plans for a nautical, cool kids bathroom

              

This is a sponsored post. As always, all opinions are my own. I only work with brands I love and I think you'll love too ;)

I know, I know, I barely managed to finish my own bathroom, why am I planning another one? Well folks, this is why....

               

Yep, that's a light up mermaid sign friends, and it was on sale, so I literally couldn't not buy her. The minute I saw her (in The Range for €15 if you're wondering) I fell head over heels, and I knew I needed her for the kids bathroom. I hadn't had any plans to touch that room ANY time soon but sometimes inspiration hits and you just have to go with it! 

This room is the main bathroom in the house but it's only used by the kids so I can have some fun in here. I want it to be child-friendly, but not childish. So fun, and whimsical, but no primary colours, no plastic, and absolutely, positively, no cartoon characters.

Starting with my beauteous mermaid I want to go with a kind of jules vern, steampunk-y nautical vibe in here, but with a palette of soft blue greens to stop it being too heavy or adult. Here's a basic moodboard to give you an idea of what I'm thinking....

The floor in here is actually the only one in the house that I didn't dislike when we first moved in so it will stay, but I will be refreshing the grout lines. It's a nice deep blue colour, so will work well with the theme.

The wall tiles in here are also fine, so I'll just be painting the walls a nice white, and adding a feature wall of some kind. I'm thinking an ombre scale pattern? The paint colours on the board are Farrow and Ball "All White", "Blue Ground" and "Vardo", and I'm thinking of making some scale shaped stamps and trying to recreate a fish scale pattern using those colours. 

I would be getting the paints mixed in Fleetwood paints though cos....money.

The shower in here only get used to rinse the kids off if one of them decides it's hilarious to pee in the bath to freak the other one out, so I'm going to replace the ugly curtain rail with a prettier, but less practical round curtain rail. The one in the picture is this one from Argos.

I'm hoping to use pallet wood to create a really cool, rustic bath panel which I think will fit in really well with the theme. I'm also going to use pallet wood for shelves, and possibly for some storage crates.

I say "I", like I'll actually have anything to do with that other than nag Gavin until it gets done.

I'll frame a round mirror with rope, and I've seen this great nautical compass wall decoration that I'll pick up. Add some vintage style art, an octopus toilet roll holder and a nautical style light like this one from Lights.ie and we're done!

What do you think? I think it'll be really pretty and fresh, and something that walks the line between what I want and what the kids want, cos I know they're my kids and I love them but they have terrible taste and this is my damn house.

oops I did it again.....painted tile floor 2.0

So you know how I've been saying since the dawn of time that the en-suite is practically finished and I just have to add the finishing touches and it'll be done? 

Well.....somehow last week I went in there to put up a frame and ended up stencilling the floor.

That's how it works around here, I'll put things off for months and then find myself elbow deep in paint at one in the morning, or ripping out manky carpet after just going upstairs to put some washing away. I've learned to just go with it. Gavin has learned to not ask questions. 

If you've been with me for a while you'll know that I painted my kitchen floor to make it less vomit-inducing while we saved up to have it ripped out and replaced. Well, the floor in here was less offensive, but just as dated. I had thought I would just leave it as is, hoping that it would kind of just fade into the background, but then as the rest of the decor in here came together I thought it would be a shame to have the floor sitting there, all beige and boring, ruining the look.

So yeah, one day I came up here to put up a few pictures, realised I had a tin of paint, a stencil and two hours of actual free time until I had to pick Max up from playschool. It was a perfect DIY storm, and before I knew what was happening I had a coat of white paint on the floor. 

When I painted the kitchen floor I used primer and actual tile paint, doing two coats of each, and while it did do the job I definitely had to maintain it, touching it up every six weeks or so as little chips appeared in it. Plus the paint was stinky and expensive, so this time I decided to try a different method that I had seen on a lot of American blogs, namely, chalk paint covered by a protective finish, in my case matte water based varnish.

I thoroughly cleaned the floor and let it dry first, then I cut in around the edges and along the grout lines with a brush before going over the whole floor with a small roller. And here's my first tip, chalk paint dries ridiculously fast, so if I were to do this again I would work in small sections rather than doing the whole floor at once, as I found I had to be very careful not to lift the paint from the areas I had cut in with the wet paint on the roller.

                        

                       

I did three coats of white to make sure everything was completely covered, and once that was dry I was ready to start stenciling!

Now, if you've been with me for any length of time you'll know that I don't have the patience for precision unless it's very easy to achieve, so I was more than half convinced that I was going to totally balls this whole thing up. I figured the best way would be to start in the middle and work out, so I eyeballed the centre, stuck it down with frog tape in the corners and got to work.

That's right, no measuring of any kind. It's either pure blind luck that I didn't end up with a total mess or this particular pattern is very forgiving.

                   

I loaded my roller with the darker paint and then rolled it on some newspaper to get rid of the excess in the hopes of minimising any bleeding underneath the stencil, then firmly rolled it over the stencil until all the shapes were completely filled in. Where the pattern went over a grout line I had to dab at it with a brush to fill it in.

As soon as I was done I lifted the stencil, moved it over until the pattern overlapped perfectly at the side, then stuck it down again and repeated the process. So what I mean is that after the very first one I did there was always a part of the pattern that was already filled in, because I was laying the stencil partially over my previous work. This is what gives you the continuous pattern and helps make sure everything is lined up properly. The paint dried so quickly that I never had a problem with smearing while I was doing this but I did occasionally wipe off the stencil to remove any excess paint that might have seeped under.

I realise that this "overlapping" is the crucial point of this project and probably what I should have taken a million photos of....I don't know what to tell you. I had a couple of hours of kid free time to listen to podcasts, drink coffee and paint and I guess the excitement got to me. So this is all I have......

I'm sorry, I hope my shoddy description of the process is enough!

The main parts of the floor went quickly and were relatively painless, but when it got time to get right up to the edges things got a bit trickier. All I did was bend the stencil to get the pattern as close to the edges as I could and roll the paint as normal. I ended up with a small gap the whole way around but it just looks like a grout line. 

                 

                       


Once the whole floor was done I went back over it with an artists brush and the white paint and cleaned up the few places where paint had seeped under the stencil like below....




Once everything was dry I went over it with three coats of water based matte varnish to protect it. I should point out that the whole time I was working on this I made sure to walk on it as little as possible and when I did need to I wore socks. Chalk paint is incredibly soft and easy to scratch. Like seriously. I managed to scratch the white layer with my bare feet!

                            

The varnish goes on milky but dries clear, and while it does give a very slight sheen this was the matte version so it's not too shiny. Using water based varnish meant it was a much quicker process as each coat dried in an hour. Also it wasn't so stinky that it gave me a headache and it shouldn't yellow over time like oil based products do.

And so it was done!

I have high hopes for this lasting a long time without much upkeep. It already feels sturdier than the kitchen floor ever did, despite the fact that I used specialised products there and in here I'm winging it with products that definitely weren't meant to be used like this. Also it's extremely rare that anyone wears shoes up here, and it's only really cleaned every couple of weeks compared to the daily wear the kitchen got from brushes and mops.

I was honestly surprised at how relatively easy this was, and I'm absolutely delighted with the result. It's a total game changer, and now that I've seen it I can't imagine the space without it! 

What do you think? Have you ever stenciled anything? Will you be giving it a try now? I've put affiliate links to some of the products I used or similar below, and I'd love to see pictures if you end up trying it!

If you liked this post, you might want to check out:

plans for an industrial/glam bathroom

this super cheap downstairs loo makeover

pallet wood shelves

turning an old dresser into a bathroom vanity

painted tile floor

painted tile floor-six months later

painted tile backsplash

                       

turning an old dresser into a bathroom vanity

The en-suite has been plodding on at the speed of a stoned turtle with a gammy leg, but amazingly, finally, I actually have some progress to report! Actually, if I could just get my arse in gear and finish off the last few fiddly bits the bloody thing would actually be finished and I could move on with my life!

But anyway, I really wanted more storage in here. As I talked about in my original post about my plans for this space, the room is a decent size but an awkward shape and there isn't anywhere for free standing storage to fit.  I had originally planned to make Gavin build me a full length, slim cabinet with a mirror on it onto the one small section of clear wall we have, but it didn't happen. I think it just seemed like a lot of work and he wasn't confident about how he would do it,so he wasn't enthusiastic about it, and to be honest it wasn't worth giving up hours of precious free time trying to make something that might not even work.

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updating to add value

This post is sponsored by Velux Windows

I love my house. After living in tiny apartments all my adult life my heavily pregnant self thought the four bedrooms and a garden this house offered was just about the height of luxury when we moved in. But as happy as I was with it then (and still am now!) it was never intended to be our forever house. I would love to be able to build our own house eventually, somewhere with a bit more privacy. As great as where we live is for the kids with all the other children around here I don't enjoy knowing my neighbours can probably hear me screeching like a lunatic every time we try to leave the house, and some day I'm going to totally lose my shit with the boys who constantly batter our pathetic fledgling hedge with their ball and then we'll HAVE to move. You know how it is.

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pallet wood shelves

Way back when, somewhere in the mists of time, you may remember that I started making over our en-suite bathroom. Yes, that was almost a year ago and it is still far from finished. I blame the fact that no-one but us sees it so it's easier to forget. Embarrassment is a great motivator I find. But I had a short list of things I wanted to get finished before the baby arrives and getting this space finished was way up there.

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my new kitchen tiles!!!!

Yes, finally, the new kitchen tiles are in! They've been in for a few weeks actually but I've been too busy enjoying them to blog about it. That and the fact that it's never been clean enough to take photos #reallife

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adding a bit of drama to the hall

Have you noticed that I've been a little....distant lately? As in, I NEVER FRICKING GET AROUND TO POSTING?!

Yeah, me too. I've lost my mojo a little bit I think, and while there are plenty of things I could blog about, for the last while it's been a bit of a struggle to find the will to actually take the sodding photos and put together the posts. There have been holidays, Christmas is coming up, the kids have an annoying habit of growing out of their clothes and needing new ones several times a year, so money for diy just hasn't been a priority for the last while, and I'm fine with that, but I guess it's hard to get excited about projects when you know you aren't going to be able to finish them anytime soon, ya dig? 

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refreshing tile grout

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately but that doesn't mean there isn't serious DIY happening in the background! I just made the mistake of starting a small "fun" project in the hall which snowballed into me having to paint all the woodwork in there and on the stairs *sob* while still working on our bathroom upstairs. 

Anyone who's ever painted a cream skirting board white and not had anyone bloody notice after your hours of fiddly painting will tell you what a boring and thankless job it is, but alas, it needed to be done.

However, I did also do the quickest, easiest, most satisfying little project in the bathroom that I wanted to share with you today...

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plans for an industrial/glam bathroom...and a trip to Barcelona

Hola friends!

I'm just back from a holiday in Barcelona so I come by that "Hola" honestly. We spent four nights on our own in the city and then headed to a vineyard outside Perpignan for the beautiful wedding of one of our oldest friends.

As in, we've known him a long time, not that he's of particularly advanced years or anything.


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adventure themed playroom reveal! finally!

Yay!!! It's finally time! I got my act together long enough to actually clean the playroom and take semi-decent photos! Go me! (exclamation points!!!!!!!!!)

I feel like I've been promising this post forever, but in my defense my kids sole reason for being seems to be to thwart me. Better late than never right? Right?!

So lets get on with it shall we, before some poo-related catastrophe get's in my way? Lovely.

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€200/one week kitchen makeover-6 month update!

Hola amigos, I'm finally back with the second installment of the update on how my cheaper than cheap kitchen makeover is holding up six months down the line (you can find the first installment here) Woo-fricking-hoo!!!!

I have two small children and therefore no social life. I am easily excited.

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painted tile floor-six months later

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Guys. It's time. 

The other day somebody asked me how my kitchen tiles were holding up and I realised that somewhere in between picking food off the carpet, playing mind-numbingly endless games of "dollies" and answering innumerable questions about such diverse topics as "why isn't there a toy library?" and "how do babies get out of your belly?", more than six freaking months had passed without me noticing!!!

So, it's definitely time for an update. As you might remember, back in August we finally bit the bullet and painted our ugly kitchen floor tiles. (You can read the original post here). 

We didn't have the money to replace them and I had spent months reading blog posts that told me it could be done so we thought "what do we have to lose?!" and went for it.....

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things I wish I'd known when I started doing up my house

                               


First of all, let me just say congratulations! Buying a house is a big step, and whether you have already moved in to your little piece of paradise or have just made the decision to start looking, it's a big step to take and I commend you.

If you've read the "about me" section of this blog you'll know that my path to house-ownership was far from a smooth one. Sometimes no matter how prepared you are things just don't go to plan (i.e. sellers can be absolute d*cks) and you find yourself gigantically pregnant a year after you thought you'd be in your new house, sneaking past the bank backwards lest your mortgage adviser behold your gravid state and retract your mortgage offer and desperately making bids on anything that even comes close to meeting some of your criteria! "Hey, who needs windows anyway? I personally don't even like natural light."

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new year, new loo.

Hello hello hello! I'm back today with an honest-to-god reveal post. Two posts in one week, I've practically got my sh*t together! Maybe I'll start getting dressed before lunch time and occasionally being on time for things.....or maybe not. Baby steps.

Yeah, so I was going to title this post "guest bathroom reveal", and then I realised I'm not actually American, so instead you get a terrible pun that was more relevant a month ago when I started this makeover.
I wish I was sorry but I'm just not.Click here to read the rest of this post »

how to create a gold geometric feature wall in 20 minutes...and it's removable!

Hi guys, I hope you all had a happy Christmas, I certainly did! I kinda feel like I neglected my "blogger duties" by not posting more about my decorations etc but I really just couldn't manage it. There was hot chocolate to drink, walks to take, baking to be done!

And a whooooole lot of whining and complaining about said activities to listen to. Expectations don't often tally with reality when it involves small children ;P

So sorry (not sorry) ;) I promise to do better next year, I swear it on my hot glue gun (which is about as close to a bible as you're going to get around here)

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turning a run of the mill fireplace into a feature

First things first, the response to my post about giving up work last week got an absolutely amazing response! It was really great to have a rant and here from a lot of people who have been struggling with pretty much the same issues....even if it was weird and uncomfortable for me to share it. Thanks guys! 

*gives awkward pat on shoulder*

So on to today's post! Remember a few years ago when everyone got into feature walls in a big way? It often manifested itself in a chimney breast that was either painted in a strong colour or covered with wallpaper in a striking pattern.

This is the how our chimney breast looked when we moved in...

                

Now, I like a feature wall as much as the next person, but this just wasn't working in here. It was a small, dark room, and the walls were painted this dark brown and a lighter colour that could be best likened to custard. I had a chocolate pudding sitting room....

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the ultimate "new kitchen counter" cheat!

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We've reached the end of the kitchen tutorials now, and I think I've saved one of the best till last. I say best, because this project genuinely surprised me with how easy and effective it was!

I had debated for a long time  over what I was going to do with the counters. What I originally wanted was solid wood butcher block, like we have on the island, and we probably could have afforded it at the time if we installed it ourselves, but the problem was that I hadn't settled on what my idea of the ideal kitchen was. We knew that we would be changing things down the line when we had the money, so it seemed foolish to rip out the old counters to install the ones we wanted now, when we would probably have to rip it all out again next year when we were doing the full renovation.

** update!!! If you'd like to see how my counters are holding up 18 months later you can find that post here

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painted tile backsplash-cover those ugly tiles!

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So here we are, another week, another kitchen post, but there's just one more after this and then I'm done, promise! I'm ready to be done with this series, and in future I think I'll post tutorials as they happen and then recap with a full reveal whenever I get it together enough to do that. I feel like I have to finish all these kitchen posts before I move on and it's kinda stifling my creativity ya know? *gag!

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pimp my dishwasher

I stuck gold foil tape on my dishwasher!.........

Wow, that really didn't take long enough to explain to warrant a full post :/

Oh well, on to the pretty pictures!!!!

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painted tile floor-no really!

First off, can I just say a HUGE thank you for all the positive feedback for the kitchen reveal? It was so great to hear how much you all liked it. I mean, I knew I liked it but to hear all of your kind comments really drove home to me how right I was to go with my gut and just jump into that makeover....even though people looked at me like I was crazy when I told them what I was doing!

So today I'm going to go through the process of painting our kitchen floor....and the pros and cons of taking on a project like this.

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