Family Room Media Wall

Here are two terrible before photos that tell you almost nothing about our family room:

The outside wall is eight feet high, with the ceiling sloping up to about 17 feet high on the inside wall.  The room is about 16 feet wide, so I wanted a TV solution that would fill the width of the entire wall.  Once again, I turned to Ikea.  The solution I designed is built from Sektion kitchen cabinets, with a custom-built surround for the TV.

First, I built a base out of 2x6 lumber:

Then, I assembled the cabinets and mounted them to the wall:

Many things did not line up:

But, with some patience and fine tuning, I wound up with this:

I installed carsiding above the countertop on the TV cabinet, wrapping around the sides.  Then I built some simple shelves to connect the two tall halves together.  I used Ikea's contour deco strips across the top to tie the unit together.

The glass cabinet lighting is Armacost LED tape I ordered from Home Depot.  It was super easy to work with and has a dimmer.

The knobs are Threshold from Target.

I centered the unit on the three large windows it faces, which resulted in an asymmetrical design.  The unit is constructed of 30"H cabinets on the bottom and 40"H cabinets on the top.  I would have preferred to go higher, but was constrained by the location of the return air vent on the wall.  Constraint breeds creativity!  The TV unit in the center is built from 20"H cabinets.  All cabinets are 15" deep.  The doors are Bodbyn.  The countertop on the TV unit is the same Karlby walnut I used on the command center and also in the laundry room.    Some hidden holes in the wall and cabinets help keep all the wires out of sight.  The TV has one of those transmitters that allow you to use the remotes with all the doors closed.

I love the way the project turned out and now need to finish the window trim, baseboards, and refinish the fireplace.

Drop Zone

Here's the coat closet when we moved in...

The whole area was narrow and dark.  There was no light around the far corner of the closet, which leads to the garage.  Also, my kids are not "open-closet-door-remove-hanger-hang-up-coat-close-closet-door" kind of kids.  Are anyone's?  I wanted something bright and open, with lots of hooks and shoe bins.  So, we removed the closet wall and had a new light box installed just inside the garage door:

Just 19 short months (and about four actual days of work) later, here's the after:

I used the same wall planks from Home Depot that I used in the powder room.  I think repeating this element helps tie the downstairs together.  The large hooks were an inexpensive option from Lowes, and the little key hooks are from Menards.  The outgoing-mail box is from a vanity set I found at Target.  I decided against a built-in bench in favor of a free-standing bench.  I thought it would be easier to clean the floor if I could just pull the bench out.  I found a perfectly-sized option at Crate & Barrel:

The shoe bins are from the Land of Nod outlet, and the baskets are from The Container Store.  I used the same wood corbels for the shelf that I used with the countertop in the kitchen (someday I will get those photos posted):

I found this cute light at Shades of Light:

I think technically it's an exterior light, but who cares?  The downlight helps to mask some of the unevenness in the ceiling from where it was repaired after we took the closet walls down.  Lesson learned:  I should have taken the whole ceiling down and replaced it rather than piecing in.  Upside:  the new light is cute!  Also, no glass globe means no dead bugs to clean out.

I love the way this project turned out.

Kids' Bathroom

For the last 15 months, five of us have been sharing the master bath.  Today, that ends.  I just finished up the renovation of the upstairs bathroom for the three youngest kiddos.  Here's what it looked like before:

Builder-grade fixtures, vinyl tile, wallpaper border, broken medicine cabinet.

 Here's what it looks like now:

First I had an attic adventure installing a new fan and light.  The new fan exhausted out the opposite side of the housing; I installed bracing between the ceiling joists so I could secure the housing against the joists with the exhaust pointing in the correct direction. The original fan was 50 cfm; I went with 110 cfm on the new fan due to the number and length of showers taking place.

There was no window, so I really wanted to brighten things up.  I selected white hex tile for the floor and 3x6 subway tile for the walls behind the vanity.  I used 6x6 white bullnose tile as the baseboard.  The vanity, sink, and faucets are from Ikea, and I found the light at Shades of Light.  The shower curtain is from Target.  I went with hooks instead of towel bars because, you know, kids.  The hooks are Delta Compel that I found at Menards.  The toilet is the same Kohler Cimarron I've installed three other times.  The paint is Hibiscus and Van Deusen Blue from Benjamin Moore.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and the kids are sure happy to have their own bathroom.

***
I want to detail how I solved a special challenge I encountered because I could find very little guidance online.

The original vanity had a toekick register I knew I'd have to work around.  The vanity I picked was up on legs, so I figured, "No problem."  I'd just tile out a vent space in the floor and be good to go.

BUT, when I removed the vanity, this is what I found:

See the conduit and plumbing pipe on the floor?  Here's a closer look: 












Serious bummer.  How was I going to tile around this?  Also, how was I going to route the vent for the HVAC?  Before, the vanity was just sitting on top of the vent in the floor, with a toekick register placed on the front of the vanity.  You could barely feel any air coming out of the vent.  Pretty inefficient.  I didn't want to return the vanity, so, after spitballing with my husband and son, I came up with the following solution. Part of my inspiration came from this video. I'm including lots of detail because I couldn't find much guidance about this situation online:

First, I framed out the area with 2x2 lumber so I would have something to tile up to.

 

 

 

 

Once the tile was finished and grouted, I removed the temporary frame,

and installed a frame that matched the height of the baseboard tile I was using.

Then, I fashioned a boot out of sheet metal and screws and screwed it to the floor and to the back of the frame so the heat and AC would be directed straight out the front.  I caulked everything with air duct sealant, then turned on the AC to make sure all the air was making its way out the front.

Here's a photo of the hole in the front of the frame for the register cover.  I lined up the toekick register so I could mark where the screws would go into the frame.  I tiled up to, but not over, the marked holes.

Once the boot was installed and the register location marked, I topped the frame with 1/2" plywood and covered all surfaces in 1/4" backer board (I don't have a photo of that).

I installed the 6x6 baseboard tile around the perimeter of the bathroom and around the frame.  Then I tiled the top of the frame.  This photo is before I grouted....

...and here it is with the white epoxy stain-proof grout applied.

Finally, I spray-painted the register and screws and installed.  There's plenty of room to remove the register if needed.

It's chilly now, and when the heat is on the floor actually feels warm, a major improvement over what existed before.

The Outside of the House

I put all interior projects on hold for the summer in order to work on the exterior of the house and the yard.

Here are some of the changes we made to the exterior of the house:

• New windows installed.  We were able to convert the double window over the front door to a single picture window.
• New garage doors installed.  I was going to just paint the existing garage doors white and do one of those "carriage door makeovers" you see on Pinterest (Two houses in our neighborhood did it and I didn't realize the windows weren't real for like a month. They look awesome.)  Upon closer inspection we discovered the doors had been both driven into from the driveway and backed into from inside, so we decided to bite the bullet and replace them.  I wanted the windows for aesthetic reasons, but I love how much light they provide inside the garage during the day.
• All trim painted white.
• Front door repaired with Bondo and painted Echo Lake Aqua (a Glidden color mixed by my Benjamin Moore store).  New bronze front door hardware.  The door was super banged up (the inside still looks pretty terrible) but front door packages are pricey!  And of course it's a non-standard size so we can't buy off the shelf.

Here's the front of the house Before...   
















...and the After
















The blue sky sure cheers up the after photo!  I like that things look a little crisper now.

Next up is replacing the siding, which is damaged all over the house (somebody really liked his BB gun).  But before we can do that, we need to decide about the front porch area.  I originally wanted to add a deep front porch from the front door all the way across the three living room windows to the left.  Now that we've lived here for a year and are spending so much time in the back yard, we may do something simpler.  Either way, we'll have to hire an architect to do the drawings.  I'm having so much fun using the siding visualizer on the Menards website.  When we do replace the siding, we are getting rid of the horrible medallion.  I'd like to go with a lighter color so the white trim is bit subtler.  I'd also like to incorporate some shingle siding into the front of the house.





                                                    

Command Center

The kitchen featured a desk area common to many homes of this vintage.

I wanted lots of storage for office supplies, files, and paper shredding and recycling.  I didn’t want a desk surface because they always wind up serving as paper dumping grounds in our family.  I usually wind up working at the kitchen table anyway.

After removing the existing desk, I added framing above the old half wall in order to provide more enclosure and a place to hang a bulletin board.  The new command center, as we call it, is comprised of eight Ikea cabinets, using the same door style from the kitchen.  The base and wall cabinets are separated by a Karlby walnut countertop.  It provides some warmth and texture in contrast to the white quartz countertop we selected for the kitchen cabinets.  I left the doors off the middle cabinet in the top row and installed some lighting to brighten up that corner of the kitchen at night.  I added a simple trim detail at the top to finish off the gap between the cabinets and the ceiling.

I added two glass doors because I thought solid white would be too monolithic alongside the vast stretches of white in the rest of the kitchen.  But, I didn’t necessarily want to see what was in the cabinets.  After considering frosting  film and funky wrapping paper inserts (which resulted in too much color), I settled on covering the inside of the doors with pages from some Shakespearean plays I found at 2^nd & Charles for like $5.  It provides some nice texture and won’t conflict with whatever artwork I might display on the top center shelf.

 I decided to use two different kinds of knobs, again to introduce some texture to what could otherwise be a plain-vanilla façade.

The cabinet interiors provide lots of useful storage.  I was able to create a spot for paper recycling and shredding on one side and a file drawer on the other:

The 30” wide drawers feature an additional internal drawer each, which, combined with Ikea’s interior organizers, provides ample storage for small office supplies:

All in all I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and it was definitely one of the faster projects I’ve tackled.