It’s time to get the sinks for the master bathroom, since we are getting close to finishing up the master bedroom and bathroom. We decided that we want vessel sinks, like we put in the guest bathroom, BUT we want the master bath sinks to be porcelain as opposed to glass. The glass vessel sink looks pretty in our guest bathroom, but it’s virtually impossible to keep clean. For whatever reason, the hard water spots and sticks to the glass like crazy.
Faucet.com is having a sale, so I figure it’s a good time to purchase the sinks. Here are the styles that I have it narrowed down to:
Summer and I have really hit a road block on this one. We finished all the brown marble in the master bedrooms wet room (toilet/shower) except for the trim. It looks great. Now, we were going to use the remaining brown marble around our master jacuzi and two sinks (on the left and right side of the tub)…but after laying out all of the tiles and looking at it, we decided that we didn’t like it.
So, here we are, trying to figure out what to do in there. A different color marble? A slab instead of tiles? Perhaps we should get Granite or something along those lines? Summer and I are both brainstorming, so I decided it would be a great idea to get input from all of you guys. How should we finish the sinks and jaccuzzi in the master bedroom? If you want to post pictures, just put the link in your comment and I will post the pictures.
Here are some pictures of the jacuzzi corner, sink area and of the rest of the bedroom. Put your thinking caps on!
Stefan and I have been shopping for our master bedroom furniture for a few weeks. We have stopped at every furniture store that we could find from Rincon to Mayaguez (Sears, Pitusa, Berrios, Rooms to Go, Seduca, etc) and have been highly unsuccessful in our mission for a nice bedroom set. The handful of times that we have found something decent, we come to find that they don’t carry what we want in king size. As a matter of fact, most furnitures stores carry so few king size bed options, that we started asking off the bat, “Just show us what you have in king size beds”. The sales guys then leads us over to the two ugliest beds in the store and tries his darnedest to sell it to us.
Today, we set off on our final mission. We went to 5 furniture stores before deciding that we would just go to Sears and get the bedroom set that we thought was “okay”, last time we were there. In a last ditch effort to avoid settling on something we didn’t really want, we went to the Pier One that is located in the Sear store, first. Low and behold, we found the PERFECT king sized headboard, dresser, night stand and bench, for our master bedroom! It’s from the Shanghai collection (which just happened to be on sale this week) and is pretty much exactly what we wanted. We also purchased a king sized Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and everything should be delivered next week.
The last two days, Stefan and I have been concentrating our efforts on getting our offices in order. It’s really, really hard to work when your office is a construction zone wreck, filled with random piles of crap! So, here is the progress on our offices. I’ll let you guess which office is Stefans and which is mine ;)…
I spent a good hour or two just moving the furniture around, trying to get the perfect lay out. As I mentioned before, the walls are concrete block and plaster, so we have to drill into concrete in order to hang things on the wall. This leaves little room for error when making the final decision on where everything is going to go. Getting everything on the walls perfectly straight was probably the most time consuming part, but I got everything right on the first try, thanks to my handy tape measure, calculator and level!
Stefan and I have been trying to take a break from working on the house, while Conner and Dianne are in town visiting, but I wanted to finished the closet really bad. So, Conner and Dianne decided to help us out and finish up the last of the master closet.
They helped build the last shelf and hang the last dowel. Our closet is finally complete and I love it!
Conner and Dianne helping build our closet.
Our completed closet!
Left side of the closet.
Right side of the closet.
Fill ‘er up! Can you guess which side is Summer’s?!
We love organization!
To make this closet, we used the following materials:
~ 3/4″ cedar plywood (4 or 5 4′x8′ sheets)
~ 6 wood dowels
~ 6 sets of dowel flanges
~ Belt hooks
~ Wood glue
Tools used:
~ Circular saw
~ Nail gun and nails
~ Electric sander
~ Level
~ Squaring ruler
~ Tape Measure/ruler
The total cost to build this closet was around $300 (since we already owned all the tools) and it took us about 6 - 8 hours of labor. Although, we can probably do it a lot quicker now that we have the kinks worked out :).
Since the center shelf is floor to ceiling, we had to construct most of it inside the closet.
We measured wrong, as you can see on the top rear of the shelf. So we cut some additional pieces and fixed it. Luckly for me, Stefan is as big of a perfectionist as I am.
Day 2: Pieces for the sides have been carefully measured and cut and I am sanding the edges.
Right side has been successfully built (on the 1st try this time!).
Sides installed!
So far, I am so excited about what we’ve built! There was a bit of bickering in the beginning since neither of us has any experience building furniture and both of us are “A” personalities, but we’ve found our niches and we’re moving right along. I draw what we visualize, we work together to get the measurements right on paper, I measure and mark where the wood is to be cut, Stefan cuts the wood, I sand the edges on the cuts and we both put the pieces together with wood glue, a squaring ruler and a nail gun.
When building a closet (or furniture) it’s SO important to get your measurements 100% correct before you start cutting up all the expensive wood. All of my fashion design classes are all coming back to me now…Furniture design and fashion design are very similar when it comes to putting the design on paper, measuring, cutting and building. Who would’ve thought…:)
Today we are going to hang the dowels and build the side shelves. Off to Home Depot!
Damn you, westelm.com! I found the perfect day bed for our guest bedroom and they won’t ship to Puerto Rico.
A day bed seems like the perfect solution for our guest bedroom. Since there is a queen size bed in the loft area, we’ve been going back and forth on if we were going to get another bed or perhaps a pull out couch or something along those lines.
Cool daybed = bueno, West Elm’s shipping policy = no bueno!
We are keeping the upstairs of our house somewhat tradition when it comes to the interior design, so we decided to get a little buck wild,insane, um, creative, with the downstairs. For the downstairs bathroom, we picked out a dark gray (almost black) tile for the floors, light gray tile with oriental accents for the shower and a bold “cranberry” color for the walls. Well, that “cranberry” color turned out to be HOT PINK. Here is the progress of the bathroom and laundry room so far:
Every one that has seen the bathroom has laughed and made a “techno”, “nightclub” or “lets do drugs and get naked in here!” comment about our sexy little techno bathroom…haha. We were going for a more zen feel, but whatever, it’s hilarious. I wish we had the foresight and purchased a black toilet for this bathroom.
Before my last trip to San Diego, I wanted to get the paint done in my office. Unfortunately I was rushed, didn’t read the faux painting instructions and it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it. So I abandoned the project, until today. Here is the base coat + partial paint that didn’t turn out:
I’m doing a faux finish that requires a lighter tinted paint (the seafoam looking paint) as a base coat, with a paint/glaze mix for the finishing coat (the darker teal color).
On my 1st try, I was rolling the darker teal paint on and then trying to manipulate the paint with cheesecloth, for a weathered look. Unfortunately I was getting roller lines and I ran out of cheese cloth about 1/10th of the way through…
So, I resumed the project today with a new game plan. I mixed the glaze and paint (4 parts glaze to 1 part paint) and cut up a terrycloth towel and used that as my paint brush.
I scrunched the towel into a ball, dipped it into the glaze/paint mix and “washed” the walls in a circular motion. It really was just like washing/scrubbing a car, and I like how it turned out (for the most part).
Here is the finished faux finish:
Now I need to paint the white walls (they’ve been primed already), and I’m thinking of adding a pearlescent additive to the white paint to give it an interesting shine. I’m also going to paint the window panes white.
After the white paint, I need to pick out baseboards, outlet covers and hang all of the dohickies that go on the wall (which I need to get right the 1st time, since I’ll be drilling into concrete to hang anything in my office).
Since the upstairs flooring has been laid, we decided to set up the living room set that was delivered a few weeks ago (and has since been sitting in huge boxes in Stefans office). Here is the dark brown leather couch and chair we got at Rooms To Go in Mayaguez:
We picked up the carpet at the Marshalls Mega Store (they have a great selection!) in San Juan and the TV came from the Costco in San Juan.
I can’t even tell you how nice it is to have a comfortable place to lounge! Before the couch, we would either be sitting at our desks, on a bucket or in the hammock, which isn’t very social friendly…
In our quest for decent furniture in/around Rincon, we’ve found the two best places to be Sears and Rooms To Go, both in Mayaguez.
