A bathroom for the kids
11:50 AM
We've finished about 90 percent of our house by now, but there's really only a few rooms that are completely curated the way I want. The kids' bath, though, we were determined to finish completely so we could focus our attention on the great Master Bath Reno, which we've barely started.
Today I'm sharing details from this renovation from months ago. I'm really happy this one's finished.
Let's start with that before. The picture barely shows it, the carpet there on the floor. Carpet in the bathroom! Cheap carpet! With no pad! I know, I know. That was the first thing to go. To save money we used some leftover tile we used for our rental home (we purchased a second small home on this property when we bought the farmhouse and we refer to it as the rental home even though it's empty now and on the market). It's a ceramic grey tile, pretty neutral although I'm not in love with it.
And if you've ever wanted to know how to paint furniture beautifully using acrylic (water-based) paint, use that formula: sand piece well, prime, sand with 220+ grit, paint in flat, sand, paint in flat, sand, paint in flat, sand, Polycrylic, sand, Polycrylic. Voila! A gorgeously painted piece that will withstand child abuse. Abuse by children.
Enough about that.
I found round white knobs from the cabinets in the downstairs bathroom so I switched out the blue for the white and bought two eight inch wide cabinet pulls from Lowe's, spray painted them white and used them on the faux drawers for hand towel holders - the perfect height for little people.
It definitely wasn't in the budget to buy new countertops, so we used the feather finish method. At about $15, the feather finish is easy to use and spread. It's a lot of sanding and it gets pretty dusty in between coats, but we have loved the results and they've held up well.
I started by removing the laminate backsplash and Shane took the sinks out.
I accidentally shipped the feather finish to Utah in August. My mom stored it for me and I stuck it in my suitcase when I visited in November. The concrete set off the alarm at the airport, even though I was checking my bag and I had to do a lot of pleading with the NSA's to let me keep the bag of concrete in the suitcase. Apparently you're not supposed to transport concrete in an airplane.
The bag goes a long way. We've used it for more countertops in our home and the bag almost lasted for all of them. I liked my consistency a little on the runny side, which means more coats.
For a great tutorial on how to use it, check out this one. We watched it a few dozen times.
After four coats, I sanded with 220 grit and then 400 grit. I used this sealer, although I'm going to buy the wax in the product line and use that on top as well.
We then backsplashed using simple white subway tile and stacked just three rows. We replaced the old almond colored, chipped sinks with new white inexpensive sinks from Lowe's, but kept the original faucets.
In my next post I'll talk about the easiest, most inexpensive vanity lighting and refinishing the kids' bathtub from almond to white, aka worst smell ever. Oh, and I'll talk about the mirrors and my super handy husband.
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