Last week's Link It or Lump It Link Party was stocked full of amazing projects. Since I'm a sucker for paint and painted furniture...and since I majorly have the itch to paint something but this weather is holding me back...I thought I'd round up a few of my favorite paint projects from the link party. I'm telling you these seven are some amazing makeovers with paint!
So last week my daughter pulled the towel bar - wall anchors and all - straight out of the wall in our master bathroom. She left a pair of golf ball-size holes in the wall and gave me a perfect excuse to make a new towel hook.
For months, I had been holding onto this idea of using some old curtain tie backs, that we no longer use, as some kind of hooks. Oh when the stars align...
Today we have a special guest blogger joining us. Sue from the lovely (and very informative) blog My-Bathrooms Blog is here to share with us seven awesome tips on bathroom towel organization. I'll let Sue take it from here...
With so much to be done and squeezed into the bathroom, it is hard to give this fiercely practical and functional room an attractive and charming finish. However, by choosing accessories carefully keeping your décor theme and chosen colors in mind, you will be able to fill your bathroom with color, appeal and plenty of useful storage space and practicality.
A place to hang your towels is a perfect example of this. Instead of the standard dreary row of chrome hooks why not consider the following options?
Free Standing Towel Racks
Eke out precious space in your bathroom by investing in a freestanding towel rail that can be moved around the room as needed – even being popped outside the bathroom should it get overcrowded for any reason! Freestanding towel rails at Argos come in a huge range of shapes and sizes, and no matter how small your bathroom, you will be able to find one that suits your needs and fits into the available space.
You might remember a few months ago when we had our master bathroom expanded so we could replace our tiny vanity with a double... No? Okay here's a refresher. Part of that renovation included combining our two reach and grab closets into one 'large' closet (and I do use that world loosely').
I'm just gonna start off by saying the tile floor grout in my master bathroom was pretty narsty. What made it look worse was when we expanded the bathroom, we matched the existing tile floor instead of re-tiling the entire floor. While the tile matches pretty well - although not exact - what made the floor look un-seamless was the dirty grout next to the brand spankin' new clean grout.
So I set out to clean the old grout to make it look new again. Just look at this...ew! I'm slightly embarrassed to even be sharing this with you...but ya know.
Cleaning tile floor grout is actually as easy as a trip to your pantry closet - and I don't mean reaching for the chemicals and bleach. I am not necessarily anti-chemicals - I use them for plenty of jobs - but why spend an hour inhaling fumes when you don't have to? Instead all you need is lemon juice, water, baking soda, and vinegar.
The ratio I used was:
3.5 Cups of Hot Water + 1/2 Cup of Baking Soda + (half of )1/3 Cup Vinegar + 1/3 Cup of Lemon Juice.
So you're probably wondering why I wrote half a 1/3 cup of vinegar...the answer is it's easier than saying .16666. Just fill a 1/3 measuring up half way... You can obviously adjust the amounts to fit the job, but with these measurements I had plenty to clean my bathroom tile floor and plenty left over for the next time.
Okay, so once you have your tile floor grout cleaner concoction mixed, pour it into a spray bottle. Spritz it on the grout and let it sit on there for a few minutes before you start scrubbing.
Now is where the elbow grease comes in - take a tooth brush and start scrubbing....or do what I did and take a chance on one of these handy dandy electronic grout brush cleaners and save your arm. This Rubbermaid Reveal Power Scrubber Brush was on clearance on Target. The price was originally $15.99, but I snagged it for less than $8.
Let me tell you - I would have paid $30 knowing know how easy it made the job. I used the toothbrush method on the tile walls of my shower where the grout lines are really thin and that was a tough job. Doing the same method on the much thicker grout lines on the floor would have required a lot of effort. Anyway - get scrubbing.
This video gives you a really good look at how I cleaned the floor (with one hand and played videographer with the other) and just how quickly it went with the brush. You can see the difference between the cleaned area of the grout and the 'before' after just a few minutes seconds of scrubbing.
After I scrubbed all the grout lines I let my floor steamer sit on small sections of the grout for a few minutes at a time, then scrubbed a little more just to make them shine. This part is definitely not necessary. And just as an FYI all the pictures in this post were taken before I used the steamer so you could see the result just using the solution and scrubbing.
Here's a great side by side of a cleaned area and an area where I had not yet cleaned the grout. What a difference!
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If you get the 2IY Weekly Best Newsletter you've been getting sneak peeks on the major renovations in our master bedroom. We are expanding our master bath to make it large enough for a double vanity. But to do that we had to take about half of my ungodly small 5' reach-and-grab closet - seen on the right below. The closet project was sort of an after thought for me - something that just had to be done because, let's be honest, ain't no girl around that's gonna make it with 2 feet of closet space.
I'm so excited to finally be able to say we have a start date for the renovations on our master bathroom. This is definitely not a DIY project - although I'm sure it will produce a few.
Basically we are expanding our bathroom to make enough room for a double vanity ending our twice daily ritual of the toothbrush/facewash/hair styling dance around the mirror and sink.
When we first thought about making renovations to the bathroom we were told it would be major construction (and cost) and would entail cutting and bumping into the guest room which shares a wall with our master bathroom. But I'm happy to say we've figured out a way to not disrupt the bathroom at all except for the vanity area. Okay so...here's a little looksy look into what's happening.
Here's our master bathroom now.
Small single vanity
You can see it's pretty small and storage is minimal.
