Archive for ‘Inspiration’

October 28th, 2008

More bathroom ideas

We did a little browsing at Lowes last night after work, and didn’t really find any vanities that piqued our interest. After really considering it, we decided that the ones that we had seen at Menards might be a little too big and overpowering for that size bathroom. The floor space is only 4′x8′, and putting a big sink and cabinet in there would just take up precious space. So, we’re back on the pedestal sink track, which means that we definitely need a medicine cabinet, as well as a free-standing cabinet to hold miscellaneous items like toilet paper and towels. We’re both pretty set on the square-shaped ones, like this:

In looking through my IKEA catalog last night, I found this cabinet:

It’s pretty much ones of the best looking ones I’ve found that isn’t too deep for the wall that it has to sit on (14.5″ is not very deep in storage furniture land). We’ve got one other option, a vintage cabinet with glass doors at Artifacts. I think we’re going to go check it out tonight after work to see if it’ll fit. At $35, it’s a lot more affordable than the $150 for the IKEA one, and will leave more money for other fun stuff in the room, like an accordion shaving mirror and funky lights.

I’m really glad that we went to Lowes, actually, because I found out that my hex tiles for the floor are going to be about $60 cheaper there than they’d be if I ordered them from Home Depot. AND! We were both really disheartened to discover that the subway tile we had been eying for the walls was really expensive, but then I walked around the corner to see what they had as their normal stock, and they had it for $0.19 a tile! Huge relief, seriously.

October 27th, 2008

Bathroom, smashroom

One of the things that HAS to be completed before the house is livable is the main-level bathroom. I got my first look at it over the weekend, and while it’s not as if it’s poop-smeared and caving into the basement, it certainly needs to be gutted and redone. There’s currently carpeting (ugh) on the floor, an institutional-looking wall-hanging sink, a toilet that doesn’t work, and a random cabinet to fill wall space.

It’s also got an art deco cast iron tub that I think is fabulous, but which is worn down to the point where it needs some work to be usable. Over the weekend, we did a little bit of research and found that we could either resurface it (which involves painting it, basically, with a paint similar to that used on cars, in which case Kevin might be able to do it himself) or get it powder coated, which would involve taking it out of the bathroom. I really want to save it, but if we can’t, I think we’ve found a cast iron Kohler tub at Home Depot that will do the trick. We both like faucet handles along these lines:

While at Menards, we found a series of vanities that we both happened to love, even though they were modern rather than retro. Unfortunately, they’re made in Malaysia instead of the US, so we’re going to do some more shopping around before we make our decision. One of the ones we liked is shown here:

And tile! I have pretty much made it known that we’ll be putting unglazed hex tiles on the floor, and I think I have finally brought Kevin over to the darkside of tiling the bottom halves of the walls with white subway tile. Hurrah! I think we’re mostly going to go white, so that we’ll have more flexibility down the road in terms of accent colors and accessories.