From Nasty to Nice

The bathroom upgrades continue! We have really ugly hardware throughout the kitchen and both bathrooms. Seriously, gross. Maybe they were cute and shiny in their prime but today...

Pardon the poor iphone quality before pictures. My camera battery was dead. womp womp. 

Aren't they seriously disgusting? I tried to clean them but they still look gunky and gross. I thought about ORBing them but A. I thought it might be too dark with our cabinets. B. We have a nickel towel bar so I was hoping to tie into that. I decided to try out the Rustoleum Satin Nickel Metallic Spray Paint. 

After like 20 thin coats, here is the much cleaner looking finished product:

The overall effect is subtle but I like it. It's definitely an improvement over the grody old ones. Someday I'd like to replace them entirely, but for a 7 dollar can of spray paint this will do for now!

ORB TIME!

After painting our hall bathroom I've been itching to ORB our mirror.

The mirror itself doesn't bother me too much, but it's just kind of meh. It was here when we moved in and we aren't particularly attached to it so we figured there wouldn't be any downside to ORBing it. For anyone not familiar with the terminology, ORB= Oil Rubbed Bronze.

I propped the mirror up on some scrap 2x4's that were lying around and spread out some trash bags for overspray. To protect the mirror I just taped down some printer paper. Classy, I know. Gotta work with what ya got!

Here's what it looked like after I impatiently ripped off all the tape and printer paper:

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't do so great at the whole "thin, even coats" thing. It was more like one thick and uneven coat followed by a few thin and even coats. whoops. In real life it looks pretty even.

Here's a solid Before & After so you don't have to scroll up.

I approve. Although I want to shimmy it over a smidge to the left so it's properly centered. That sucker is sorta heavy though. I'll get there. The next step might be to ORB that hardware as well... too matchy-matchy?

Painting Bug

The first painting project I took on was painting the living room back in July. I still haven't shared pictures but those will have to come later because I don't have any good ones right now. I began painting the trim in the entry and hallway a few months ago and finally finished it up within the last few weeks!

Unfortunately the only real before picture I have is a screen shot from zillow when we were in the process of buying the house. As you can see it has the same wood trim as the rest of the house and a pink-ish paint color. The same paint is used throughout all of the bedrooms and depending on the light sometimes takes on a violet quality. Mostly it looks pink. I don't like it.

I started out with the best of intentions: sanding down the trim, taping everything off, painting. I quickly learned that I hate the prep work. I wasn't getting anything done because I despise sanding trim. I decided to skip that (probably critical) step. I might regret that in a year when the paint starts to chip and peel but, oh well! Yay instant gratification! Once I made that difficult decision the process moved along much quicker. I got all the trim painted and my mom was kind enough to help me knock out the walls (not literally).

Here's a view from the living room. Doesn't the white trim make everything look fresh and crisp? We plan to do something about the dark wood doors at some point. Not sure if we'll end up painting them or just buying new ones... that's still up in the air! Look at those pretty, green living room walls...yum!

Here's the view looking straight up the stairs. The color reads a little pinkish in the foreground but that's just the lighting. The wall at the end of the hall is pretty true to life.

Here's the opposite view looking down to the living room. 

It's definitely a big improvement over the pink walls!

I'll leave you with another living room sneak peak: