World's smallest bathroom (well, it's at least in the running...)

Before the woman who briefly lived here before us, a couple owned this house since the 60s. Our realtor told us how, as they got older, they no longer wanted to have to go downstairs (especially in the middle of the night) to use the restroom. So, they had a toilet added into the closet that sits above the full bathroom. That was the extent of this "bathroom:" simply a toilet in the closet, and a bare light bulb on the ceiling. No sink, no toilet paper holder, nothing. There's not even really any room to turn around.

Here it is:

I think the last owner didn't really know what to do with the room, either. She never added anything to it and might not have even used it. When we went and looked at the house, we were even asked, "What did you think of that weird toilet in the closet?"

When Andrew and I talked seriously about putting in an offer on the house, I asked him what we should do about that closet. Should we pull out the toilet and have the sewer line capped? He thought that would be silly, especially since we have little kids who might need to go potty in the middle of the night. He made sense, so I started brainstorming ideas for the water closet. I decided I didn't want the room to be an apology. "Yeah, we have a toilet in the closet. Weird, right?"

So, I decided to own it! Plus, with tiny spaces, you can do things you'd never even consider doing in a standard-sized room. I decided to try wall paper for the first time. I decided to hang pictures. I decided to add a mirror (a basic one that I brought up from the main bathroom downstairs. That room is a whole other story for another time). We got a towel ring and a toilet paper holder. Here is the finished bathroom:

Because of where the sewer line was, there was a big gap left behind the toilet. By big, I mean 10-11 inches!

So, I filled it will a shelf! I looked everywhere and finally found a floating shelf on Target.com that fit the dimensions of the space almost perfectly.

See something different in that picture? Yes indeed, I found a toilet tank sink! It is actually the coolest thing I've ever seen. I got it online from SinkPositive, and it's an eco-friendly sink. Instead of going into the toilet tank when you flush, the clean water from the line first goes through the faucet. You wash your hands with that clean water, and the used "gray water" then fills the toilet tank. So, the water automatically flows as soon as you flush the toilet. I took a video of it because I think it's so neat. At the time of the video, the bathroom wasn't yet completed.

                       

Finally, we replaced the bare bulb with a simple pull-chain light with a cover. We also swapped the bulb to a CFL so no tall people would burn their head stepping into our bathroom closet. Powder room. Water closet. WC. I don't know what to call this room.

One final look:

The room is simple, obviously. But I just think it now looks like a bathroom instead of a weird toilet in a closet. And that makes me happy :) I now consider our house to officially be a 1.5 bath!

Home Improvement: The Kitchen Sink

Have you all seen the pin on Pinterest to put peel-and-stick tiles in your kitchen sink cabinet? It looked like a super cheap and easy home improvement idea, so I pinned it and finally got around to doing it one night last week.

The project cost under $15, and it took me about 2 hours from start to finish.

Here's the "before" photo. Yuck, huh?!

And here are the after photos:

I feel like I got a lot of bang for my buck! The only problem I encountered with the project was the tiles I ordered had arrows on the backing paper. I made sure all of the arrows pointed in the same direction. I realized when I was halfway through the project that the arrows didn't point in the same direction on all the tiles, so some are upside down. It kind of made me mad, but then I decided it doesn't matter that much, and it definitely looks very much improved!

I realized I never posted about my cabinets, either. A couple Christmases ago, Andrew's uncle gave me a gift card to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I ordered a bunch of cabinet pulls because our cabinets looked very outdated. I took off all of the cabinet pulls, cleaned the cabinets, polished them with wood polish, and then screwed in the new handles. The project would have cost about $100, but it only cost me the wood polish!

Here are the before and after shots of the cabinets:

Close-up:

I really love it when simple changes make a big difference.

A Special Shelf

Because Oliver started crawling yesterday, I decided to finish up some of the baby-proofing around the house. I cleared out the bottom shelf of the book shelf. It looked so empty, so I decided to designate it "Oliver's shelf." I put some of his toys, tupperware, and an empty coffee can (It does not have jagged edges, don't worry! It came sliced with a rounded edge.) on it. I turned to grab the camera to take a picture, and Oliver was already making a bee-line for it! He loves his shelf! I set it up for him again and again with various toys, and each time, he delighted in pulling them off of "his" shelf.

New Floors!

The flooring is offically done in the dining room, kitchen and living room! Once we get our bathroom pipes moved on Tuesday, we'll finish the flooring in there, too. It looks so much nicer in here, and it feels great to be rid of all the stinky (literally) blue carpet.

Tearing out the Flooring

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Ah, fun with home ownership. My parents want to get Andrew and I new flooring as our housewarming gift. Unfortuantely, as it works, before the new stuff comes in, the old stuff must come out.

The kitchen and bathroom floors were raised about two inches higher than the rest of the downstairs flooring. We knew, of course, that this meant previous owners had failed to remove the layers of old flooring before adding on their new choices. So it came down to Andrew and me to remove the layers (and layers) of Pergo, linoleum and sub-flooring.

OK, so Andrew did most of the work. I scrubbed down the kitchen appliances as they were moved, though, and that was pretty much the nastiest task ever.

At this point, half the kitchen is down to its subfloor, and the other half has one more layer of linoleum left. Thankfully, it doesn't appear to be glued down. Point one for us. On the other hand, it's held down by approximately 2.3 million staples. It appears someone had a little too much fun with their staple gun...

Houses and Town Homes

Andrew and I have been on a mission with our house-hunting these last few months. We started looking before we were expecting and even put a bid in on a home. After re-crunching our numbers figuring in the cost of our upcoming baby, we made the tough decision to pull our bid on the house.

Now, we're looking for more affordable places to live in town homes and such. The problem is, all the nice ones always seem to have offers on them already!

Finding a home seems impossible, and now we have 60 days to move out of our apartment! Actually, the apartment people did say we can do month-to-month after our lease is up, but that'll cost an extra $100 a month. Bogus!

American Idol and Digital Receivers

Andrew and I don't have cable; we don't watch all that much TV, so we've been sticking with broadcast and saving a bit of money there. A few months ago, we started hearing about digital receivers and such, so Andrew sent in for our free coupon thing from the government.

Yesterday, we finally hit up Best Buy to get our receiver. While we were there, I picked up a copy of Wii American Idol karaoke.

I might not be a fan of the show, but American Idol for the Wii is too fun. They have a selection of maybe 4 dozen songs or so, everything from that song, "It's Beautiful" (Or is it "You're Beautiful"?) to "Bohemian Rhapsody." You sing along with the song, and the judges from American Idol (Randy, Paula and Simon; see, I know my pop culture trivia!) critique you based on keeping with the rhythm of the song and keeping the right pitch. Based on how well you do, you might bomb out or else go gold or platinum (I have yet to get a diamond). The more platinum songs you get, the more songs you unlock (5 more until I unlock "Somewhere Over the Rainbow!").

Anyway, I wasn't sure what to expect from the game, but it's a lot of fun. Andrew said it's exactly like Rock Band, only it's without all the other instruments. I guess that means I might like Rock Band... or that Rock Band fans might like American Idol!

So far, my best song is "Tiny Dancer." I did surprisingly well on Aerosmith's "Don't Want to Miss a Thing," too. I'm really bad at the low pitch songs; the pitch mic has a hard time recognizing my low notes (no matter how low I go, I can't seem to get low enough for some parts of "Knocking on Heaven's Door").

I'm thinking about bringing the karaoke game over to my parents' house. There's a chance my mom'll get a kick out of it. That or Guitar Hero. I wonder if you can rent that along with the guitar from Blockbuster? Hmm.

Anyway, back to our Best Buy purchases. The digital receiver works *really* well. A few of our channels came in really static-y, but with the receiver, it's just as clear as having a cable connection. Andrew commented, "If I'd known it worked this well, I wo uld have sent for hte coupon a long time ago!" We have a second coupon, so we're planning on picking up another for our other TV. The digital picture is widescreen, too (I didn't know TV shows were filmed in widescreen; did you?). I'm excited to catch "House" tonight!

Hurray for our Stimulus!

Huzzah, Andrew and I have officially paid off one of our student loans! One down, one to go. Our finances seem to be in such good order, we've started to talk about looking for a house!

Our lease ends soon, so we'll renew it for another year, but we're hoping (hoping!) that we'll be able to find something and afford something the following year. Hurray!

Strangely, once we starting talking about it, my thoughts went immediately to Bailey. She's starting to show signs of getting older, and walks with a definite limp. I wondered if she'll make it through next year to be able to see our house and play in the yard. Thinking that it's a possibility she won't be there made me cry.

It's weird, I guess. In some ways, she's really an attachment to my childhood. My parents gave her to me a week before my 14th birthday, so I got to train her in Chicago and raise her here in Denver. She got to be with me for the end of my childhood and throughout the years of teenage angst. She was with me throughout college and still here now that I'm married.

Don't get me wrong. She's not on her death bed or anything. It just scares me to think that one day she won't be here in another stage of my life. It's hard getting used to the idea of not having someone around who's always been there. Sadly, that's something I've had to learn time and again over these last few years.