Emma’s Bathroom Before and After

It has officially taken me about 2 months to finish remodeling Emma’s bathroom!  Our goal was to finish painting all of the bedrooms and living areas prior to moving in, and then complete the bathrooms after moving in.  I had hoped to finish the bathrooms pretty quickly but I’m learning that even though bathrooms appear small, they are a lot of work!  There were about 13 steps involved in remodeling this poor poor bathroom.  Here are the before and after pics. 

Feel free to skip over all of the details below… several of you have asked me what I did so I decided to list the steps. 

Before:

After:

What did we change?  Oh, just about everything except for the counter tops!  Here are the steps we took:

1. We had the tile replaced prior to move in.  The existing flooring was half carpet, half small white tile. We had it all removed and replaced with 18” tiles. 

2. The next step was removal of the wallpaper… I did this during our ice storm and it was not fun!  AND… my little secret (not really a secret now if I’m blogging about it) is that I didn’t remove all of the wallpaper.  I plastered over the wallpaper that wouldn’t come off and it doesn’t show at all. :)

(by the way we removed the toilet in order to paint behind it… this was not a huge deal- pretty easy actually.)

3. Next I plastered the entire wall surface with a very random pattern.  I used joint compound from Lowe’s- $12 for a huge bucket that will cover all 3 bathrooms.

4. Next I spray painted the light fixture, originally brass.  I sanded it lightly and spray painted it with a can of ivory spray paint ($4).  Then I sanded the edges to make it look roughed up a bit.

5. Next we took off all of the cabinet doors and set them up in the garage.  I sanded all of the cabinets and cabinet doors. 

6. We then primed and painted the front and back of the cabinet doors and the cabinets.  My good friend Rosie had recently done this at her house and was a big help to me during this stressful process!  This took several days.  I also spray painted the cabinet door hinges.

7. Next I taped and caulked all of the wall edges.

8.  Then Robin painted the walls and ceiling a light green color.  I picked a color that matched the shower curtain and rugs that we already had from Pottery Barn Kids.  The room was VERY bright at this point- we decided to re-paint the ceiling an ivory color because the light was reflecting the green color all over the room.

9. Next I applied a dark green glaze to the walls using rags.  This toned down the bright green quite a bit.

10. Then I sanded the edges of the cabinet doors to antique them. I also added a brown glaze to some of the cabinet doors to antique them even more.

11.  Then Robin re-installed all of the cabinet doors (after they were completely dry!)

12. Next, Robin installed new towel rods and a TP holder

13. Then I spent hours touching up all of my ut-ohs.

I still have a few things to touch-up and I need to apply a topcoat to the cabinet doors.  Robin is also going to add some ivory wood trim around the mirror. 

I was very anxious to get the bathroom put together so that Emma can begin to use her own bathroom instead of using ours. :)  Overall we are pleased with the final result.  It may not be super professional-looking, but it definitely brighter and more cheerful than before and Emma loves her bathroom. 

This was my first of 3 bathrooms to re-do and there are definitely things I’ll do differently on the next two bathrooms.

The cost for the  project (without the tile) was about $100 for: plaster, 2 gallons of paint, primer, glaze, sanding materials, and spray paint.

Here are some pictures from the process:

Removing the wallpaper… (just seeing these pictures brings back bad memories for me!)

 

Here are the walls after the plaster has been applied (you can also see the brass light fixture before):

 

Here are the walls without the glaze:

 

Painting the cabinets and ivory color with my good friend Rosie:

 

Applying the glaze with rags:

Close up of one of the wall:

Close up of the cabinet door:

 

And here is Koby asking, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO CLEAN UP THIS HUGE MESS?  FINISH THE BATHROOM ALREADY!”  He considered trying to potty train in Emma’s potty chair but decided it looked too hard.

Pops and Gigi’s Visit To Tulsa

Robin’s parents, aka. “Pops and Gigi” came to visit Emma (they say they came to visit all three of us, but that is up for debate!) for the weekend. Robin’s mom flew in on Saturday and his dad drove up after preaching on Sunday morning.

We told Emma about them coming to visit early in the week last week and she asked about them EVERY day, several times a day. She was so excited to see them!

Here are a few pics from our weekend:

Emma and Daddy waiting for Gigi to get off the airplane:

Yeah! Gigi arrived! Emma jumped up and down and squealed when Gigi walked through the door:

Looking at a photobook with Gigi- Emma loves to look at pictures of herself:

Playing dress up:

Showing Gigi how she rides her rocking horse:

We celebrated 3 Birthdays on Sunday night. Robin and my Aunt Judy share a birthday on February 17th. Robin’s mom’s birthday is on February 28th. We have celebrated all together that past several years. It’s so much fun when both sides of our family get together!

Alicia, Robin, and Judy blowing out their candles:

Emma enjoying a pink cupcake:

Emma loved having her two Grandma’s play with her. They are two of her favorite people!:

Emma reading her favorite book “The Holes In Your Nose” with Pops and Daddy:

This was my favorite scene from the weekend… Emma TOLD, (not asked) Pops and Daddy to have a parade with her. Here they are parading through the house. Notice who the leader is and also notice that Pops and Daddy are cheating:

Still parading…

Bye bye Pops and Gigi, we had fun!

Daddy’s Sweet Heart

Emma LOVED Valentine’s Day!  She had a party at school on Thursday where each of the children in her class brought each other Valentine’s.  I didn’t think Emma would pay much attention to the Valentine’s but she has memorized them and now tells us who each of them are from.  She is pretty observant. 

Here is a picture of Emma on Thursday after her party at school (definitely on a sugar high!)  Her shirt reads, “Daddy’s Sweet Heart.”  She has her daddy wrapped around her little finger. 

 

Nana came over on Friday night to play with Emma so that Robin and I could enjoy a nice Valentine’s Day date.  We went to McGill’s and had filet mignon and creme brulle (it was a little taste of heaven!)  Emma had a blast with Nana as always so it was a great night for everyone.

Emma and Nana coloring

Emma has really become interested in coloring… which is great at restaurants when we are waiting for our food!

She loves for us to color with her at home.  We have recently bought her several different coloring books and she will sit on the floor and color for 30 minutes at a time.  By the way, she really loves the color orange these days.  What’s up with that???  Orange has nothing to do with Baylor, Jenks, OU, or any other team that we love.  I also do not decorate with orange, talk about orange, or like orange!  It is always the first crayon she asks for.  Silly girl.  We’ll work on changing that soon. 

Here is a picture of Nana and Emma coloring at lunch after church about a week ago:

Have I mentioned that Emma loves baby dolls?

Emma LOVES baby dolls.  She has one in her arms at all times of the day.  We have successfully weaned her from the paci, but now we have the baby dolls and they are an addiction I can tolerate.  Emma is adorable with her baby dolls.  She talks to them all day long, bossing them around, loving on them, caring for them. 

Here is Emma with Daddy at Nana’s house hangin’ out on the couch with “Big Baby.” Daddy is always such a good sport with the baby dolls.  He rocks them, feeds them, changes their pretend “poopy diapers,”  and anything else Emma tells Daddy to do with them.  He was definitely meant to be a Girl Dad.  :)

Aunt Judy and Uncle Ronny Paparazzi

(above picture- Uncle Ronny tickling Emma at dinner!)

Emma is one loved little girl… especially by all of her aunts, uncles, great-aunts, and great-uncles.

On Jan. 31st we went out to eat for Uncle Brandon’s birthday and Great-Aunt Judy and Great-Uncle Ronny came back to Nana’s house for some cake and ice cream.

I walked into the living room at one point to find Emma sitting on the floor while  Judy and  Ronny both had their cell phones out taking pictures of her.  It was a pretty cute sight.  She wasn’t even doing anything particularly fancy or cute.  Just sitting…. and she loved every second of it. 

We love you Judy and Ronny.

Chef Emma

(I’m a bit behind on blogging… I plan to catch up in the next few days with several posts.)

On Saturday, Jan. 31st, Emma and I attending a very fun “Cooking Themed” Birthday party for our good friend Chloe who turned 3! 

The entire party was so cute and such a great idea!  Chloe’s mommy made each child a chef’s hat with their name on it and a hand-sewn apron that we got to keep!  Chloe’s mommy deserves an award from Martha Stewart for throwing such a successful toddler birthday party.  :)

In normal “Emma fashion,” she was very observant of all of the other kiddos for about the first hour of the party.  She kept telling me to make the different food items because she wasn’t quite ready to participate yet. :)  We made a pepperoni pizza, trail mix, and fruit kabobs.  Then after all of our hard work, we got to eat some yummy cupcakes (see below.)

Emma was pretty timid during the party, but when we got in our car to leave, she couldn’t stop talking about “cookin.”  She said, “Let’s make more pizza mommy.” 

Ever since attending the party, Emma has asked to help me cook just about every day.  I guess it sparked some interest in her!  I pray that she’s a better cook than I am when she grows up!

 

Is this the cutest Chef cupcake you’ve ever seen?:

 

 

Emma and Mommy working on their pizza:

 

Chef Emma:

 

 

A view of one side of the table- there were about 13 Toddler Chefs at the party:

Iced In

Tulsa received its fair share of ice, sleet, and snow on Monday and Tuesday causing our roads to be very slippery.  Many area businesses are closed including most of the local schools.  School is closed again tomorrow, for the 3rd day in a row.  I’m not sure Emma even realizes that she is supposed be going to school, we’re having so much fun together at home!

We’ve tried to keep Emma occupied with lots of fun indoor activities like flashcards (nerdy, huh?), dress up, beauty shop, play-doh, painting a bathroom, playing pretend kitchen, etc.  I’m usually pretty worn out by the end of the day!

Today we ventured outside to our backyard for some “sledding” in a laundry basket pulled by mommy.  Emma loved it!  Koby loved running alongside the laundry basket.  It was pretty cute.

Luckily, I’ve been off work the past couple of afternoons also so it has made this a really neat, cozy time for our family.  I love it when we get quality time that we weren’t planning on having. :) What a blessing.

Here are a few pics of our snow/ice bunny:

Our homemade sled:

Pajama Day at School

We don’t have a lot to blog about this week… it’s been a great, fairly uneventful week.  No trips to the emergency room praise the Lord!

Below is a picture of Emma on Thursday morning.  It was pajama day at her school.  It was really funny when I talked to her about pajama day before school that day- she kept trying to tell me that she was not supposed to wear pajamas to school.  She was really nervous that she’d be the only one.  When we got to school and she saw all of her friends wearing pajamas, she was SO excited and thought it was the coolest day ever!  I let her bring her Baby Madeline to school for pajama day and the teachers said she had Baby Madeline participate in ALL of the activities and explained EVERYTHING that was going on to Baby Madeline- what an imagination!

 

I also wanted to mention a prayer request.  For those of you that haven’t already been connected to this blog, please visit: http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/

This is a family that I’ve never met, but feel like I’ve known for years because I’ve kept up with her blog for several months.  They are a wonderful Christian family from Arkansas who struggled with infertility and finally got pregnant last year.  They just had their baby girl, Harper, last week and she was in very serious condition immediately after birth.  Ironically, she was flown to Tulsa to a NICU here.  Being a NICU nurse, I read about her condition and didn’t think there was a chance that she’d make it through the first night here.  However, every day she has improved and it sounds like she’s on the road to recovery.  This has been a huge eye opener to me a reminder that once again, GOD IS IN CONTROL!  Many people are praying for this little girl and I’m sure they’d love to have a few more people praying.   I know I am!  Thanks.

I’ve been Tagged!

I’ve been tagged by Terra! 

The rules are:  Post your 4th picture in your 4th digital photo folder and talk about it.   

This picture was take June 29, 2005 in Washington D.C.  Robin and I took an awesome vacation for our 5 year anniversary (which was on June 24th.)  We spent about 4 days in Washington D.C. and then took an Amtrak train to New York City where we met up with our good friends, The Kreys, for about 4 more days.  Neither of us had been to D.C. or N.Y.C. so this was a really cool trip for both of us.  We did a LOT of sight-seeing! 

I am very grateful for the vacations that Robin and I have taken and I’m prayerful that we’ll get to take another vacation  in 2010 for our 10 year anniversary! 

Ok, so now I’m tagging the following 4 friends: Jessica, Kylie, Christy, and Katie (unless you’ve already been tagged, then I guess you have an “out!”)

“Searching for a Needle in the Haystack…”

This was a quote from the Urgent Care physician who worked with a physician assistant for 2 hours to get a sewing needle out of my foot!  Yes, you heard me right.  For some of you, this is already too much information.  But how could I leave this important event out of my journal?

Thursday night after getting home from work, Robin and I were in our bedroom moving furniture when I stepped on something very sharp.  I was immediately in a ton of pain but we weren’t sure what I stepped on.   Robin got down on his hands and knees and found a sewing needle sticking straight up out of the carpet- and it was broken in half.  That makes sense- the other half was still in my foot!  I worked for a few minutes to try to retrieve the needle with some of my nursing supplies, but we could soon tell that it was not going to be an at-home fix!  Emma was very concerned for me and kept trying to hand me different supplies out of my first aid kit- you know like a thermometer, blood pressure cuff, and other useful things at a time like that!  Maybe nursing is in her future? 

Please note- No, I have not starting sewing.  I do however have a sewing kit that I vaguely remember Emma dropping a few weeks ago after move in and apparently we did not pick up all of the contents!

We quickly dropped Emma off at Nana’s house and rushed to the Urgent Care center.  We were treated very well- I was very impressed by the Dr’s and nurses.  They took on my case as quite a challenge and all of the staff came by to see my foot!  It took several x-rays and a few hours of “searching” for the needle before retrieving it.

3 hours and 6 stitches later, I was home cozy in my bed.  Luckily my foot stayed numb until Friday, when it started hurting like crazy!  I’ll have to take it slow for a while and running a marathon is probably not in my near future (darn! I was really planning on doing that!) 

I guess this was just one of those weird things that just happens.  We’re so thankful that it was my foot and not Emma’s!  I can’t imagine how tragic that would have been.

One of the cool parts of the story was meeting the PA- she is shown in the 2nd picture below- turns out she is from WACO, went to BAYLOR, and knows some of my former roommates!  What a small world.  She has a daughter a little bit younger than Emma.  Do you Waconians recognize Rachel Jumper Taylor below???  (and yes- this is a lovely picture of me, I know!)

So, here’s hoping that this is our ONLY ER/urgent care visit for this year! :)