No More Orange Glow

Let's just start today's post by saying that I finally got the House Tour tab up and running! For all of those folks who haven't had a chance to check out our place, go get a brief glimpse of what we're working with here.

Since that item of business is now out of the way, we're going to start talking about one of the many projects we have started on since closing about a month ago.

First of all, I can't believe it's been over a month already since we closed. Moving with a newborn and 3 other children has not been fun. And I say "has not" instead of "was not" because we still haven't managed to fully unpack or even move all of our stuff here yet. You know, snow storms really put a damper in even the best laid moving plans. *sigh* That's a story for another day!

Amidst still working on unpacking, we have managed to tackle a few small projects here and there. The first week we were in the house, we started re-doing the half bath on the main floor. Did you see this pretty picture in the Home Tour?

Isn't that just a lovely shade of orange? When the light was on in the bathroom, it cast a strange orange glow onto the wall and carpet in the hallway. We decided that out of all the things we wanted to change in the house, this room absolutely had  to be the first!

See how the color just reflects onto every surface in the room?

On the to-do list:
- replace the mirror, light fixture, toilet paper holder and faucet
- replace the toilet with a more efficient model
- paint the vanity and replace the vanity hardware
- swap out the electrical outlets and plates covers
- update the door hardware
- update flooring (We plan to eventually completely swap out the flooring, but we are contemplating the idea of painting the linoleum like this.)
- PAINT!

During our very first trip to Lowe's as homeowners, Justin (hubs) was totally stoked to pick out new toilets. As a housewarming/Valentine's Day gift to ourselves, we got a new potty. Ahhh... the romance.

Oaken was pretty psyched to try out the pot at the store, too.

Unfortunately, the installation of the new throne did not go very smoothly. The toilet flange and below pipe joint, drain thingy were broken. Seriously doubting our plumbing skills, we thought it best to call in a professional. A couple of days, and $270 later, we were finally able to install the new toilet.

Fortunately enough, that was really our only hurdle with the bathroom. But, it is a small bathroom. Who would have thought we would run into any problems at all?! We thought that this would be a super easy, budget friendly bathroom makeover. We've kept it on track budget wise by choosing to paint the vanity rather than replace it, and live with the current flooring and vanity top for now.

This is what it currently looks like...

This is by no means the final "reveal", but it sure is a big improvement! There are still a few minor things to take care of yet. We need to at least paint the quarter-round, hang a piece of art, replace the cabinet hinges and put an organized cloth diaper changing station in there for baby Cullen. At some point, we just might tackle that linoleum floor too.

I feel like there is still a lot to do in just this room and we have the WHOLE house to tackle yet. Does anyone ever get to feeling like they are just so overwhelmed, they don't even know where to start? It's been difficult for us to stay focused on just one space. I guess we'll chalk that up to the ADD.