• DIY

    Bathroom Re-fresh

    We are busy preparing the house for a lot of guests and graduation party for my eldest daughter.  The front bathroom was especially overdue for a little refresh.  Here’s what it looked like originally:   Pretty plain but over time the dried hydrangeas fell apart and the stain on the frame of the mirror gave me a western vibe, which is not the vibe of my house …at all! Step 1 I started by replacing the shower curtain with one made from fabric I had picked up at a remnant/close out sale for $1.  My sewing machine and I are on the outs, so I did a quick no sew…

  • DIY

    Laundry Room Makeover

    Looking for a laundry room make over?  Here’s my latest project, I added a sink, broom closet, shelving, and lots of storage but did NOT sacrifice on style!  Here’s the old laundry room:   This room had become a diasaster, located off my kitchen and right next to the back door, it was a catch all for everything. You can see from this photo that the room wasn’t small but long and narrow with only one cabinet.  I had added those utility shelves a few years ago, but they were in a bad spot and often we bumped our heads. After a lot of consideration on color and materials, I…

  • DIY

    Lakehouse Bathroom Reno

    While renovating our lakehouse, we decided to tackle the bathroom.  For this blog, I will only go into the shower project because it was quite a bit of work with many steps.  In the pic below, you can see the 70’s style plastic shower enclosure.  This room always had a funky smell no matter what we did, when we ripped this out we finally found out why.  There was stagnant water behind and inside of the hollow shower enclosure.  It was a huge relief to get that ripped out!   Step 1 We started by removing the walls and then the shower itself.     Step 2 Allign drain to…

  • DIY

    Kitchen Backsplash

    On my trip home to see my parents this summer, I offered to install backsplash for my mom’s kitchen.  This project is a perfect example of a room transformation on a small budget and in just two days. My parents’ house is a beautiful 100 year old home that they have put a lot of work into over the years.  In the kitchen, there wasn’t any backsplash which makes cleaning and keeping a stain free wall quite tough.   Here are the before pics:   As you can see, the kitchen was pretty much a blank canvas with regards to choosing an accent feature.  The counters and walls are a similar…

  • DIY

    Adding a Mudroom

    Here is the front view of  the recently renovated exterior, which I’ve blogged about in Lakehouse Exterior post.  In this post, I will show what we did to the inside. Before we added our mudroom, I had no idea how much it would add to our home.  From the exterior, it added curb appeal and character to the house and inside it added a laundry area, bench with storage, additional storage and a way we could open up the kitchen area by sinking the refrigerator into part of the mudroom. Here you can see the outside wall of the old house, which we removed the old siding and insulation.  Then…