Project Powder Bath: Inspiration for Bold Walls

I'm so excited to share my next house project with you today! There's a couple rooms in our house that I've never shown you: my husbands office and our powder room. The office we haven't and probably won't put much effort into considering it will turn into a nursery some day, so we don't want to put money into it and he has everything he needs to work from home even though it's not to my design standards-- ha ;) The powder room, however, has just been forgotten. I always ask guests to use our main bathroom because I'm so embarrassed of our powder bath, but all of that is about to change!
Today I'm going to show you the before of this space and give you all my design plans. The project will be started in March and finished in April. 
THE BEFORE:
First of all, I'm so grateful to have a second bathroom, even if it is the size of an airplane bathroom! When we moved in, we didn't even paint this space because I knew I'd have some fun plans for it one day. Well, I'm happy to say that day has finally come! 
As you can see it's tiny and it's plain. It's got this muddy beige on the walls, pedestal sink, no wall decor and an ugly mirror. 

We DID change out the light when we first moved in and so we'll be keeping that, which I love!

This bathroom is going to look a whole lot different, even though we're actually not going to be buying much or swapping any large items out. Here's the breakdown...

What's Staying:

+ Toilet+ Sink+ Lighting+ Wainscotting
Project List:
+ Paint the walls a background color+ My artist friend is going to be doing a floral pattern on the walls which is going to look like wallpaper (I'm SO EXCITED for this!!)+ New Art for the back wall+ New Mirror+ New Towel + New Rug
Outside of the wall artwork for the space, I'm going to try to keep the budget under $400 for the mirror, art hand towel and rug. I'm going to keep this as low budget and high impact as possible!
THE WALL INSPIRATION:I really wanted to have some fun with pattern in this room because 1. it's small and 2. there's no better place to be bold than a half bath or laundry room, if you want to keep the rest of your house neutral and simple!
Like I mentioned above, my talented friend Chelsea is an amazing artist best known for bold, large-scale canvases (she's working on a custom piece for one of my client's now!) but she's also super talented at line drawings. She designs tattoos and paints murals in local shops and eateries. I'm so proud to be her friend! I'm so excited because Chelsea is going to be hand painting a line-drawn floral pattern on our bathroom walls and it's going to look like wallpaper! I think this means I'll have to stay in this house for a couple more years to enjoy this little bathroom with her artwork all over the walls :)

Here's what I know:

+ I want the color scheme to be in the blues or greens

+ I want the pattern to be floral

The main thing I have to decide before April, which is when she's coming to do the painting, is if I want to paint the walls white, like the wainscoting, and have Chelsea do a darker color (navy maybe?) line drawing on top of that, OR if I want to paint the walls dark and have her do the design in white. 
What would you do?! 
Besides this wall pattern, I'll hang some art on the back wall or maybe do two floating shelves (kind of nice to have a place for TP), and get some fresh new towels and a rug. The pattern and colors on the wall will dictate the direction of all those finishing touches, so I'll update you once I decide on the color scheme. 
I can't wait to see this little room come to life! It won't be long before I start telling guests they can now use the powder room ;)xoxo

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The Monthly Edit: February

I'm excited about this new monthly series around here! Each month I'm going to round up some of my favorite things to share with you. If there's a special holiday or season that month, I'll be sure to include some items that coordinate to encourage celebration! Of course, this month we have Valentine's Day coming up, so I've included a fun heart printed sweatshirt, a photo frame, some floral and pink items. 
Enjoy!

1.  heart sweatshirt: this cozy top is so cute for the colder months, especially February! Since we're all living in athleisure these days (wait, is it just me?!) I think this is a great number to add to your wardrobe.
2. woven frame: give me all the textures! When designing spaces for my clients, I always include varied textures in many ways throughout the space to offer visual interest. This frame is so beautiful; a lovely way to display memories!
3. cozy blanket: this is the blanket of your dreams. If you're anything like me, you have to have a blanket on your lap while sitting on the sofa at.all.times. It's in my cart, as I've heard nothing but amazing reviews.
4. mini lip gloss duo: these lip jellies smell (okay, and taste!) delicious, their safe for you, and deliver an impactful shine. I love wearing them around the house, since with masks, glosses aren't especially our friends ;)
5. milk & sugar stoneware: I grabbed these last month with some Christmas money and they added such a sweet touch to our open shelves in the kitchen! I use a tiny bit of sugar every morning in my tea, so it's useful, too.
6. beanie: at least in Michigan, you can never have enough of these ;)
7. gold candlesticks: these look like something you'd find in an antique store and I love adding treasures like that to any room to give it a "collected" feeling.
8. personalized floral stationery: I've said it before and I'll say it again-- snail mail is the best!! I always love writing thank you cards or just-because cards for friends or family (I try to write my grandma's once each season to send them some happy mail!), and I also love personalized goodies. This stationery is designed by one of my friends with her signature watercolor florals and you get to personalize the top with your monogram!
9. floral pillow: add a little feminine touch to your bed or sofa with this modern, line drawn floral print. It comes in a couple sizes!
10. sneakers: these are the sneakers I have and I love them. Mine are a slightly more muted pink (sold out), but this color is so fun, too. They also come in black!
11. henley top: I've been LIVING in this top!! I didn't realize how amazing and soft everything from Aerie is. I recently grabbed this henley (in gray) and another sweater. Both are so cozy, I'm finding myself reaching for them over anything else. 


What are you loving this month?! 

xoxo



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Our Basement Renovation Progress

I'm so excited to finally share an update on our basement renovation! 

We bought the house with it partially unfinished, but it had a good start with concrete floors, drywall in most spaces and a finished bathroom. It's a HUGE amount of space (about 1000 square feet including the storage / maintenance closet, bathroom, living area and laundry area) but about 750 of it will be open living space. This is a huge upgrade for us, since our main level is only 1400 square feet. While we're not adding any bedrooms down here (there are no windows, so adding a room wouldn't count as a bedroom), we did do a ton of work to make it a cozy, livable space for us!
First, let's look back on how it looked before:

OUR ORIGINAL TASK LIST:
+ framing in the laundry area to create a laundry room with a barn door (though it won't look rustic) Still need to build the door!
+ fixing some aspects to the bathroom (flooring, adding mirror, fixing light, etc.)
+ carpeting the main living space
+ adding a bar with a sink, mini fridge and possibly an additional actual bar area with 2 stools. We decided not to do the bar with stools-- felt too closed in and wanted to keep it open!
+ adding flooring under the kitchen / bar area. 
+ changing the placement of the electrical in the ceiling. There are barely any lights down there now, so McCann is redoing it all and adding about 8 can lights so we make sure it's nice and bright, since there are no windows. Ended up adding 12 lights and a sconce above the bar sink!
+ fresh, light paint throughout and paint the ceilings black in order for the exposed beams to count as a ceiling (this is accepted by appraisers in our state). This will also make the ceiling stuff "disappear" to the eye and hopefully make the ceiling look taller. I know it won't be my favorite, but it'll be an improvement from what we have now ;) I was skeptical about the black ceiling, but I LOVE THEM! So glad we went with this choice. The ceilings really do disappear now. 

This list really just scratched the surface of all the projects that went into this space. We also had to do a ton of caulking (my job!), replacing baseboards, paint and install the bar area with shiplap, install the fridge, the countertop, the hardware, moved outlets, and got the sofas down here (that was a whole Friends PIVOT moment and we almost didn't think it'd fit-- but my husband and neighbor did it!!) It's taken us months to get to this point, so we are extremely relieved and so happy to have this extra space to entertain and just a different spot to watch tv / movies. McCann did all this work himself or with a little help from a friend, other than laying the carpet. I'm SO proud of him!!
Lincoln also LOVES running around down there; it's adorable!
Alright, so knowing that it's not 100% finished yet, here's where we are at today!It is hard to capture, because there are no windows and it's been so cloudy / snowy here, but you'll get the idea!

I love our vinyl planks for the bar area! We did a vertical shiplap as a backsplash as a way to draw our eyes up and make the 7' ceilings look taller. It really, really helped. Never underestimate the power of visual tricks ;)

I also originally planned to do a deep navy color on the cabinets, but after seeing how dark the ceiling was, the navy just read black in here, so I switched it up and went with a light blue. It's Blue Smoke by Benjamin Moore. Our hardware are these pretties from Pottery Barn, but the large size is sold out. This is similar. 

Over in the tv area, we got a new tv and mounted it on the wall, then set up our leather recliner sofas (my husbands' dream--ha! These aren't my style, but I'm so happy he loves them!) I got two side tables, then a small accent table. 

This space behind the TV area is huge and, well...it's empty! We don't have a use for it yet, so it's Lincoln's running zone ;) But eventually it will McCann's desk area and maybe even a play area for future family members. One thing I love that we did was create this closet at the end of the laundry room. Other than our huge storage space down here, we don't have other storage. Since this basement area might house guests on a blow up mattress some time, I wanted to have a closet to store linens, their clothes if needed, games, a filing cabinet for his office stuff, etc. It's going to be so handy!

I love this comparison shot!

BEFORE: laundry was out in the open, no bar, concrete floors.

AFTER: laundry room framed in and dry walled, cute bar area, cozy carpet.

The next things on our list are just finishing touches, really:
+ barn door made & installed+ Art or shelves above bar + Art / decor for tv area and other walls+ move our upstairs console down here under the TV (this one is a stand-in for now that we had laying around)
We're so close!! And we're so excited that it's added immense value to our home!

Thanks for following along with this labor of love! I'll be sure to give a better video tour on instagram today.
xoxo


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