Nap Time Project

Last Sunday our family experienced a bizarre household rarity.  In the middle of the afternoon, I began to detect an eerie calm settling around me.  The princess toys had all but vanished, the gurgle-y giggles had been stilled, and the silence was near-deafening.  My brain began to race, and frantic, I ran to Ryan to confirm my confused suspicions.  Solemnly, he nodded, and I knew at that moment that my dreamlike assumptions were in fact reality.

Jordan and Jackson were napping at the same time.

After a few seconds of dumbfounded head-scratching (shouldn’t I be parenting somehow??), I snapped in to action realizing that I had before me the perfect opportunity to delve in to something I have always enjoyed, but since moving in to our new home, haven’t really indulged.  It was house project time!

Since I knew the clock was ticking, I decided to start with something small.   A few days before I’d taken advantage of a fantastic deal at Sherwin-Williams and picked up a few buckets of paint. Grabbing the lighter shade, I collected the rest of our paint supplies and headed to the tiny toilet room in our master bath.

Here we are before, in all of its stark glory.

This is the ceiling as I began cutting in with “Nomadic Desert”.  It wasn’t until I looked up that I realized that this room actually has FIVE itty bitty walls.

A few from the top.  This room is definitely a single!

Several acrobatic and less-than-graceful maneuvers later, the room was painted and then second coated.

Jackson and I waiting for the paint to dry.  I wrapped up the painting just in time to greet our favorite little man.  Now if I could only say the same for the clean-up…

As I worked on my long-awaited house project, I began dreaming of all the follow-up jobs that awaited me.  Since we found out that we were expecting our precious boy the week of our move-in, the majority of my home-making was put on hold until the arrival of the little one and the doctor’s permission to come within ten feet of a paint brush again.  Now that the tool was in my hand, it was as though someone threw open the floodgates.  It wasn’t enough now to merely paint.  I wanted more projects!  More!!

I headed upstairs to our guest bathroom and removed an over-the-potty shelving unit that had been a decorative thorn in my side.  It’s not like there was really anything wrong with it, necessarily, but it didn’t really match with what I had in mind for that room.  Plus it was a little bit rickety, and at that point was serving absolutely no function for us.  Time to repurpose!

I began by removing the chrome door knobs and spray painting them a darker finish to match the new bathroom hardware.  After my first unsuccessful attempt to cover the knobs completely without peeks of chrome shimmering through, I saw a great tip on HGTV. Thank you Sabrina Soto for your brilliant painting trick!

Attach the knobs to a piece of cardboard, and then spray away.  You’ll be able to reach all of the nooks and crannies with your desired color, and then the knobs will be able to dry without resting and smudging.  Genius!

Since I planned to use this cabinet for bathroom items, I thought that the see-through glass was definitely not the way to go.  Feeling like a warrior princess with my noisy and authoritative power tool, I removed the glass doors.

I then gathered my “concealing” supplies.

I traced along the side of the glass on the back of my chosen fabric with a sharpie, then cut out the fabric and used some Fray Check to protect the edges.

I then covered the front of the fabric with a mounting spray and attached the glass.  There’s probably a more technical tool I should have used at this step, but the not-so technical me chose a rolling pin to knock out the bubbles.

(Please forgive my blurry picture.  This was totally posed and taken unskillfully with one hand!)

Today I enlisted the help of my talented and precise husband to finish up my mini-project assembly.  Since this shelving piece was so terribly flimsy, I wanted to somehow mount this to the wall so we wouldn’t have a commode catastrophe.

The only shot I got of Ryan’s assistance.  Couldn’t have wrapped this up without him!

Our wall mount.

After attaching the unit to the wall, Ryan then affixed our new toilet paper holder. Oh, how I enjoy those dark finishes!

And the finished product!  It’s so fun to see all of “our” stuff come together, and I can’t wait to jump to something else. I wonder which room will be next…

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