It was an–unaversary. (I just watched Alice in Wonderland and was at the un-birthday part)…. Yes, I’m a weirdo that watches Disney movies on a Saturday night while blogging.
We didn’t truly party, but here’s the lowdown on how we decided to celebrate… This was due to having 2 of our 3 kiddos under the weather, and thus we skipped the generous sitter offers we had. We were bummed, but made the best of it.
Call us crazy, but we seem to like to DIY on anniversary. Maybe it’s because we married on MLK weekend, and we usually get an extra day, who knows. For example. On our very first wedding anniversary, in our second home, we had this brown paneling all over. We didn’t like how dark it was, and decided to paint it. It took 2 coats of Kilz primer, and 2 coats of paint. We were high the whole weekend on paint fumes… kinda. Here’s the best part, a year later, we tore it ALL out and re-did the whole basement, added a 100 square feet, and a bathroom. But the even bigger kicker, was we tortured ourselves once again, by buying paneling and doing it all over again. :)
Our first home, basement after 2nd re-do of paneling…
Fast forward to this year. Good old Anniversary #9.. We took the day off after our anniversary, (it was a Friday) and at Joe’s suggestion, we utilized supplies we already had to update the kids bathroom thinking we could do if for $200.00.
Why?
Well when we bought the house it looked like this.
Now let me state, that it’s not horrible, and is livable. But, the fan was broken, and remained on all the time, and it wasn’t really my style. However, it was fully functional, and had been updated at some point in the house’s 35 year life.
I decided to make due with what we already had, and with the help of a dear family friend, we made it more like this…..
Sorry about the bad photo. It’s the only one I could find. We changed the curtain, and added colorful towels and decor..
Here’s a shot of some of it.
Now in the photo above there a a few things to note: The faucet. The whole house had these, and they are very hard for little hands to get on and off. They drove me crazy, and I felt it discouraged hand washing. Which from this post, you now know is a big deal and concern for us. :)
Also, note the colors of the wallpaper. They just don’t scream all boy. And, really they shouldn’t. The prior owners had one of child of each gender, and the kids shared the space.
The bathroom stayed like this until 11 months later. We came home from work to find this….
The poor nanny was cleaning, and somehow pushed too hard, so off went the toilet paper holder. Now this wasn’t the reason we decided to update, it just started my brain working on it. :).
In all reality, the pool had just closed for the summer, and I had a bee in my bonnet to “do something” So, thinking it would be no big deal, I decided one afternoon, (when I was getting amazeball naps), to rip off all the wall paper. When you are as impatient as I am, this is never a good idea.
Why?
Because, with 3 kids, working weekends, and hubby having 2 jobs (at that time), it meant that it wouldn’t really get done in a few days or even a week. Try 5 months.
Here is what it looked like the night of our anniversary when we started…
Here is the light, which I wasn’t a fan of.
Also, if you look back at this shot, see the laminate floor and trim, it was plastic, and once removed, just yucky. You will see in the shot after this one.
Here is the glue and if you look closely, you can see how they wall papered over wall paper behind the toilet.
So lovely right? Here is where I will leave you. Reminding you that we agreed beforehand that we would try to only spend $200. Do you think we made it? Have you ever done your own renovation? Did you stay on budget?
