An IMPERFECT Bathroom Renovation

Today is all about a project that has taken way to long to finish. In fact it isn't even finished yet, and to be totally honest it probably will never get finished to the standard I had in my head when we started.

BUT! that isn't super sad, it's actually what I am devoting my Fridays to this year. Yep my "failure Friday" starts TODAY, with our totally imperfect bathroom make over.

Reed and I needed to start this bathroom reno 1. because I hated the color, it was a pale yellow but made  everything look yellow and 2. because the shower walls decided to start falling off.

We visited Lowes and got new shower walls for just $70 and made sure we had all the glue and caulk we needed. And I figured this made a great excuse to paint the bathroom when I didn't have to worry about getting paint all over the place. I was aiming for a smooth ombre effect with the left over grey from the rest of the house/studio.

First, Reed pulled the old walls off and boy oh boy was there problems. Loads of old glue to scrape and then bad sheet rock around the faucet. Once Reed scraped off the glue and replaced the sheet rock he was ready to add the new walls. So he cut the walls to size, spread the glue and taped it to dry.

Sadly, apparently our window is no where near square so when Reed cut the walls it was a bit off. Ya know an inch between the bottom and top of the wall. Old houses blow my mind some times. 

And no pictures but the next day when we put the caulking on apparently 1 section of the wall decided to not really stick tight so there is a bubble... great. Right now we have a board attempting to push the air out of it! Oops :) 

And when Reed was doing the shower walls I decided to start my thought to be super easy grey paint job. I took my original paint color and painted a 12 inch strip. Then I added a half cup of white paint to make it a tint lighter. Then painted another 12 in strip. And to blend them together I used a dry paint brush and just smudged the two together. I continued this up for 6 strips and then white for the remainder of the wall. 

 Well, I failed. I was hoping for a beautifully soft gradient. Instead I got some crazy uneven stripes and then basically the same color the rest of the way up... It was a pretty big bummer and took all I had in me not to just give up on the idea. I'm hoping I can go back and fix it up... maybe another post in the future but for now our bathroom is a failed paint job FO SHO!

Please just tell me how I taped off the entire bathroom and still have about a bajillion of these bad paint spots?! Ugh, I always hate painting...

How many projects have you started thinking it would be uber easy only to find out it is going to take much longer, and maybe a bit more skill than you thought?

How I turned a failed dog bed project in to artwork for the bathroom!

Projects don't always turn out the way we picture in our heads. Pinterest has created a perfect example of how our DIY projects should turn out. But often they don't look anything like what we pinned. I am not a huge fan of Pinterest. I use it some but only if I have a specific thing in mind that I have a QUESTION about. It is a research tool for me, otherwise it would totally put me in a creative block.

Anyway, back on track here. I decided I was going to make our beautiful puppy a bed. She is a little strange in the fact that she doesn't like the floor. She would rather sit on ANYTHING but the floor. She is precious and I will take any chance to share pictures of her so here are some of my favorite pictures of her sitting on everything from my feet to a barstool. Isn't she just the sweetest!

I decided that she might like her dog bed a little more if it was off the floor! Brilliant right?!
And what better material than the mighty pallet! Well I got to work and it immediately wasn't what I was expecting. 1. taking the pallet apart was SUPER hard! I have used pallets before but always cut them up, trying to take the nails out was ridiculous. Never again. 2. Making a real rough pallet look some what refined just wasn't happening. I'm sure it could have but I was so turned off by that point that I just gave up. It looked like a pallet...




So the bed sat outside on the back porch for about 3 weeks. Reed kept asking what I was doing with it and I just avoided answering :) Finally I just took it apart. I was tired of looking at it so I made it go away.



Then I realized the other thing I was really tired of was that big blank wall in our bathroom!
Our bathroom is kinda strange. I showed you on Friday in our bathroom "tour" how long and narrow it is, isn't it a bit bizarre?? Even though I technically finished this room like 2 days after we moved in I just couldn't share because I was so unsettled about that long empty wall.



So I decided to recycle my already recycled pallet dog bed in to SOMETHING to put on that wall!

The pieces where already whitewashed from the bed so all I did was come up with a word that would fit the bathroom. I wasn't in the most creative mood so "scrub" it was. Then I just pulled the color from the shelves and shower curtain and painted it right on the "headboard" of the dog bed.

WAH LA! The perfect size piece of wall art made in all about 10 minutes (if you don't count the long process of failing in making a dog bed).



So there is a fail turned success! I'm sure you all have stories similar, its hard to live up to the Pinterest perfect life that is out there now. Let me know what kind of project fails you've had around the house.