Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Befores and Afters

These are from a project we did a few years ago........but sometimes it's nice to look back and remind yourself that we are progressing. We bought our old house in sad condition and basically we have been working on it for 19 years. We do pretty much everything ourselves since both of us are handy. Joe especially. He is an electrician and an engineer and can figure out almost anything. In this pic he had already busted out the old tub.

This really was the bathroom from hell. There was just nothing to redeem it except that all the plumbing worked...I realize that's no small thing. But just look at it. Cheap plastic everything. Depressing.

Now that's better! This is the same corner where the tub was. We moved our washer and dryer in here...they started in the yucky basement, then moved to the kitchen, and now they have a real home. I wanted a restaurant sink in there so bad, but it just wasn't in the budget. Then I went to a moving sale...and the people moving were restaurant owners....I got this sink still in the crate, brand new for $30. I could not believe it! In this photo you can see a little bit of Joe's custom drop ceiling. It's all made of wood and you can move some of the panels. This is because we plan to put a bath in our master bedroom someday and the plumbing for that is right above this ceiling....we wanted to be able to access it easily.

I wanted it light and bright in here, since laundry is not my favorite chore. We kept the stool and sink, because we really needed to keep a second bathroom on our first floor.
You will find out that I love maps. I just think they are beautiful. For years I had been saving the maps out of National Geographic Magazine and I used them to paper the walls in here. I sealed them with a couple of coats of water based poly so I could wipe them clean.

We had the old ugly bathroom for almost 15 years....we mostly tried to keep the door shut and not use it because just looking at it was depressing. When our son was a couple of years old he called this "the broken bathroom" because we never used it. After that we all called it the broken bathroom! This is soooo much nicer!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

My bathroom is similar to this right now. We have not touched it since we moved in. I hate more and more everyday. We haven't started because we are afraid of how much it would cost us to redo it. There is no telling what is hiding behind all that plastic. Your's looks great now! The map on the wall is genius!

Pam @ The Blue Between said...

I LOVE your map walls!!!! Oh what an amazing idea!

Anonymous said...

Very nice! LOVE your map walls. And the ceiling is ingenious.

Aunt Colana said...

I've never seen maps used before! What a fantastic idea!~

Anonymous said...

How did you fix the maps onto the wall? Did you use wallpaper paste or what? It looks great. Thanks.

pedalpower said...

Yes, I used wallpaper paste. I smoothed it out as much as possible and was kind of freaking a little because I could not get it perfectly flat...but when it dried it was very tight to the wall and much flatter than when it was still wet. After it was good and dry (several days) I went over it with a clear brush-on water based poly. That last step makes it easy to wipe down, because hey...it's in the bathroom....you have to be able to clean it.

Amy said...

Wow your walls are amazing. I love that idea! I have tons of vintage national geographics in the attic... I have to check and see if they have maps now. Great job!

Anonymous said...

I love your transformation and I want to thank you for solving a problem for me. I want to make patio placemats out of maps, but I haven't been able to find any inexpensive ones to laminate. Off to Half Price Books to find some NG maps!