Wednesday, March 6, 2013

White Wash Brick Fireplace

Continuing with the update of the fireplace...



To lighten up the room I wanted to lighten the color of the bricks.  We did not want the brick to be completely painted over but just have a "film" of white on top of it.  After much research I decided to go ahead and do it.

Materials Needed
Water
White Paint
Plastic Container
Paint Brush
Towels







1) In the plastic container I mixed one part paint to three parts water (if you want it whiter you can mix half paint and half water). Mix well. It should be the consistency of skim milk.

2) Start at the top.  Paint the mixture onto the brick and into the mortar.  Do this in a small area because the water will drip down the bricks.  Use the towels to get the excess paint/water off the bricks.

3) Paint the whole fireplace like this and let it dry.  If you want it to be whiter, do another layer.



It took a hour or so to do.  It is a really easy project and you do not need much skill to complete it.  The brick will absorb a lot of the water.  Make sure you rub off the paint if it is too white for you before it dries.  You can always add more.

This room will look so much better without paneling.  Hopefully by the end of the month it will be gone!

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Master Bathroom Remodel

Due to an unfortunate circumstance, we have to redo our master bathroom.  After many visits from our friends at our Home Warranty company, we determined that we had a crack in the shower pan that was not covered under our Home Warranty (of course).



We could have just fixed the shower, but why have a beautiful shower with a very outdated bathroom.  For a little more money we could have the bathroom we were going to get years down the road.

Bathroom When We Moved In


Bathroom After We De-Wallpapered and Painted




After many quotes to get our bathroom done, we choose to go with Mark Prater (he works in the school district I work in).  It is nice because he can work around our schedules and does not mind when I ask him how to do things. :)  It took him a longer than planned but her finally finished.  Here is the progression of the bathroom being done.


 First he started by tearing everything out. 
At least in the shower.


 Like any good home improvement project something always goes wrong.  When he went to take out the old shower pan the pipes should have easily come off.  But due to a bad patch job from the old owner, the shower pan came off and took the pipe with it.  The problem was is that it tore off in the wall (a.k.a. He needed to cut up the sub-floor and fix the piping in the wall.
 Here you can see the PVC literally cracked off
 All fixed!
 He then put up insulation (to keep noise down from the bedroom on the other side of the wall), plastic, and started putting up backerboard.
 This may be one of the coolest things we did in the bathroom.  This is a shower insert for our shampoos and other toiletries. If you keep reading you will see that there is also a glass shelf that goes in in.


 The copper pipes had to be redone to convert our two knob handle to single handle.

I painted the trim and door white!
 First Row of Tiles!!!!!






















The tile is finally finished!













Here is how you put in the shower insert.








 The next step was to take all of the original bathroom pieces out (vanity, toilet, and mirror)
 Unfortunately when we went to turn off the water the shut offs were not working properly.  It is not a fast drip but enough that we need to put on new shut offs.


 This is the P-Trap at under the vanity.  After taking it out it starting to fall apart.  So if it wasn't for the shower, we would have needed to fix the vanity because of water rushing through.





It is hard to see but the only thing that was stopping the water from draining was a calcium deposit and the bottom (no wonder the drain drained so slowly...).







He then had to fix all of the damage to the walls the wallpaper had made. I hate wallpaper, but if you have to put it up, please, please, please prime first.  After fixing the walls he removed the toilet and light fixture so I could prime and paint.















When the toilet and register came off, we found these two pieces of wallpaper.  Can you tell they are from the 70's?








 I then primed and painted the walls.  We decided to go with a different color on the walls than the light blue (Azure Snow to be exact).  I think it will go well with all of the other things in the bathroom. This is the same color that is in the half bathroom downstairs.  I put up the new light so Mark could continue to work when he came over at night.
























The next step is the flooring.  We picked this awesome tile that looks like wood floors.  I sealed the grout.  This will prevent water, dirt and oil (from skin or bathing products) to get into the grout.  According to the can you should seal it every 3-5 years.  It was really easy to do.  You just spray it on, leave it for 15 minutes and wipe of any excess.


The last step was all of the things that make the bathroom beautiful.  We bought a new vanity, mirror, toilet and shower doors.  The toilet is one of the new-fangled ones that have two buttons on the top to save on water.  We'll let you know how well it works.







Our bathroom turned out to be so beautiful!  Now the only thing left is to get some decorations for the walls!


Here are the Before and After