Painting the bathroom

It is a swirling and whirling of leaves out there and the temperature has dropped down to 23. The feral cat, Tuxedo, keeps coming back for the warmth of the settee out in the front porch; and I can tell when he’s been there because he keeps knocking down the pretty pillow in azures and sapphire colors I keep there.  I guess he must not like that pillow for some reason.

It is very cold outside, but inside it feels deliciously warm and cozy and beautiful everywhere you look.  

The next day after I worked on restoring the grout in our master bathroom I decided it was finally time to paint the walls; something I’ve been wanting to do since we moved to our little cottage, but was afraid of the task and thus I kept postponing it.  I knew that once I had started this project I wasn’t going to stop until it was all done.  And I was right.  I painted seven straight hours... going up and down coats after coats.  At the end of the day I was truly exhausted and achy all over, but ever so happy it was all done. 

I love to take long, hot baths, so the extra big bathtub was on top on my list of blessings when we found our little cottage, but the paint there was a yellowish-creamy color, which made everything looked opaque and unclean.  Now it is crisp clean white walls and floors.  The bright white grout made a huge difference too.  

I did some redecorating there too.  I wanted to go outside the box and use tall window drapery panels instead of a regular shower curtain. I’m envisioning some white ruffled panels for a cottagey feel, but haven’t found what I want yet, so for now I’m using my pink Rachel Ashwell curtains temporarily, and I’ve also dressed up the window over the bathtub in sheer pink.  I love the soft pink glow that saturates the bathroom when kissed by sunlight.

I still haven’t figured out yet what to do about the water proof backing part… I might have to use a second rod for the plastic liner… but we’ll see.  Pink it is for now!

This is an unfinished job for sure.  I still want to replace the hideous six light Hollywood vanity fixture for something nicer, but if we must keep it, I will definitely paint it too, and I’m still planning on framing both of the basic vanity mirrors…

Oh forget Medusa—

She'll only come out at night, but sometimes she likes to help around

.

Oh Sherry, I took this picture just for you! It is the same view as the second picture down on my previous post.  I have sheer white panels installed there, so you can’t see the pond real well, but not much to see these days anyway… the water is frozen and the fountain has been shut down for the winter.

 

Thank you for being here with me my friends~

“We are kindred spirits, you and I... One day you will realize you don't have to fight your nature. You can live your life freely... I want to be there when that happens.”
― T.T. Escurel, The House of Rose

My day - restoring grout

I’m tired—exhausted up to my eyelashes tired working all day in another project in my little cottage… like restoring the dark/dirty tile grout in our master bathroom.  Phew!

When we moved to our little white cottage, the first thing I noticed was the hideous dark grout in the kitchen. White tile and dark grout is an awful combination; the floors looked extra dirty and busy and it was simply hideous. 

So we removed the old grout and re-grouted the entire kitchen and laundry room area.  It was a messy job and it was costly.  But it was totally worth it.  What a huge difference that alone made!  Happy happy.   

The two bathrooms in our little cottage have the same type of yucky grout, but I knew I had to wait on that one.  Now that I’m out of the garden for a while and taking small projects at a time inside the house I decided it was time to work on our master bathroom.  It so needed an update.  

The first thing I wanted to concentrate on was the grout. This time, however, I had to do the restoration myself… 

For my grout I did a little bit of research and discovered a magical product at Home Depot. It's called Polyblend Grout Renew and it comes in a bunch of different colors. I chose 'Bright White' for my project. The entire bottle was only $11.97 and I only used up about half a bottle on the entire bathroom. The only other 'tools' you need are a toothbrush to apply the color and a wet towel to clean excess off edges.

This is how my floors looked like when I started…

ugh...

 Moving on…

You can already see the difference...

 

I had to stop for a pick me up mid-morning/quick lunch...

Kale, pineapples, blueberries and Greek yogurt smoothy

Manuel came by around 11:30am and started working on wiring cables and such…

While I continued working on my tiles.  I'm so excited over how well this is working!

Poor Manuel is having trouble installing my chandi because it didn’t come with the appropriate tools.  Wondering what to do eh?  Hehe... guess he'll have to come up with his own magic to be able to tuck the wires into the ceiling hole and such ;) 

 He ended up having to rewire the whole thing, bless his heart.

I finally finished working on the bathroom tiles by the time Manuel left... here's how it's looking like now.  I say wonderful!

The teal chandi is finally up… I totally love it. 

I’ll be retouching the paint tomorrow morning, including painting the extra piece of chain we added and I will be replacing these chunky light bulbs for something else.  But otherwise, it’s looking beautiful.  

Oh and I did ended up adding a clear coat of Rust-Oleum’s Painter’s Touch Ultra Cover 2X to my vase…  do use it if you’re painting something like that.  It adds a wonderful shine!

In the midst of our lives, we must find the magic that makes our souls soar...

PS: The Polyblend will stain your hands if not using gloves. Hard to remove.

My today

Breakfast—we love coffee, and we love our breakfasts.  It is my hour of enchantment and communion when I seek to hear God’s voice while, outside, the natural world joins in, in their own way. 

This morning, the blue jays were holding a meeting on the pea gravel paths on the west side of the garden.  It was bath-time in the fountain in the center of the garden for the orange-breasted robins, and over to where the feeders stands like a magical tree in the east part of the garden, the cardinals were holding their own worship services.  I am enamored of this place and everything that surrounds me. 

After breakfast and after I cleaned up the kitchen and cleaned both bathrooms, I started assembling my new chandelier.  I’m loving how it’d turned out; love the colors and the combination of both together.  I did some paint retouching in some areas, but this was really more for my own sanity than anything else, and it turned out beautifully.  I’m now waiting for Manuel, my 70 plus year old dear handyman, who has helped me immensely with all the things I’ve done in our cottage, to put it up.  Hopefully, I’ll see him tomorrow. 

Because I’m not spending that much time out in the garden these days, I’m into some ‘inside’ projects now.   I found this lovely urn you see here at a thrift store several years ago, but because I never really felt in love with it, I didn't care for it much.  Something about the blue stripes on it kept me from showing it.  It's been hiding all these years.  It never occurred to me that I could have painted it… 

 Until now...

Love it!

Do I need to spray on a clear coat?  Do you know?

Can hardly wait to see my chandi up! ;)

See you all soon!

Painted chandeliers... a yes, a no?

Hello beautiful!  Hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been dancing amidst myriads of colorful autumnal leaves on chilly mornings and the skies are clear and cloudless and it is wonderfully and marvelously sunny all in one.  I am drinking in my days in tiny sips of moments; drinking them with the little spoon of my heart while I savor each moment and treasure them somewhere in my thankful inner self.

When we bought our little white cottage I replaced two of the basic, builder-grade, dome light in our kitchen and dinning room area with two of these Home Depot pretty chandeliers...

But I still have two more dome light fixtures in the kitchen that really need to be changed.  Vulgarly speaking, they look like some giant boobs to me, and that’s precisely the name I have for them… they really need to go.

Thus, I’ve been on a hunt for an old light pendant to use in my cottage kitchen; something boring and dull that could be transformed into something pretty, and cottagey.   At our local thrift store the other day I found this yucky thing here—lost in a thick coat of grime and sticky dust.  I was not in love with it, but it was the right price.  Yes, I’m cheap.  And I knew I wouldn’t feel terrible if I messed it up or didn’t like the results.  So I bought it.   

White and teal are the colors of my kitchen.  Greens, blues, teals, aqua’s… I’m so in love with this line of colors lately.   

So I hosed down “the thing” real good, gave the glasses a cleansing of hot water and vinegar and got to work. I originally wanted to paint the entire light fixture in white for a more sophisticated look, but I have a cottage, and hot or not, painting things is permissible in a cottage.  Thus, I got both the colors of my kitchen for my chandelier.  White and teal for a funky cool chandelier! ;)

I debated between painting the brass part in this lovely Island Oasis teal color, from Behr and the glasses in white, or vise-versa.  I finally decided to paint the brass in white and the glasses in teal.

Here are the glasses now ‘baking’.  I followed the Martha Stewart’s Bake-to-Cure Method, found HERE.

Oh boy... are they melting?

Stay tune for the results! ;)

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Back home...

Our eyes to the outside...

One of the two windows in our master room 

 

I love it that it gifts us with the view of every changing season

from just steps away from our bed...

 

 And at the kiss of dusk, 

when outside light goes dim 

and the insides get fill with tickling little stars

 

A single rose

One of the last gift of the season

 

All about us is still and familiar and sweet

 

I love this little painting of the purest of white roses.

A treasure found at a estate sale, two houses down the hill from our little cottage.

Autumn leaves scattered around

How happy and thankful I am to be back to the peacefulness of our little white cottage; to be able to have made it back in one piece altogether after a whole week of traveling and experiencing some of our biggest and overpopulated cities—D.C., and N.Y.C.—with it’s irresistible charm and permanent revolution… life changes irremediably as you walk the streets of NYC… you become a poet of people and of the diversity of some very marvelous subjects—a sea of souls.  Some lost, some beyond reach I suppose.  And you feel enveloped and cheerful as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous.  NYC is an instantaneous magnetism.  And I loved it all, but always happy to return to the gentleness and oddities of our rural realm…

Our little white cottage is still standing whole too—a total relief and we found it tenderly sleeping in the arms of autumn.  We slept on a cold house last night, with only the warmth of our bodies to soothe our dreams.  And finally this morning the heating guys came and fixed our heater.  The little cottage feels warm again, and wonderfully cozy in an autumnal morning like this… and I find myself adoring the simple, the unimportant, the small... going from room to room admiring each little thing, changing a pillow here, turning on all the little lights here and there. The fairy lights like tiny whispers in the morning. 

Outside, the fallen leaves have taken possession, and now that the thicket is starting to thin out, birds of every kind are seen everywhere in their natural home.  The cardinals and the black birds and blue jays—bright blue above the oranges and crimsoned colors of autumn.  Birds with their fondness for acorns and ripe fruits chasing each other; chasing the wind.  I just can’t seem to have enough of them.

The colorful zinnias that had bestowed so much joy throughout the summer are finally done and the knockout roses almost eaten in their entirety by bugs.  I need to prune them before winter comes around, but I don’t feel like doing much outside. 

I finally finished reading “The lovely bones”.  It frustrates me that I get so profoundly intertwined into what I read.  It is a scary feeling sometimes.  And I am Susie Salmon this very moment wearing my innocence like a comfortable old coat.  “Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.” Alice Sebold.