Bathroom reveal!

Ok.  I've been on quite a hiatus!  Things in life just got to be SO stressful with the house and the wedding that I was running on full speed constantly!  We did manage to get the bathroom all finished up before the wedding, which was a huge relief!  Here is how that went down!

My favorite plumber helped me out and got the new shower installed and plumbed in the sink and replaced the toilet for us.  These were all tasks that I was just not up to trying to figure out.  He managed in 2 days what would have taken me weeks to figure out.

The cabinet over the toilet was very retro.  It had a design around the perimeter of the doors and gold knobs and hinges.  So we added trim to the edge of the doors to make them shaker style like I did for the kitchen and we painted them white and added new knobs.  It turned out great.

We got the new shower surround put in.  Notice the nice new shower!!!  I was beyond excited for this.  

Since we couldn't get all of the old tile adhesive off of the walls (thank you old plastic tiles!) we decided to just cover it up.  And I love the way the wainscoting turned out!

And my new vanity was finally installed!!!  It took me a while to find something that was going to be the right size, that I liked, and wasn't going to bust the budget.  But I found this one on Home Depot and I love it!  The black granite counter top is beautiful!

We had to trim the bathtub surround to fit around the window, which is why we went with a 5-piece surround.  But it worked out well.  A utility knife and straight edge made it work perfectly.  

And to finish it up, we put up a new medicine cabinet.  The bathroom may be on the small size, but it ended up having plenty of storage for our family of 4!  I love it.  And I'm so proud of everything we did to make it our own.  

Bathroom redo part 1!

The bathroom in the house we just bought was in rough shape.

Notice the lack of actual shower and the place where the tiles were falling off since this wasn't ever intended to be used as a shower, but was being used as such. I do love the tub though!  So keeping it was a must!  We started out by taking down tile and the wallpaper. 

I quickly discovered that this plastic blue tile had TONS of adhesive behind it. And this stuff was next to impossible to remove. After hours of scraping, I finally threw in the towel. I was going to have to come up with a different solution. My original plan was to scrape off the adhesive, skim coat the walls with drywall mud, sand, then paint them. I got the adhesive off of the tub walls so we can put in our new tub surround, but then I decided to put up breadboard instead of trying to save the walls. So at least the problem was solved. The sad part was that I was going to be an added expense to a bathroom that was already climbing in cost anyway. We originally were only planning on putting in the tub surround and new flooring (there was carpet in there. Can you say "YUCK!!!!"???) then we ended up getting rid of the vanity. It was in rough shape and we had to take it out because the wall was tiled behind it as well. 

My next snag was that my super awesome flooring I ordered was back ordered. I was so bummed. 

This stuff would have been SO pretty. I LOvE hex tile!  This is a vinyl flooring, but i still loved the look. But we couldn't wait the extra three weeks for it to come in when my plumber was coming this weekend and the floor had to be down so we could install the new vanity. So I had to pick out a new floor. 

I decided on another clueless vinyl floor. We just put some down in the kitchen and it turned out great. 

I went with one that was $0.99 a square foot!  Unflortunately we had to put down new underlayment.  This was interesting, to say the least. It has been my mom and me doing most of this stuff and so we used some old wallpaper to make a template. 

(That stuff was awesome!!). Then we used it to cut our boards. It worked out alright. I only had to make a few adjustments to get the board in. 

Then came the difficult and nerve wracking part!  I had to get the vinyl in and get it to fit right around the tub. 

We used our template to trim the original piece of vinyl, but I purposely cut it a couple of inches too big. 

Then I had to get it to fit around the tub. Since its glue less vinyl, I wanted it to fit nicely against the tub since there wouldn't be trim there, it was stressful!  

I used both a utility knife and a pair of sissors and worked little by little. It ended up working really well and looks great!  I just need to put some vinyl tape under that edge to hold it down and caulk along the base of the tub to make it watertight along there!  

I'm very pleased with how it looks!  Now to get the plumbing sorted out so that we can get it all wrapped up!!!  I will be extremely happy when this bathroom is finished. It has been a stressful part of this house stuff. We are just lucky that there is a bathroom in the basement. 

Kitchen update, part 1!

I haven't had any free time over the past month. Buying a house is an ordeal!!!!  There are so many projects we are trying to get done before the wedding next month. Other than the bathroom, the kitchen has been our big project.  The ~1960's style cabinets did not fit into the 1900's style home or my taste.  I had come across a few posts on pinterest about redoing these sorts of cabinets.

The doors, which will be in a post soon to come, have had a 3 inch trim added to cover up that groove.  However, the drawers would not accommodate a trim that wide, and since almost all of the 13 drawers were different sizes, I decided to try filling the groove in with wood filler.  

The wood filler worked out great.  I put it on with a putty knife, sanded it down with 120 grit sandpaper, and applied a second coat to make sure you couldn't see that groove anymore.  After a good sanding and checking to make sure they were all smooth, we put on a coat of primer.  

They were already looking MUCH better at this point!!!!

After 2 coats of primer, we put on 2 coats of cabinet/trim paint, and finally 2 coats of Minwax Polycrilic to seal them up!  (I love that stuff, by the way!)  Then I got my dad to help me put on the new drawer pulls!  

The only snag we really ran into was that the screws for the drawer pulls were too long.  But luckily dad has a screw cutter, so after we got them trimmed, we finally got to put the drawers in!  

I did add some little felt pad to the top inside of the drawers so that there was no sticking and to keep the wear and tear down.  

I LOVE how they turned out!  

DIY Ring Bearer Pillow

We are in the process of buying a house and it has been extremely stressful.  Today we had to move the closing date while we sort out some questions about the mortgage, which is disappointing.  But better than feeling like we were pushed into making a quick decision.  I needed a little escape, so I sat down at the sewing machine and decided to get the ring bearer pillow made for our upcoming wedding.

I'm really new at this whole blogging thing, and of course I didn't even think about writing a post about making the pillow until I was all finished.  I did have enough scraps to put together a second one and take a few pictures along the way.

Materials:
Piece of fabric approximately 18" x 9"
A few feet of two types of ribbon
A few feet of Jute cord
A few feet of lace

Sewing machine
Hot glue gun


I made my pillow with scrap fabric I had.  It doesn't take much.

The first one I cut to 9"x9" and the second I only had enough to cut 2 8" squares.  Both turned out to be nice sizes in the end.

After cutting, it's just a matter of sewing the edges of the pillow, leaving a hole so you can stuff it. 

I stuffed the pillow and then it just needed closed up.  The proper way to do this, of course, is to sew it shut by hand.  That's what I did with the first one, but the second one I didn't feel like putting that much effort into it, so I cheated and used some hot glue to close it up.  It actually worked pretty well and you can't see that it was hot glued, but that may not be the case with other types of fabrics.

Then I cut some ribbon that was long enough to overlap in the back and I glued it on with hot glue.  (This is also the point where I glued my fingers and OUCH!  That stuff was hot.)  Then I did the same with some lace over the ribbon and used hot glue to attach it as well.

Then I made a bow, making sure to leave the strings of Jute longer than the lace and ribbon, that is the string that will be used to tie the rings on.

I put hot glue across the back of the knot and attached it to the pillow.  Now I have two cute little ring bearer pillows!

Removing Engravings from Wedding Cake Knife & Server

Currently I'm in the midst of planning a wedding.  And my parents have told us "we paid for the first one, this time you are on your own!"  And I don't blame them.  So the wedding is going to be almost entirely DIY and simple since I'm working with an EXTREMELY limited budget.  Even though it will be simple, I still want to be able to do many of the traditional things.  And having a cake and doing the whole "cake cutting" thing is on that list.  BUT there was no way I was going to go out and buy a new cake knife and server set.  Last time I had an engraved set made.  They were nothing fancy, but I still was NOT about to spend even $20 to get a new engraved set.  My fiance also had a set from a previous marriage and they were beautiful.  However, they were also engraved.  So we had two sets of servers and knives and both were completely useless.  The set he had was made of stainless steel from a popular personalization place, which we will call "Stuff Forgotten" as my significant other likes to call it.  We did check with "Stuff Forgotten" to see if there was anything they could do to change the engraving, but as expected, they could not. He doesn't even remember the cake cutting part of his first wedding, so it didn't bother me at all to consider using them if we could fix them.  Since we had nothing to lose, I decided to try to remove the engraving myself!  We stopped at Menards and picked up some sandpaper.  I already had some metal surface sand paper at home that had a coarse, medium and fine grit paper included.

I wish I'd taken better pictures before I started and along the process, but I didn't have a blog or a post about it in mind before I started.  Nor did I know if this was even going to work!

 The knife had their initials on it and the server had their names and the wedding date.  I took a piece of the "coarse" sandpaper, wrapped it around a block of wood and started working on it.  I made sure to only sand in one direction because I knew I would like to leave it with a matte or "brushed" type finish.  It took a lot of elbow grease, but after some effort, the letters were finally gone.  For a time you could still see the engraving even though it felt pretty smooth and could not feel the engraving anymore.  I just kept working at sanding it.  Then to smooth it out a bit I used the "fine" grit and then the 400 grit paper dipped in just a small amount of water.  I decided I liked the finish as it was at this point and left it alone.

 And now we have a beautiful cake service set to use for the wedding!  I'm so excited about how they turned out.  One more wedding item done and it only cost $5 to do and I have plenty of sandpaper left for future projects!

*Disclaimer:  I cannot guarantee this will work for you or not ruin the engraved item.  But if it is something you have nothing to lose over, give it a shot.   

Blog Launch

Welcome to Crafty Mom, PhD!  I've wanted to start a blog for quite some time.  It is usually when I try finding some sort of tutorial online and come up with nothing. I generally have several projects going on and this will be a place to share them!  

I want to start by introducing myself. My name is Jenny and somehow life took me to graduate school where I earned a PhD in Chemistry. But my heart has always been at home. After finishing school, I stayed home with my kids (I have two of them) for a few years. That all changed when I went through a divorce and a job became a necessity. 

I'm a rather frugal person, and being divorced with two children, it is extremely important to me to avoid spending money on things that are not necessities.  Luckily I love to create things. I bake, sew, knit, crochet, paint, and try my hand at whatever crazy idea I get. I am someone who would rather try to make it myself and figure out how-to instead of paying someone else.  

So watch for posts about recipes, crafts, DIY, kids activities, and so on.  I can't wait to share my endeavors!