This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sterling for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.
Sometimes when you have more than one child, it can be hard finding any activities that both of your kids can do together. One activity that is fun and most kids of all ages love is bath time! Because my daughter is one there’s not a whole lot of crafts that she can help her brother with, who is 3. So when it comes to bath time I’m always looking for ways to make it more fun. One of our favorite bath time activities is painting, I have two different recipes that are safe for babies who still tend to put things in their mouth and one for older children. What’s great about doing an art project in the tub is it’s easy clean up, and they can get a bath afterwards.
We’ve been working on upgrading our bathroom and had the new Sterling Prevail bath doors installed this past week. I love the sleek design and the installation was easy! You can see the before and after photo below! The Sterling Prevail doors with the ComforTrack technology are available for both bath doors and shower doors.
Directions: First grab a cupcake pan and fill each circle with shaving cream. Put a few drops of your neon food coloring in the shaving cream. Next mix the colors, the kids love helping with this step and mixing their own color combinations. And finally…let them have some fun in the tub!
Our Sterling shower doors with ComforTrack technology have a cushioned threshold that bends to applied pressure, so that I am able to kneel, sit, or lean on the track, making it easier and more comfortable to bathe my kids, access the shower, or clean the bathing/showering space.
Read article : Bathroom Paint Colors - It All Started With Paint
I’m sitting here shaking my head in disbelief …
sheer, utter, 100% mystified disbelief.
Do you remember my weekend project? The one where I redid the kids bathroom with a huge helping hand from my neighbors at Ace Hardware? This one …
Well, the folks at Ace Hardware shared this with their Facebook fans. And you know what? There was more than one person who preferred the “before” over the “after” …
Huh?
Yep. I’m shaking my head, questioning what exactly they love in the before? Perhaps the orange oak cabinet? The stained sheet vinyl floor? The beige sink? No, no, it must the plastic white handles on that orange oak cabinet …
And then I chuckled … and admonished myself for my snark. Bad Linda.
To each his own. Style and design is subjective. And yet I can’t help to think that if I had given them a personal and in-person tour of the before they might agree with me that the after is vastly improved …
vastly so!
When I redid this bathroom – the bathroom shared by my teen son and teen daughter – I consulted closely with said daughter on the design and colors. She is the one who spends the most time in this room. Though, in all fairness, the son does take exceptionally long showers but I’m pretty sure his eyes are closed much of that time …
(okay, seriously, as I’m writing this post said son just walked down the stairs after taking a shower and fessed up that he mistakenly washed his hair with soap instead of shampoo and now it feels all weird and hard and stringy. The sleep showering assumption has been confirmed).
But my daughter? She is a bath lover. A daily occurrence for her. So I wanted the bathroom it to feel soft and soothing and relaxing to compliment her treasured bath time …
The first color we chose together didn’t go over well. Not because of the color. It was lovely. But it was much darker and bolder and, in this small window-less space, overwhelming. So we went back to the drawing board and selected Clark + Kensington’s Lucky Charm. It’s a blue-gray color that is much softer. And it’s a primer and paint in one, so it easily covered that rejected bolder color with two coats …
And then I did something crazy. I took that very same flat paint and painted the beloved-by-some orange oak cabinet …
I gave it two coats of the flat latex in Lucky Charm. And then I gave it two coats of clear wax (I used some Annie Sloan wax I had on hand, but any clear wax would work).
And can I tell you something? I just love, love how it turned out. No brush strokes and the wax has hardened nicely so this cabinet will stand up to two teens who can’t seem to brush their teeth over the sink …
am I the only one with this problem?
The beadboard wallpaper (I really need to get that ‘how to hang’ post written!), trim, baseboards, and door were all painted with Clark + Kensington’s Designer White.
The medicine cabinet was painted with Ace’s Cabinet, Door & Trim paint …
It’s and Alkyd enamel paint so it’s thick and self leveling and, in the end, the finish looks like it was sprayed on, not brushed on …
And can I just say how great it feels to have a room complete. Top-to-bottom-cross-it-off-the-to-do-list-finished! Even it it’s not to everyone’s taste, it makes me smile. And my kids smile. And that is the critique I value most …
P.S. Just in time for the New Year, I’m giving away a $100 gift card to Ace Hardware. You know, to jump start your 2014 home improvement and paint projects …
a Rafflecopter giveaway
This post was written as part of my partnership withAce Hardware as a member of theAce Blogger Panel. However, any and all opinions are my own.
Read article : Nautical Bathroom Makeover - The Cards We Drew
This post has been months in the making…we started planning this bathroom in June and finally in August we’ve finished it! Our Nautical Bathroom for our son is complete and we are all in love and sighing a sigh of relief.
When we moved into our house, we had these plain, vanilla bathrooms in each room. We have 2 1/2 bathes total and to date we have one and a half finished now. Here’s our 1/2 bath makeover from a few months ago. Our master bath, the best of all, is last on the list. Our bathrooms lacked character and were outfitted with builders grade cabinets, lights, and fixtures. While the cabinets remain the same, we hit the whole room with a coat of paint and tons of updates…and we took our bathroom from THIS:
Light green, ugly cabinets, plain jane bathroom with NO character…and definitely NOT a kids bathroom…to this AFTER:
Doesn’t even look like the same bathroom anymore does it?! Let’s get a side by side look for comparison 😉
Ok…enough before and after’s…although I kinda love looking at them. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty…what did we do?
I’ll have some more follow up posts this week with specifics, but here’s the what we did:
1. Painted the cabinets and trim in the room white.
2. Repainted the room from light green to light gray, yes, it’s gray, not light blue. Promise. It’s the same color we’ll be used for our son’s bedroom makeover (next up on the list and in progress). It’s a Benjamin Moore color.
4. Replaced all of the hardware in the bathroom with great new fixtures provided by Moen. Moen sent us brushed nickel bathroom fixtures to try out after I got to see them at SNAP in April. They really took the room from builder’s grade to a whole new level of customized. We used all new fixtures from their Ashville Collection that is meant to be spot resistant and microban protected. We LOVE the new fixtures and later this week I’ll show you some of the details of getting those items replaced! Thank goodness my dad is a contractor because we wouldn’t have been able to do that ourselves!
6. Added a MirrorMate frame to our plain, unframed mirror from before. The white frame really adds a gorgeous touch to the room and makes the mirror look custom for a great price and little effort. It takes NO time to install and I’d buy a MirrorMate frame any day over a new mirror.
7. Then, of course, we decorated. I recycled a lot of stuff I already had around the house and added a GORGEOUS handmade sign from Evie Ivy…I saw her first at SNAP and purchased a sign from her there and knew I had to have another one for this bathroom. HER STUFF IS ADORABLE and I LOVE IT. Seriously…go check it out. I want one of each (more to come on that later this week). Our previous bathroom was light green, so I used the same bath mat and striped green bath towels to go with the room.
I made the little frames over the toilet using scrapbook paper and wooden decorations I purchased from JoAnn’s. I painted a few of them to match my decor better, attached them to the paper, and put them back in the frames I already had. They work perfectly over the toilet and I already had them from the guest bedroom we’re converting.
Overall…I’m so happy with how this turned out. I’ll share more specific details on all the awesome vendors I used later this week.
Note: This is NOT a paid or sponsored post; however, I did receive free products from some vendors to collaborate with them for this makeover. All words and opinions are 100% my own and I personally recommend each and every one of the vendors I used for my makeover! I’ll give you more details on all the smaller pieces of this makeover as the week continues.
Special thanks to:
Moen
Barn Light Electric
Evie Ivy
Ryobi Tools
MirrorMate
My dad…for helping us install all the “hard” stuff
And my hubby for putting up with a whiny, tired pregnant woman who just wanted to finish this project.
Ok…enough before and after’s…although I kinda love looking at them. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty…what did we do?
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