Making plans for a bedroom refresh!

Never one to be satisfied, I'm making plans for what the youtubers call a REFRESH of the bedroom!

Bit of a back story: Our house has two bedrooms -- the second bedroom functions as a library, office, and guess bedroom (via sleepsofa). It's a room for Mark's crap, which we clean up whenever guests come to stay. Some day I hope that we'll have decluttered enough to look decent 365 days of the year. But our bedroom is a pretty good size for a 1930s Dublin house, so that's where my desk lives. In the corner. The dark, dark corner.

As some of you know, I got a new job back in October, and come May when my probation is up, I'll be working from home two to three days a week. I have no interest in working in the chaos of the office, but I don't want to be stuck in the corner of my bedroom either! So that got me thinking...

Just out of interest (because it's bonkers), I'll share a photo of what our bedroom looked like after we stripped the wallpaper:

ANYHOO there will be three major elements to the bedroom refresh. First, the desk situation. Here's how it looks now:

You can barely see my desk in that corner! And it gets quite cold under the desk, even when it's warm in the rest of the room. So I've decided to swap the desk and the wardrobe. But ALSO I want to replace my desk, which is currently a very small, white IKEA desk with two shelves above. Once the wardrobe is moved into the corner of the room, I'm going to put a slightly different configuration of this IKEA Svalnas desk/shelving situation next to the window:

The next area that I want to change up is the wall behind the bed. Here's how it looks now:

Lord give me strength that Mark has put that storage thing on the top of that bookcase, but ignore that -- it'll be going away, as will the pile of clothes ;)

As you can see, we have two tall black bookcases on either side of the bed. But the whole thing is kind of blah. So I'd like to do an accent shiplap wall and paint it black, sort of like in this video (except probably real shiplap instead of faux). Shiplap is generally a tongue-in-groove wood cladding. The end product will look a little like the wall in this video:

And then the third change is going to be very dramatic, I think. Because one of us (::cough::cough::not me::cough::) is a bit of a clothes hoarder, storage solutions are always needed. At the moment, I don't like how cluttered this wall is:

First of all, I'm not a particular follower of feng shui, but I have read The Joy Luck Club, so I do know that it's bad juju to have a mirror at the end of your bed, let alone two. Now that we have the mirrored cabinet in the bathroom, I don't really need a full length mirror anymore. And Mark needs more shoe storage. So I've decided to replace everything that's here with 4 Ivar cabinets, an unfinished pine product from IKEA.

The grey press here will go, and the mirror and everything that is in/on the press will go inside the lefthand two cabinets. On the right side, Mark will be able to store shoes and other items.

The Ivar looks like this:

It can be wall mounted or stacked on legs. And the possibilities are endless when it comes to finishes -- it can be left natural or painted or even decoupaged or wallpapered! I've decided to do something a little different. Since I'll be installing four (two by two on legs), I have decided to put a natural finish on the top two cabinets and paint the bottom two. BUT I'm also going to paint that wall the same exact colour on the bottom of the wall, sort of like this effect, except probably not blue and there won't be other furniture involved:

My makeup and jewellery, plus the mirror and the strip of lights will be tucked away inside a cabinet, getting rid of the chaos and clutter.

Other fun things I'll be getting are a new desk lamp, new trash bin, new desk chair, a rug, and I'm sure another couple of items as well :D Stay tuned for progress reports and plans!

Upstairs bathroom big reveal!

Yes. I started my bathroom renovation.... uh.... eons ago! And it's been finished for a couple of months at least, but the way the window and light are, decent photos required another light. Also, a clean bathroom. But today I finally managed to clean the bathroom, get out the light, and take a few shots.

Let's just recall where we started, back in 2016 when we stripped the wallpaper and the flooring:

Pretty grim! And other than adding some lino and getting a new toilet, we didn't do much to it until these renovations. It became sort of a storage room, a place for crap to collect on its way to somewhere else.

Back in April last year, I made SIX blog posts about my renovation plans, which, in retrospect, may have been overkill. But lots of people were very helpful in the decision making process! And I feel like everyone felt personally invested in my bathroom.

Before I go into what I learned and some of the particulars, I'll just post the after photos!

We already had the mirror

Pretty excited about the tissue holder and the marble accessories

The basket on the left holds toilet rolls and
the one on the right is for dirty linen

I decided to paint the radiator and I'm glad I did

The brass shelves came from IKEA

I love how the sinks came out, especially the taps

I'm overjoyed at how the faux pane shower door looks

Inside the cabinet is a double shaver outlet

  

The gorgeous brass hooks (4 of them) came from an antique wardrobe that I renovated last year

Having two sinks still feels ultra luxe. And this sideboard has tonnes of storage

While I like to think of myself as good with the ole DIY, we clearly needed to hire a builder for a good bit of this renovation. A lovely builder, Linas, was recommended to us. He and his colleague did an amazing, amazing job with the plumbing and tiling, ESPECIALLY since this was clearly not a standard job - I bought nearly everything off the internet without a clue what the heck I was doing. This did lead to some foibles, which I'll talk about at the end. 

The dresser is a particular point of pride -- stripping the white paint off without ruining it was a labour of love, particularly since I have little to no previous experience with stripping furniture. I was confident but not certain that there would be lovely wood underneath the white paint. I have to apologise because I had a heck of a time getting a good photo with the window. But the wood is lovely! The builders cut the holes for the sink and installed them. They did an amazing, amazing job. 

The yellow and white Mexican tiles drove Linas just a little bit nuts because they aren't all the same, neither in size nor thickness. I'm not sure he believed me when I told him I didn't want it to look perfect, and that he could just wing it with their placement. 

The black floor tiles are so perfectly done, especially considering how crap the floor was. They even matched the floor tiles to the bath surround tiles. 

Once Linas and his associate were finished with the plumbing and tiling, it was on me to do everything else, which included wallpapering, putting up the wall panels, painting the ceiling, putting up the hooks, towel rails, shelves, toilet roll holder, toilet brush holder, tissue holder, put together and paint the mirrored cabinet, remove and strip the door hardware, and paint the door, wall panels, and trim. It took me ages to get it all done! The walls are like chalk in some places, so I had to be fairly inventive to get everything up and secure (thank god for Sugru!).

Mark kindly painted the ceiling, which we did before we wallpapered. The walls are uneven in ways I didn't think possible, but I wanted the panels and trim to be at least somewhat level, so putting them up was... annoying. I chose a dark, daaaaark green paint for the wall panels and trim. Speaking of annoying, THE WALLPAPER! I miscalculated that situation and had to order more. Twice. And I still had to mismatch the pattern in TWO of the corners. But - no regrets! (Well, I do, but let's pretend I don't.) The decorator's varnish that I put overtop keeps it from being ruined by the moisture, but it also gave it a bit of a sheen so that it almost looks mural-like. I definitely did not try to make the walls even before I put up the wallpaper, so there are lumps and bumps, and I kind of like the imperfections. My whole idea behind this bathroom was that I wanted it to look like it belongs in an old house. I think I achieved that! 

Now, for the other fuck ups. The bath tub tap that I bought on ebay from China was apparently for a more high-pressure water system, so it took Linas hours to install it instead of the 20 minutes it should have taken, but he made it work in the end! 

I also bought a black metal ceiling pendant fixture, which turned out to be unusable because the original fixture didn't have a ground wire. So I ended up having to spray paint a plastic fixture and transfer the wire to it. Of course, then once I did that I realised that I didn't check whether the bulb bit fit into the glass shade we wanted to use. It's hard to see, even in person, but it doesn't sink into the shade how it should. One of these days, I'm hoping to get the glass cut. But for now, it's fine.

But the biggest mistake I made was the electric shower. DID YOU KNOW that there are electric showers that hook up to the mains? I DIDN'T EITHER. So, when the shower was finally up and running we realised that it's a bit temperamental compared to one that hooks up to the tank. If someone flushes, turns on the tap, or uses the dishwasher, the water either shuts off or goes cold, or both! So that's not ideal. When we have the money and the attic is cleared out more than it is now, we plan on swapping out the shower for one that can hook up to the tank. For now, we just have to take precautions. 

I made another expensive mistake when ordering the floor tiles. I wanted the largest black hexagon tiles I could possibly get. There were a few local places that had medium sized ones, but I had my heart set on something really big. But the ones I ordered from a place in Galway were confusingly labeled in an emailed photo, so when they arrived, they turned out to be basically a size that I could have gotten here in Dublin much, much cheaper. So that was a huge bummer that really burned me up until the tiles were in and I decided that the ones I bought actually look great. All's well that ends well. (As you may know, I do not believe that 'everything happens for a reason'.)

I also did kind of a crap job painting the yellow cabinet, so the paint is chipping off in places, but I'll fix that at some point in the future. For the moment, I feel very, very happy every time I walk into this room and it was definitely worth all of the effort. Thanks for coming along with me on this journey!