Vanity, thy name is DONE

Remember, waaaayyy loooong agooo, I bought a cheap Craigslist dresser with plans to refinish it and turn it into our master bathroom vanity? Well, it has sat at about 80% completion for, oh, the last six months or so. We got the drawers in, but they lacked a certain je-ne-sais-quoi... namely, they didn't like to OPEN or CLOSE. Call me high maintenance, but I feel like that's an essential component of drawer-ness. After our frustration level escalated from side-eye to angry glare to outright cussing, we (Brandon) decided it might be time to do something about it. And so we were back to this. Sigh.

Oh, plus this.

Yep, that's the entire contents of the vanity, spread across the floor for extra easy access. Ten points if you can spot the dozen or so pee tests I took before I believed I was actually pregnant. And yes, I saved them...? I'm gonna go ahead and blame the hormones.

One of the big problems with the drawers was the bottoms, which appeared to be made out of what I'll call "fancy cardboard." It had started to warp and fall apart, and in fact completely collapsed out of one of the large bottom drawers.

Brandon ripped them all out, and replaced them with plywood - they are MUCH more sturdy and less likely to randomly give out and dump toothpaste, deodorant, and contact solution into the void below the vanity.

Along with reinforcing the drawers, Brandon took off all of the metal drawer slides, as they were the source of our INFERNAL DRAWER-FAIL ANGRRRRR. He decided to just yank them, and put wood supports into the frame of the dresser to support the drawers (should have photo'd these, but I forgot). He also took care of the last two "finishing touches" - installing the baseboard that I'd stained and poly'd way back when to cover the gap at the bottom of the vanity, and picking up some hinges so we could attach the door front that covers the middle set of drawers. To save you some scrolling, here's where we sat a few days ago...

...and here we are now!

Suddenly it looks like a nice, substantial piece of furniture, rather than a repurposed Craigslist dresser. I love it! Big props to B for his hard work on finishing up this project; we all know if it were left up to me it might never zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzsnore

Wood boxes in my world right now

WOOD BOXES #1-6: the bathroom vanity drawers

Remember the old dresser that I refinished to use as our bathroom vanity? Last time you saw it without its drawers (scandalous!)... and so it sat for quite a while, while I contemplated the best way to deal with the inevitable drawer-plumbing conflict. Well, we finally went for it and created what must be the most grotesque set of drawers... ever. But hey, they'll only be seen by us, right? (I'm pretty sure there's no one on this whole "internet" thing.)

The top drawers (above) had to get huuuge chunks cut out of them, and I contemplated just removing them altogether and attaching the faces permanently to the dresser. But, that six inches or so of extra storage space won out, and we cut pieces of wood to keep our deodorant and contact lens cases from falling into the abyss.

The two bottom drawers didn't need to be chopped nearly as much, since the pipes run much closer to the wall down by the floor.

What did I tell you, they ain't pretty, but they get the job done. Except, they don't really, because the slides are all wonky and they don't shut right. This is going to require drawer surgery #2, in which we remove the slides and attach pieces of wood for the drawers to sit on instead. Regardless, some drawers and storage is a big improvement over this!

Yes, I took that picture from inside the shower. And yes, I forgot to take an "after" picture with the drawers in. Don't let the suspense kill you!!

WOOD BOX #(lucky)7: the toy(?) box

Don't you love when the internet gives you things like magical rugs? You know what's even better? When you find an "internet friend" and then you meet them in real life and they are hilarious and super fun and you can have adventures! Kit at DIYdiva posted about our first junk hunt (and the recounting made me laugh ALMOST as much as the reality). Well it seems to have become what we will call a "recurring pattern" (rather than a "bad habit"). (I prefer the term "genius," actually, now that I think about it.) The difference between me and Kit is that she has big plans for her thrift store finds, whereas I buy strange things and retrospectively try to figure out what on earth to do with them. Like... this adorable little box on wheels.

It was only after I decided that I completely needed this absurd item that I came up with the idea of using it to hold kindling for the wood stove. And it's adorable. And Brandon thinks I'm crazy... but isn't it so cute?

It may move down to the entryway to hold mittens and scarves or something, we'll see. Or dog toys, or sweaters... really the possibilities are endless. Strange little box, I dub thee "$20 well spent."

A house of a different color

PAAAAAAAAINT!!!

I promise that is all the same color - Benjamin Moore's Summer Lime - even though it looks wildly different in each photo. At least on my monitor, the bottom one is the most true to life, and the top one is much more buttery-yellow than the real color. It's a great cheerful yellow-green that changes a lot in different lighting conditions, but so far I like all of the permutations it's thrown at me!

The dining room has also been painted (Benjamin Moore's Silver Fox), and I loooove this color. It immediately sets the dining room apart as a more calm and serene space - a little bit formal without being stodgy.

We decided to bring the guest room Tranquil Blue out into the entry way as well, so as not to get overwhelmed with Summer Lime. I love that it's bright and cheerful without being obnoxiously turquoise. I also admit to a bit of geekery at the thought that my beloved jellyfish will be swimming around in a Tranquil Blue sea...

The back of the kitchen island (where you see the 2x4's in the photo above) will be white beadboard with a dark wood countertop. The wall below the cabinets will be tiled - I am thinking something in tones of gray and white, possibly like this inspiration pic from Pinterest:

That will basically leave us with a bright and light kitchen separating the Tranquil Blue entry from the Summer Lime living room, which I think will work really well.

The plumbers finished up installing the sinks and faucets in the master bathroom vanity - now I have to modify the drawers to fit, and stain and install trim around the bottom where we ripped off the ornate original trim. I think it is going to look fantastic when it's finished!

Lazy Sunday

Just kidding, not really! But it was a good excuse to reference a very funny SNL skit.

Actually, this morning did start out fairly lazy - I slept in, and did a bit of work before lunch. I planned to go out to the house in the early afternoon to put another coat of stain on the dresser that I bought to convert into our master vanity. I started thinking about this project over a month ago, but had some trouble finding a good candidate dresser - it had to be the right size, sturdy, and relatively simple in design (both because I prefer that aesthetic, and because I didn't want to lose my sanity trying to sand and stain something super ornate).

Of course I turned to my good buddy Craig and his most excellent list. After much repeated checking (i.e., stalking) the for-sale furniture section, I found a dresser that looked perfect. My ever-tolerant husband accompanied me on the nearly hour drive to the north side of Detroit to snag the $80 dresser. I was apparently so excited to start sanding that I yanked all of the drawers out before remembering to snap some "before" photos. So here it is drawer-less:

And here is what the original drawers looked like, complete with retro liner paper:

The plan was to sand it down and stain the whole thing a rich, dark chocolate brown a la this gorgeous vanity I found on Pinterest. Here are the drawers all lined up, knobs removed, and ready to be sanded:

The two little drawers at left in the pic above live behind the cabinet door in the middle section of the dresser. If you are observant you will notice there is one drawer missing - it was the recalcitrant one that I couldn't get the knob off of. Brandon eventually got it off by getting all aggro on it and busting it into many pieces - luckily I was planning on getting new knobs anyway.

I used 80-grit sandpaper to start, and then finished everything with 220 so it is all nice and smooth. (Luckily the dresser top and drawer fronts are all solid wood. The sides of the dresser are veneer, but the veneer itself is really thick so I wasn't too worried about sanding, and it all went fine.) Because we are low on storage space at the moment, I stuck the sanded drawers back in the unsanded dresser after I ran out of time on the first day.

(mmm, Jimmy Johns)

The one feature of the dresser that we (OK, Steven) didn't like was the trim piece at the bottom. He thought it would look much better if it sat against the ground (like baseboard) rather than having the decorative cut-out section. After much grumbling I had to admit he was right (as usual), so Brandon did some minor surgery:

...which had the intended consequence (see ya, offending trim piece)...

...as well as some unintended casualties. Ouch.

Fortunately that section will be covered by the new trim piece, once we get the new trim piece.

The staining process has taken me several visits, since I put two coats of stain on everything. It is nearly impossible to get a good picture of the stain color (MinWax ebony), because when the drawers are inside the boat house I have to use a flash:

And when they are outside there is too much glare:

Alas! The color is exactly what I wanted after two coats, but I am a bit concerned that I put too much stain on the drawers. I wiped the excess off with a rag but I may have left it on too long, because there are still shiny patches on the drawers, a week after they have been stained. It isn't wet or tacky anymore, and I can't wipe anything off with a rag, so maybe it isn't a problem. I plan to polyurethane the whole thing anyway since it will live in a bathroom and be subject to moisture - does anyone with more staining experience than me want to weigh in? Think I can poly it, or should I try to wipe off some of the excess stain with paint thinner/mineral spirits/etc.? Let me know what you think, oh helpful interwebs!

Anyway, this all brings us up to today (ha! faked you out with a super long preamble). I was going to head to the house after lunch to finish staining the dresser. When I got there, though, the extremely hardworking drywall crew was back at it, finishing up sanding the drywall, and told me they would be cleaning up shortly. This caused the synapses of my brain to rewire into a giant pulsating paint can. After a quick call to Brandon, I realized that I had barely an hour to drive back to our rental, pick up my wallet and the shop vac, drive back to Turtle House, drop the shop vac to the drywall crew (who said it would be a big help with clean-up), and drive to Ann Arbor before the paint store closed at 2pm. I got it all done though, through sheer determination and willful disregard of posted speed limits. I returned to the house with a bunch of primer for the bathrooms, pans and rollers, and four sample colors (one each that I picked as starting points for the living room, guest room, and both bathrooms). Whew!

Unfortunately, the drywall crew was still hard at work cleaning up. Our GC had sent us an email indicating that they would be done at "e pm" which made us laugh super hard. Given that e=2.718, we thought that meant they should be done somewhat before 2:45, but apparently this was not the case. Indeed, they were still going strong after I put another coat of stain on the vanity and left the house (around 4:30 pm). So, perhaps no priming today... but now we're ready to go!

Vanity, thy name is...

I am waiting for Brandon to wake up from a nap before we head out to the house today, so here's the story of how we spent our day (a.k.a., why is Brandon asleep at 5:51 p.m.?). I like to think of our activities today as the "Tour de Thrift" - going to five (count 'em five) different thrift stores in Ann Arbor. Why? Well, it's about time for us to pick out the vanity cabinet for our master bathroom. I've looked through every option at the big box stores, multiple times, and would kinda sorta settle on something... but then I'd go to my Pinterest page, look at images like these, and sigh a small heartbroken sigh...

Image from Coastal Living via My Little Happy Place

Image from Design Sponge

So, with some courage and inspiration from my favorite blogs* (and enabler/designer Mandi), I decided I am going to try to DIY this thingamajig. I will worry about how to do that after completing Step 1: finding the perfect sturdy old dresser. And so far, Step 1 has been fairly daunting.

Ypsi --> ReUse Center --> PTO Thrift --> Salvation Army --> Treasure Mart --> H4H ReStore

No dice. Back to Craigslist it is... I will keep you updated!


*And OMG you guys, speaking of my favorite blogs - I just have to share this because I am having a major newbie-blogger geek-out. Just checked my Google Analytics data to see who's been visiting the website. I do this every so often and usually the most exciting thing is getting a hit from "Palestinian territories" (hi Diana!)... but here's the view from today:

As it turns out, the hits are piling in from one of my absolute favorite websites - so big hugs & power tools to the DIY Diva herself for sending some traffic over to this lil corner of the interwebs. For the ~10 of you who didn't get here from Kit's amazing website, go check it out immediately! I have been devouring her archives for the great tips and also snort-soda-out-your-nose hilarious writing. No joke, it hurts when that happens.