Botanical Kitchen Revival: A Rental Kitchen Makeover on a Budget

Transforming any space is fun, but transforming your lifelong BFF’s space is a special kind of fun. When Frogtape reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in being a designer for their annual Paintover Challenge, it came at the perfect time. My friend, Kristina, had been talking about wanting to update her kitchen in the rental home where she lives with her husband and son, and I instantly pitched her the idea of doing the paintover challenge in HER kitchen. We talked to her landlord, who gave us the greenlight for the proposed changes and we got to work!

This makeover was primarily achieved with paint, with some honorable mentions from a few other design elements. I traded out the old overhead track lighting for a pretty new light that not only looked gorgeous, but offered way more illumination (which is a godsend come those dim PNW winter months). In lieu of taking out the meager tile backsplash and doing new tile (which probably would’ve required some drywall repairs, and a significant budget bump) I opted to keep the existing strip of tile, and add beadboard on top to fill the blank space between there and the bottom of the wall cabinets. Then, we painted it the same color as the cabinets and the walls, for a delicious tone-on-tone vibe. This basil color is super pretty, it feels lush and sophisticated.

The big, unexpected showstopper ended up being her basic old fridge, transformed with a bit of removable stick-on wallpaper! Since we kept the existing cabinet hardware and painted it brass to match the light fixture, we did the same with the fridge handle to tie everything together. I used Rustoleum Vintage Gold spraypaint to paint both the cabinet door pulls and the fridge handle.

Another thing we did was add a whole wall of open shelving to give her a ton more storage. We painted those shelves the same green as the rest of the kitchen, but kept that wall white to give some contrast. Now she has a bunch of space to store all her pretty jars of dry goods, cute mugs and, of course, more plants.

And one more fun little detail: we put a chalkboard area in for her toddler to use! That panel is access for the water heater, so it was just an unfinished wood panel before, so we framed it out to match the shaker style of the cabinets and did the center panel in chalkboard paint so he could draw and have fun!

Projects like this have all the elements of what makes me most excited about design and remodels. Making a huge impact for not a huge amount of money, coming up with creative solutions, and doing really fun and out of the box elements (I’ll never get over that fridge).

I’m so thrilled that Frogtape brought me in on their Paintover Challenge this year so I could do this amazing project!

\\ Sources //

Paint
Spraypaint
Light fixture
Removable wallpaper
Rug

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Eclectic Modern Bathroom Remodel

This before and after still rocks my world a little bit. Truth be told it’s not a true after, there are still projects to be done in here. but, I mean, come on. Are these two rooms even the same?! It’s wild. The layout for this room is strange. I’m really not entirely sure what the person who laid out this space was thinking, but gutting it and rearranging just wasn’t in the budget.

We kept pretty much everything and just reworked it. The vanity is the same, but I put new slab doors on, sanded down the original vanity to its natural oak and then whitewashed it to keep the modern light look that the raw wood had (putting poly over the raw wood would have turned it back into the ugly orangey color of the original bathroom— no thanks!).

For whatever reason, the old vanity had a strange vacant cavity next to the cabinet under the counter. What went there? Who knows. Probably just cobwebs and grime. I added some open shelves there which are perfect for holding baskets with hair product (curly girls represent!), and the bottom shelf is the perfect spot for extra TP rolls.

The large linen closet storage on the left side of the vanity got a slatted upgrade, I just refinished the existing door and trim the same way I did the vanity cabinet, and then added oak slats.

This bathroom is not hurting for storage so the massive medicine cabinet mirror was absolutely not necessary. a streamlined simple brass mirror took it’s place, and the sorely dated vanity lighting got a midcentury modern upgrade.

Dingy white walls be gone! I did a textured wall treatment, giving the walls a plaster-y look to remove the dated orange peel texture, and then painted a moody blue-ish green-ish teal, Valspar’s Everglade Deck.

Obviously the showstopper of the space is the stunning cement hex tile from Riad Tile. I’ve eyed so many styles from Riad for years and this large wall behind the vanity basically begged for a statement wall. I’m absolutely obsessed with how this tile completely transforms the room.

And to replace the old formica counter, we did a poured concrete counter! This whole space was a DIY update, and we did everything we could to do budget friendly updates, use what existing elements we could, and worked around the layout so we could create the maximum update for minimum cost. I did pretty much everything myself, except the poured concrete counter and the floor tile, which my husband took on (though I did cut the floor tile, so we’ll call that one a joint effort).

If you want to see the before images, scroll down!

We’ve got some other big projects in the works so this space is basically on hold for now. It has an ugly ivory fiberglass tub/surround which desperately needs to be replaced, but it works fine and I can hide it behind a pretty shower curtain, so for the time being it stays. A pretty white tub and tiled surround will happen someday! In the meantime, I just bask in the glow of the tile wall.

tile c/o Riad Tile

ORC Week 3: Shower tile installed!

We have tile!!! If I’m being honest, the tile isn’t 100% done… I still have to clean up grout haze, grout the shower niche (I think I’m going to grout that with white grout, which I didn’t have on hand), and caulk everything. Details, details. I always drag my feet on the details.

Tile was the biggest project in here, and the next biggest is to move plumbing, which I’m going to hire out. I’m moving the vanity to the wall under the mirror, so we need the sink plumbing to be there as well. Since we are in the midst of selling our other house, though, I may wait on that and try to button up some of the less daunting projects like finishing the drywall, installing shiplap on the ceiling, and re-doing the wall texture to feel more natural.

Make sure to check out all the other One Room Challenge participant projects here!

Jack's big kid room

A little less than a year ago, shortly after we moved into this house, we transitioned Jack from a crib to a “big kid” bed. I got this Ikea bed planning on making it into a cute little house, but after sketching out a bunch of iterations, I realized that his bed needed to be a Winnie! Luckily by this time he was a little bit older and I flipped the bed into the loft configuration in order to turn it into his very own Mini Winnie! I had some plywood leftover from a project, cut it into the Winnie shape, cut out the windows, painted it, and then just screwed it to the side of the bed!

I hadn’t really set out on designing his room with a plan, but over time it turned into a sort of adventure room, which I love. I had a bunch of National Park posters from years past, so I put those up (still need to find some frames that fit them). I found a vintage map at a local vintage shop, and had the paper star lanterns from his newborn nursery (Jack’s middle name is Polaris, so his baby nursery had a subtle star theme).

There’s obviously some work to be done, we need to finish the trim throughout the house so his room is missing door and baseboard trim, but for the most part, everything else is almost there! I’d love to take the super dated ceiling fan down and do a DIY paint job that fits his room, maybe do a Hudson Bay blanket look on the fan blades? The yellow triangle was inspired by Erin Barrett (@sunwoven on insta, if you don’t follow, you must! Her house is gorg).

Like the rest of our house, most of Jack’s room is thrifted, with the exception of the Ikea bed and the rug, which is from Wayfair!

Sources:
Bed frame: Ikea Kura Bed | Rug: Wayfair | Red Ampersand : Modcloth (years ago, here are some similar options) | Letter Boards: Mini + Poet size from Letterfolk | Winnie Painting: by me | Shelving unit: thrifted (originally from Ikea) | Storage Bins: thrifted (similar metal bins) | Bookshelf: thrifted (similar) | Elephant Clothes Hamper: thrifted (similar) | Chairs: thrifted | Floor Pouf: c/o D+K Renewal

ORC Week 1: Our Master Bath Before!

Our Master bath was the one room that we really needed to gut completely and start from scratch. It had a disgusting 3x3ft shower, with a tiny linen closet next to it, an itty bitty vanity and the toilet sat smack dab in the door way. Whoever designed this space was completely insane. We didn’t have the budget to move a bunch of plumbing around, so we are working with what we’ve got for the most part (yes, including the toilet location).

Originally, this bathroom really didn’t feel at all like a “master” bath. It feels like the dingy basement bathroom from my college duplex, only less spacious. So while we couldn’t do a ton with the layout of the space, we could make it feel more like a nice bathroom that was designed in this decade.

Like, you guys, it kind of even gives me the heebie-jeebies just looking at these pictures. There are so many things about this house that made me a little stunned that humans were living here right before we bought it, but this bathroom was definitely high on that list.

We’re also removing the pocket door, and moving the doorway slightly to the left so that the toilet isn’t RIGHT in the middle of the doorway. Look, I love my husband, but I’d rather not have a direct line of sight to him taking a dump while I’m laying in bed. But that’s just me. Taking out the pocket door also allows us to beef up that wall where the pocket was for the door, so it’s sturdy enough to take the tile that we’ll be putting on the shower surround. We still really need a sliding door since our bedroom isn’t very big and a traditional door will take up too much space, so we’re putting in a sliding barn door instead. I got a vintage french door, which I’ll be rehabbing and doing a faux mercury glass treatment on the glass panes for privacy.

Next to the shower was a tiny, 3ft deep linen closet which felt minimally useful, so we decided to tear out that whole side of the room and instead put a walk-in shower. Originally I wanted to do a penny tile floor for the shower, but it ended up being a lot of work to do all that ourselves, so instead we bought a pre-made shower pan that fit the space perfectly. It’s not fancy, so I’m going to make a teak slat floor for the shower that will fit right on top of the shower pan and make things feel way more “spa” like.

The flooring will be completely replaced with large black hex tile, and we are moving the vanity to be on the wall opposite the doorway, next to the shower. Since the shower entrance will now be where the linen closet used to be, we can utilize that wall for a vanity with way more counter space. We’re putting up a gorgeous brass hexagonal mirror and two brass sconces on either side of the mirror!

I’m so excited to have a functional bathroom in our master! We have a second full bath in the house, so we haven’t “needed” it, but it’s going to be SO nice to have a space of our own.

Check out the other One Room Challenge posts!