Garage Progress

I've finished painting!  Since I applied the paint directly to drywall, I ended up using about 2 gallons- that stuff sucks paint right up.  Just as a reminder, here's where we started:

To the right.

To the left.

You can see how I started with our interior paint, Kilim Beige, around the doorway.  Frankly, it just wasn't covering well enough.  And here's where we're at now thanks to our leftover exterior paint.

More left.

More right.

The paint really helped things look cleaner and less cluttered.  We are still debating about paining the ceiling. We think it would look nice, but we all know that painting ceilings is not a party.  Jury's still out.

Here's the wall to the left of the door.  We moved the key hooks down so we could put up a shelf and some artwork.  In the spirit of the garage as "man domain," most of what's on the wall are pieces of memorabilia of Steve's.

Nerd alert.

My favorite part of this wall is the whiteboard on the shelf.  Our chest freezer is notoriously disorganized and I hate digging through it when meal planning, especially in winter when it's chilly in the garage.  I took the time to inventory the chest freezer and wrote it on the whiteboard.  This way, I can keep track of what's in there without rummaging around a bunch of meats by simply adding and deleting items from the whiteboard as they go in and out of the freezer.

Every freezer has some mystery meat, right?

Aside from some garden tools that had been hanging out by our water heater moving to the garden shed, this little corner got some much needed organization too.  Our exercise mats are now neatly rolled up and on the shelf with the Xbox (which we love for playing exercise videos or streaming Netflix while treadmilling).  My weenie weights hold the mats in place.  We have plans to build a small shelf below for heavier weights and kettlebells, and Steve's heavybag will get stashed there too, so all of our exercise equipment is in one spot.

Exercise center.

The front end of the garage is coming right along.  So what do you think about the ceiling?  Paint or no paint?

Psst- check out this post at Beneath My Heart's "Best DIY Projects of July" Linky Party!

Cover-Up

Kenny is the BOSS, Princess Hayley, Angel, Oh ya!

What does it all mean?  I'm not sure.  I am sure that I don't want to read these phrases scrawled on the inside of our garage in sidewalk chalk and spray paint anymore.  And the best way to do that is a little cover up mission.  I recruited Martha Stewart to help me.  Or her Flagstone paint, to be exact.

Buh-bye, Princess Hayley.

We had about seven gallons of Matha Stewart's Flagstone exterior paint after using it as the base paint for our house last summer.  I figured, why not?  It's a little dark for a place that is already kind of dark, but it's free, and we had a TON of the stuff.

I decided to paint the entire finished section of wall, which includes the wall closest to the interior of our house and about four feet's worth of drywall on either side of that.  And I figured I'd add some organization and pizzazz so long as I was classing the joint up.  More on that later.  Here's how we looked after just adding the paint and a shelf that had been gathering dust in the corner for the last almost two years (don't judge).

Delightfully scribble-free.

Is there still work to be done?  Oh yes.  See: laundry basket full of shoes, half-empty box of wine in front of chest freezer, and lack of photos showing the whole finished wall for reference.  But I've already gotten to work on it.  And you'll get to see it soon.  I promise.  Spoiler alert- the finished wall may or may not include Star Trek memorabilia.

Guest Bath Updates

Our guest bath was virtually unused for the first 18 months that we lived here.  But lately it's been getting a workout!  We've had guests staying with us about every other weekend for a few months now.  And now that our guest bathroom's function has been road-tested, we've added a few simple updates to make life easier for overnight guests.

Adding a second rug.
Stepping out of the shower onto bare linoleum can be a slip hazard.  And also, why wouldn't you want your freshly washed piggies to have a more comfortable landing?  The rug we used in front of the shower is the exact same rug we already have in front of the sink, and it matches the gray-green paint in this bathroom perfectly.

Better footing.

Adding a second (and third and fourth) towel hook.

We had noticed that our overnight guests didn't have a convenient place to hang towels to dry.  People don't sling their wet towels over shower curtain rods for the fun of it!  Since wall space was already at a premium, and we wanted to have room for multiple towels convenient to the shower, we went with a swiveling three-hook fixture.

Three is the magic number.

I think it's super cute and love the vintage vibe.  This hook is from Target's Threshold collection, and has already gotten rave reviews from guests.

Swivel, baby.

Adding a shower caddy.
This was such a "duh" moment.  Nobody likes to bend over in the shower to retrieve the shampoo, and nobody likes to let their soap get used up on the built-in tray by the shower's over-spray.  I should mention that the shower-head was installed by Steve's parents a couple of months ago to amp up the water pressure.  Unfortanately, the showerhead and the caddy get a little tangled up, so I think the caddy is going to move to a 3M hook mounted on the back wall of the shower surround.

Caddy up.

Speaking of the shower surround, I noticed that the chips I repaired have done the unthinkable.  Like chips in a windshield, these chips have also converged and spread.  There's now a hairline crack running from the chips near the drain over halfway up the floor of our shower pan.  Since there's no way to be sure it's not leaking, replacing the tub/shower surround has claimed precedence as the next major project around the house.

Adding a pedestal mirror.
If you're used to doing your makeup with a pedestal mirror, particularly a magnifying one, then the regular old builder grade bathroom mirror is not going to cut it.  Nuff said.

Mirror at the ready.

Adding bumpers to the vanity doors.
This had been on my to-do list ever since I finished painting the vanity last summer, but somehow it just kept getting neglected.  Realizing that my guests were subjected to loud wood-on-wood crashing noises every time they shut the vanity doors made me get on it.

Crash-free.

There's our handful of quick and easy updates to make our guests more comfortable.  So about that tub and shower surround, who's got some recommendations for me?