It's been months in the making and we finally have a functional and (nearly) complete first floor bathroom!
This little bathroom that started out completely covered in floral wallpaper with a floral border, with baseboard radiators, cracked and scratched tile, missing a mirror, and with an off center pedestal sink...
...has been completely transformed.
This room was the very first project we launched into to spruce up our new home. We wanted to tackle something small, something quick, and something that may not be a complete renovation of the bathroom, but would make it feel a whole lot nicer than it did at first.
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We're all likely familiar with the tried and true DIY trend of upcycling, but have you heard about downcycling?
How many times have we seen someone using pallet wood for their feature wall or coffee table? The idea is simple, but the statement in decor is impactful. You take something distressed and often seen as a castoff, typically used for shipping who knows what from some factory to a warehouse, and you rip it apart, sand it, scrape it, and eventually proudly display your creation in your home.
But now that we've seen the boom of practically free wood, we're faced with a DIY crisis. Yes, it's true, our love of all things character laden and weathered has led to the great pallet shortage of 2016. As a result, we're doing our part and joining in on the "downcycling" trend.
Following this new craze, what starts as this...
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Seeing a project come together is one of the most gratifying aspects of DIY renovation.
We've been working on trying to improve our little first floor bathroom for a while now, and it finally feels like we're starting to get to the home stretch. I can't begin to tell you how excited we are at this point now that we can see it slowly coming together, and thinking back to what it used to look like feels like a distant memory.
We last left off after I applied the Pall X-325 sealer to the repaired and fully sanded heart pine floor. We are using the same finish as the rest of the house, and opted to use the Pall X-325 sealer with Pall X-96 water based topcoat. This will give us the light finish that allows the natural character of the wood to be on display, rather than the stain and finish.
Once the floor's sealer cured we were able to begin prepping for the Pall X-96 matte topcoat. Wendy and I have refinished several floors in our DIY career, and we've watched several pros finish a few floors too, and in almost every case, we're somewhat intimidated by the finish. What happens if we leave streaks? What happens if it peels? What happens if it fractures? What happens if we let dirt or dog fur get into the finish? And we can confidently say having working with oil based poly, water based poly, shellac, and tung oil, these Pallmann products are some of the easiest to work with that we've ever encountered.
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There's just something that feels quintessentially "summer" about outdoor porch dining.
Even back as far as when we were looking at second homes, the idea of having a large space for outdoor dining was really appealing to us. And when I first laid eyes on our home, I was immediately struck by the very large side porch and how perfect it would be for this classic summertime activity.
Our side porch space is quite large at almost 14 feet wide and over 40 feet long. To put it in perspective, that's nearly the footprint of our entire row house.
For nearly two years (since I first saw the wrap around porch in our home's listing photos), I've been dreaming of how we could pull this space together, creating an outdoor dining area that could accommodate large numbers of friends and family, fit the character of the home, and be conveniently located near the kitchen.
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Last week we gave you a rundown of our progress in bringing our first floor bathroom's antique heart pine flooring back to life.
It had been hidden beneath poorly installed tile for many years, so we knew there'd be some repair necessary. The end result was a floor that needed to be heavily repaired with new heart pine, some serious tar that needed to be removed from the old flooring, and the need for a whole lot of sanding.
Our last post left off just before sanding some DIY wood filler mixed from heart pine sawdust and too little glue and realizing we'd need to apply a second coat of a slightly wetter mix of wood filler...this time with more glue.
Over the weekend we picked up where we left off by mixing up a new batch of wood filler...this time with a full gallon of wood glue available just in case.
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