When we started our little adventure, the room dubbed ‘the princess room’ looked like this –

We were looking for something, er, a little more neutral to say the least. We opted for the Para Paints Sarah Richardson Collection Signature Eggshell paint in Lichen. A great green with some grey undertones.

We also took down the lacy curtains and the pink chandelier. For now, our window covering is simply venetian blinds, but I’ll likely add a valence eventually.

I found a light I really liked at Canadian Tire for a little over $40. It’s a flush-mount with brushed nickel accents and a linen glass shade. Clean, simple, neutral.

Since the pictures were taken, I have also painted the trim, re-affixed new (non-yellowed plastic) electrical covers, heat register covers, etc, and reassembled the closet organizer and painted the closet doors. I should have a finished picture ready shortly.

As you know, Redd is my assistant when it comes to illustrating the wall colors as best he can, so here he is in the former princess room (investigating the air return) – also, pretty sure Mike Holmes would have something to say about putting an air return in a bedroom!

We’re whipping through the top floor at break-neck speeds! All that’s left up there is the hallway and master bedroom and bathroom.

Ah yes, the mustard yellow laundry room. Classic isn’t it? No? Someone forgot to tell the previous owners about that…

Here’s the before picture of our laundry room –

I’m not considering it finished by any means now, but I’ve made some good progress. It’s amazing what a good coat of paint and some elbow grease will do.

You can see that the washer and dryer have become a shelf to keep all of the tools we are currently using upstairs. They should be one their way back to the garage soon.

I spent quite a bit of time scrubbing down the washer and dryer (inside and out), the cupboards, above cupboards and under the washer and dryer. I think it’s safe to say it had been years since any of that had last been done. I even found a freakin’ human tooth! This room was like every other in this place – if you don’t look to carefully and don’t look above, under or in anything, it looks alright. And I swear I’m not exaggerating. It’s been pretty bad in places. Getting better by the day though!

The color I used on the laundry room walls is another from the Para Paints Sarah Richardson Collection called Celadon (I used Para Paints Signature Eggshell) –

It actually reminds me of honeydew melon.

I love it with the black and white floors and this is becoming one of my favorite rooms in the house as far as the colors go.

I still need to put up the venetian blinds and I thought I’d do a little valence at the top of the windows – maybe something black and white and graphic. I also want to put a small back/side splash in around the laundry sink using white subway tiles.

Nothing fancy, just something to keep the paint from getting dingy and damaged from the water. It also looks like my ironing board needs a new cover, so I’ll likely make one to match the valence.

Progress pics as they come!

Our hall bathroom is a design nightmare. Normally I would have been content (at least short term) to shut the door and have hubby take it over as his bathroom, but it houses the only bathtub in the joint, and I’m a total bath-a-holic.

Here’s our ‘before’ picture -

Turquoise walls and ceiling, ornate decorative tile, green countertops, black floor, yellowing grout (which for some reason isn’t totally apparent in the above picture), ugly too-bright lighting with a vine motif, gigantic mirror. Yuck.

I thought I’d paint the bathroom green, so I started getting those little paint testers and trying out patches on the walls. Stu got sick of the bathroom becoming a camouflage design, so he painting the whole works a dark-ish moss green. I think I hated this more than the turquoise (it had very yellow undertones).

Part of the problem was that there was so much light in there (8 bright vanity bulbs in a 7′ x 5′ ish room). It was pulling all the color out of anything subtle, so something bold really had to be painted on the walls with those lights.

My first move was to take down the lights -

Right now, we’re using a lamp in there until we can get a new light fixture in.

My second move was to take down that gigantic mirror -

And primer over all that green! -

At this point, it’s in the most ripped down state it will get to and is ready to be built back up.

I’ve decided on Sarah Richarson’s “Surf” (SR-31) color for the walls (she has a line of colors through Para Paints that I found at Lowe’s) -

It’s described as ‘a subdued, barely there neutral with a touch of blue, green and grey – it’s an easily adaptable chameleon colour’. Perfect! Just what I need with all my different shades of green in that bathroom.

If you’re looking for more on the Sarah Richardson colors, you can find them here. I’m slowly painting my whole house in them.

The funny thing about the Surf color is that as I was leaving the house with the paint chip to have the paint mixed at Lowe’s, I held it up in broad daylight, and the chip read as a stark white! I almost had second thoughts, but reminded myself to trust my instincts and also reminded myself of what a huge difference lighting can play with a color.

I’m glad I went with my original gut feeling and had the Surf mixed, because there is definitely enough color in it for our (no daylight) bathroom.

Normally I probably wouldn’t even mention this, but I am just amazed at the difference it made, so I’ll share. Our grout in that shower (with the tiles (and yucky grout) to the ceiling was turning a pinkish yellow and had some darker staining in other places. I thought we were going to have to re-grout it to return it to it’s former white glory, but if we were going to go to the effort to re-grout, we might as well re-tile, since those ornate decorative tiles aren’t in the 5 year plan. Well, re-tiling is not in the budget right now as you can imagine, and I thought I was going to have to live with the grout the way it was for a few years.

I tried scrubbing the grout with all sorts of grout cleaners and bathroom cleaners with no luck. As a last ditch effort, I decided to try a $5 bottle of grout whitener I found at Lowe’s (in with the grout sealers, etc if you’re looking). I didn’t have high hopes, but I applied it yesterday, and OMG! What a difference! Our grout is white again and looks fantastic!

I used the Homax Tile Guard Tile Grout Coating. I’m thinking about using it on our kitchen back splash too, because it’s having the same problem that our bathroom grout was having.

Here’s a glimpse into the new bathroom –

It still needs quite a few finishing touches, but is getting closer to being done.

You can see that the color works a lot better with the tile than the previous wall colors.

The counters are still a mess, and we don’t even have towels in there yet (or a shower curtain and rod), but I wanted to share my progress. I also want to put something in the area to the right of the mirror – thinking a hotel style towel rack, but also thinking maybe a small cupboard. We don’t have a shortage of storage space by any means in this bathroom, because there is a huge closet in the area behind the door (when it’s open). Perhaps I’ll throw a couple of wall shelves up and put some decorative stuff on it.

More pics to come when the bathroom is all finished.