Home Updates: Downstairs Floor & DIY Powder Bath

Feeling accomplished is one of the best feeling ever! Brandon and I have been working so hard since we bought our house in December to get it updated to the way that we want it. We have already made so many strides in the right direction! The first major change we made was getting our living and dining room floors torn up and replaced. We had real hard wood in both rooms originally but the once beautiful floors, were now a disaster. The top coat was peeling off in multiple spots in the rooms, it made it worse when we tried to clean the floors. That became a major problem. The tipping point was the peice of flooring that connected into the tiled hallway. There wasn't a threshold put in and the one peice of wood started to come up to the point that you could bounce on that one piece and the concrete underneath was visible. It was not only impossible to clean and harder to hide the patches, but it was becoming a hazard.

Hardwood Floors and More became our fix! We went and picked up a few floor samples layed them out and chose the one that fit us!

We chose a floating floor called Relic. We had to go with this type because our home is built on a slab and we knew that a vinyl flooring would work better for us especially since we haven't had kids yet and we plan on getting a dog. I love the choice that we made and had the date set for the installation. April 7th, the day before we left for Myrtle Beach. I was definitely worried about doing it so close, but we weren't going to have anytime to get it installed for at least a week after this, so we went ahead with the plan. The process took about 9 hours, start to finish. Brandon was home supervising and sent me a few photo updates that gave me a giddy feeling all day!

The floors turned out better than I could have imagined! This lead us to really wanting to get the rest of the downstairs floors done. We absolutely despised the tile! It was grose and cold. It never came clean as hard as I tried, at least clean to me. And the grout was just despicable. We knew we needed to wait and save up some more money before we spent another large chunk… that lasted a month! The second week of May we had Hardwood Floors and More come back and finish the downstairs. This included the Kitchen, Hallway, Pantry, Powder Bath, and Laundry room. The week prior to the installation Brandon and his grandfather tore out the old vanity that sat in the Powder Bath and that weekend we repainted the room. Then we were ready for what the second week of May brought us, new floors!

The tile kicked up a lot of dust and apparently there was a linoleum floor underneath the tile that the previous owners had left. The Tile was definitely an amateur job. It was thrown together and in certain places the tile was just broken off so it would fit. For example the doorway to the pantry, the old flooring was left in there and the tile was just on sharp edges around the threshold. Same for the backdoor threshold. Needless to say, we were very ecstatic when we saw the demolishen of the floors! The dust caused a bit of a cloud and a film over a lot of furniture. We hung plastic sheets over the doorways to the living and dining spaces and taped it down, but it did not trap all of the debri. It was time for a deep clean anyway.

The finished product was better than we could have hoped! The thresholds that were placed in the doorways to the living and dining were now gone and in its place was rooms that flow into each other. The laundry room no longer looked like a clutered mess, but an organized spacious room. The kitchens transformation is just out of this world. It looks so much bigger and open to the point Brandon said we need another rug to place behind our Island.

The last week of May approached us and it became time to finish our Powder Bath! We decided to do the bathroom ourself because it was cheaper and it was pretty easy. We bought a new Vanity and light fixture from Lowes. I already had the perfect mirror for the small room in our home and the two Floating shelves were a gift from Brandons grandparents. I really want the Master Bathroom updated, but that is an expensive and daunting task. The next best thing was getting the small bathroom done. For a small portion of the expense it would have taken to do the large bathroom. Now our guests have a clean and updated room to conduct their business.

Here are the Befores:

The paint job came out a little more blue than gray. We definitely weren’t expecting that and decided to change it, but after about a week we finally decided to keep it. It’s different and the icey lights above the vanity really make the room. I changed the decor around a bit and need to find a larger wall decor peice for the long wall that you see when you open the door. I am also wanting to change out the soap dispenser and hand towel holder to go with the black and white color scheme. As you can tell we haven’t completely finished it yet. There has been a ton going on within our household and I kind of put this on the back burner to focus on other things. Another small project that we want to add to the powder bath is wainscoting. After ripping out the old vanity, realizing that the new one wasn’t going to be flush against the wall, and the marks from the old vanity being ripped out showing through the paint really made us want to add some texture to the bottom half of the wall. My brother had it in his bathroom at his old house and I love the look of it. I think that it will make the small corner bathroom complete and have a more seemless look.

Here are the afters:

Thank you all so much for being patient with me. I know this has been a long time coming. Please stay tuned for more updates! Our living room is next!!!