Before & After Renovations

Before & After Renovations

Before And After: Charcoal Bathroom Makeover

zzzzzzzzzz

OK, so nothing was wrong with the second bathroom in our new place - not technically, at least. Our condo is a new build - the original structure burned to the ground in the Woolsey fire a couple of years back - so everything was in great shape, but it just felt like...a hotel. You know, what with the large flat mirror, the nickel-plated lights, the white walls. It was one big "meh."

You know what I enjoy, though? A blank slate. Give me a boring room, and I am a child on Christmas morning.

Before & After Renovations

Before and After: Blush & Bashful Powder Room

The "before" (totally fine, but zzzzzzzz).

First, please tell me you get the reference in the title. Thank you. Now, you may recall I have a thing for pink bathrooms - I painted the tiny bathroom in our San Jose house a deep rose shade (vastly improved from the prior olive-and-vomit-themed aesthetic). In my new place, the main bath is very much not-tiny: There's an entirely separate vanity area (pictured above) with its own sink and walk-in closet in addition to the toilet-and-bathtub bathroom itself. Which means my "personal suite" in our apartment constitutes about 1/3 of the total square footage.

Which is A-OK by me.

Before & After Renovations

(Finally) Fixed It: Truly Hideous Kitchen Floor Before and After

Move-in day; also an excellent approximation of my feelings about my kitchen floor

I hate my kitchen floor. I have hated it from the moment I moved in, when it consisted of paint-splattered linoleum in a shade that could generously be called "vomit." I hated it after I tried to fix it by covering the linoleum with peel-and-stick tiles, which - as it turns out - reallllly aren't the best choice for this large or well-trafficked of a space.

Before & After Renovations

In Which We Reach The Limit Of My Abilities

I've gotten pretty handy over the years, mostly thanks to the presence in my life of a few Superwomen who have taught me how to do things like lay tile, resurface brick, and even demolish concrete (not the best idea for the old neck muscles, but surprisingly fun). And lord, do I wish those women lived near me still, because the house that I'm currently renting has alllllllll the project opportunities (yes, I fix up houses that I rent - you can read my rationale here).

In the course of my efforts to fix up certain elements of this house that I wasn't into, I've had some wins - painting my daughter's room, securing some maybe-going-to-fall-down ceiling panels, retiling my entryway step, suffocating weeds and replacing them with lavender and blueberry bushes, that sort of thing. But I've also had oh my god, some misses - like, for example, the linoleum kitchen floor that I covered (poorly) in stick-on tile that is MUCH better-suited to small spaces and apparently turns grey with any wear whatsoever.

Another fail: I used that same tile to cover a gross wall in the bathroom. I discovered that its stick-on powers did not extend to use on bathroom walls (or at least not somewhat uneven ones) around 2AM later that night, when I was awoken by the huge "bang" made by twenty tiles all falling off the wall and into my bathtub simultaneously. But was I to be deterred?!

Before & After Renovations

This Preteen’s Bedroom Got A MAJOR Makeover

Before

When I was 9 or so, I decided that I wanted my bedroom to be painted in shades of purple and teal (it was 1990; I have no other excuse for this) - and my parents, to their immense credit, let me actually do it. Which is great! Everyone should have a regrettably painted preteen room; it's a rite of passage.

But another rite of passage is when you age out of that room, and suddenly find yourself wanting something a bit more...peaceful. The teenage years can be rough ones, and I think having your own space to retreat to is an absolute essential. So when my friend Margo's daughter Claire told me that she didn't like her room anymore and wanted something that felt more "her"....


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