bigger to be considered more of a room and less of a walk-in closet, but this was a tiny step up from our last in-the-basement-walls-weren't-even-finished laundry closet. I had great dreams to make it cute and a place that would maybe have the power to make me smile while completing my least favorite household chore.

YAY! I'm obsessed. It should be noted basically all of my ideas have come from Classy Clutter. Do you guys follow them? They're adorable and I love them and all of their ideas. 

This project started with pink walls. Because if there's a room I can paint pink, it's this one, and then I paint brushed black squares onto the white accent wall.

I realized I could create a faux thick shelf look pretty easily by putting a couple of pieces of wood over the shelf that was already there, so Jeff got that project done for me lickety split. Then a mere 2 hours at Hobby Lobby later and I officially had the "Babe Cave."

As much as I loved the "Babe Cave" sign and thought it was hilarious given my house of boys, and my ability to only be able to claim a small corner of the house as my own that I could guarantee wouldn't be overrun by boy-ness, I decided "Babe Cave" was a little...non progressive...and debatably offensive. So I replaced the babe cave laundry room dungeon sign to instead say "loads of fun" which I think portrays a better message to my flock of growing boys.

I've been on the hunt for a piano because Carson has shown some interest in music and I would love for all the boys to learn how to play. We were so excited when Jeff's brother said they had an extra one they would be willing to give us!

I had a friend who had painted a piano with chalk paint, and I couldn't shake that idea as soon as I saw the new addition. After many hours of YouTube and many dollars of chalk paint later, our piano had a little bit of a facelift!

My proudest moment with this piano was the whitening of its keys.

I had low hopes of being able to whiten the piano keys, but after a lot of internet research, I learned that a hair bleach product called Salon Care 40 and a lot of sunlight can actually whiten plastic. We ripped all the keys off the piano and gave them two full days of a sunlit bleach bath.

We went from this...

To this! I'm still not over it!

Next on the to-do list: Pantry and closets! Stay tuned! Oh sorry, I was talking to the piano. We just got it tuned and it was like $200. So I really need it to stay tuned. Okay bye. (I was talking to you this time. What are you still doing here? The post is over. Bye.)