Ikea Hackers

Have you seen some of the fabulousness that is going on over at Ikea Hackers? Man! Talk about squeezing blood from a turnip! Check it:

Drum Shade Pendant

 Painted Edgeby Rug

I always get so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff in Ikea that my mind goes blank and I can’t imagine doing anything like this. I’ve got to plan ahead for this kind of stuff.

Mini home makevover

The hubs gave me the green light to renovate our tiny half bathroom over the weekend. It’s kinda strange actually because this was waaaaay down on the project list, far behind a new kitchen sink, renovating the fireplace and surrounding wall, and gutting our master bath and walk-in closet. I’m not even really sure how this project came about but I’m glad it did! We like to do projects ourselves rather than hire outside contractors. One, because we’re cheap, and two because, well, we’re cheap.

Here’s a picture of the bathroom before:

This is the only picture I got since the bathroom isn’t even big enough to stand in and take a picture. It’s THAT small. The wall color is a hideous dark, grayish green sick baby poo color, which is actually a vast improvement over what it was when we first moved in the house – flourescent yellow. And the bathroom has no windows so with this dark color, the room itself is pretty dark, so yet another coat of paint on the walls is in order.

I came up with 3 different schemes for the new room over the weekend and put them to a vote. We immediately veto’d one and were left with 2 choices. I was pretty torn between the 2 and could have easily gone either way, so I enlisted the help of my Facebook peeps and asked them to vote. Hands down, #2 won out. That and the hubs picked #2 as well and since he’s footing the bill I figured his vote should count for something.

Here were the 2 options (#2 being the winner):

OPTION 1

OPTION 2 – WINNER!

I purchased everything but the countertop and the floor tile over the weekend (on the internet, of course), so hopefully we can knock this project out pretty quickly. And by quickly I mean 2 weeks cuz I’ve got some out-of-towners coming on March 16th! The difficult part will be starting with the paint because we are keeping the toilet and the sink (for a future project) so everything will have to come out of the room to paint it. This includes the lights so we can fix the wall behind it if necessary, which means the room will be DARK! And I am painting horizontal stripes (inspired by John & Sherry) so painting will take a couple of days at best. Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted with progress and of course, the finished product!

Game on, Bob Villa!