Showing posts with label bathroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bathroom. Show all posts

Wednesday, 15 July 2015

The Right Lights.

It's no secret that I've been pretty dang terrible at blogging this year, but as I keep saying, I've had a fair bit going on... I know this house 'thing' is a marathon and not a sprint, but I don't think I anticipated it would take this long to turn this place into somewhere that feels like home.

Last weekend was the first time since we've moved that I've felt genuinely comfortable with having guests come to stay, and that's with the clutter that's still overtaking the front room, the fact we have no dining table and not to mention the amount of recycling we have (seriously, no one ever tells you that you'll suddenly amass more cardboard than you've seen in your life)!
It finally feels like we're getting there though, you know? It's not a chore to have downtime any more and we can have the odd evening where we're not unpacking another box or moving stuff from one room to another because it 'just looks better'.


With that being said, with our self-set deadline of the first weekend of August looming, we still have to paint the landing, living room, bathroom, front room, kitchen and hallway - but it's all good because despite running out of steam, we're feeling savvy having painted those first few rooms and we're being a little less ambitious with colour for this next lot - feature walls are fun and all, getting painting done is far more satisfying.

TL; DR: I got a new bathroom cabinet, I put it up in my house, I've lost track of all time.


[Bathroom Cabinet: Teagan (similar), c/o Pebble Grey]

Right, back to why we're here...

I was contacted just after we put in an offer on the house to write about bathroom lighting with the offer of a fancy bathroom cabinet mirror from Pebble Grey and here's my full disclosure policy because a bathroom mirror is one of those things you don't think about needing until you do and I was going to move house and I needed one so of course, I said yes. Plus, storage, I can't stress enough how much I love storage and thinking we wouldn't even have a bed at this point, I needed all the help I can get.

So when the cabinet landed on my desk after a couple of e-mail exchanges, I was pretty excited, I naïvely thought that it wouldn't matter that I didn't put it up in the flat because we'd be in our new house in a matter of weeks. Three months later... Obviously we've now lived here about 3 months and we're only just settling in, so we only actually put up the cabinet a few weeks ago so this review has (some how) ended up being almost 6 months late. But I'm doing this and it's a great cabinet and a great idea so I felt compelled to share anyway, despite the embarrassment.


That slate.



Bathroom lights are usually pretty bright, in fact, I remember reading (back when for a period I was inexplicably obsessed with winding down in the evenings) that they can end up waking you up and making you more alert, a little annoying when it's time to get ready for bed.

I was actually considering, once we'd bought our own place, that we'd either get super-low wattage lights or a dimmer switch but instead, this delightful LED battery mirror came up and I have to say, it lights up the bathroom like the moon and is great for staying relaxed after making the move from the living room to brushing my teeth.





Our little IKEA drill has been the best purchase, but these little piles of ex-wall don't ever fail to stress me out.

The cabinet itself was very easy to put up but we're very much DIY novices so it still took a good hour or so - which included the mild panic that Moon had over whether he'd hit a pipe or not, he didn't, so yeah, easy peasy. I really like the way it looks and even though the light is a simple set of battery LEDs it looks pretty sleek, I'm so pleased.

I feel that the inside of the cabinet is a little bit of a let-down as mirror on the other side of the door is just stuck on rather than having a little more consideration - with that being said, I hardly open it as it's mainly for our medicines and Moon's man things.




Now we 'actually' live somewhere it's been really satisfying to be able to invest in quality pieces rather than cheap but okay. The bathroom cabinet, while sponsored, is a great example of the kind of things that it's worth investing in. Especially if all you need to wind down and get a better nights sleep is some nifty bathroom lighting and, considering the mirror the previous people had before was just that, it's changed the whole feel of the bathroom and instantly made it 10x more functional.

Like I said, it's sort of getting there, even our bathroom window is starting to look like home.




[*I was gifted this bathroom cabinet by Pebble Grey, in case I didn't mention it enough, all views are my own]

Gratuitous Doll pics:


Friday, 11 May 2012

Duck Egg.

I wish I had more things to paint, painting is so much fun, although it's much easier to do it outside without a little cat trying to interfere every few minutes.

So, my Gran handed me down this box, she says it's called a butter box but she couldn't tell me why as she's always used to use it for extra bathroom bits. I figured it would come in useful for us so that we wouldn't have to worry about Dolly tearing up all our toilet paper (something that's happened before). All it needed was a lick of paint, so I figured why not.

Once again, Wilkinson saved the day with their sample pots, although I don't think these shades went as far as the ones I used before as I had basically run out by the time I was finished. The amount was fine though and I think it's best to have the exact amount rather than be over or under.

I went for 'Duck Egg' and 'Tealtastic', two of my favourite colours.
The 'teal' was a bit more blue than turquoisey but I still think it complimented the duck egg well.



Before.



I decided to paint the inside of the box too, which was much more hassle than painting the outside. It is better I did though, mainly because it had seen better days and was kind of mucky, but also because the mushy red didn't go to well with the clean, crisp colour I'd chosen for the rest of the box.



After.
I'm quite happy with the end result, and although our bathroom is mainly white - with the grossest shower curtain, which is why I haven't shown it to you - most of the accents are a turquoise/teal colour, so I picked everything so it would go.



RIP sanding block, this was Moon's contribution to this project. obviously we couldn't wait to buy smaller screws to screw the handle back on (we totally could have), so he improvised and used my sanding block to hold everything in place. It's a good improvisation to be fair and means that the handle holds well, and it does look a bit silly but hardly anyone would ever know...

I'm quite pleased with this little project and it took a lot less time than the chest, probably because I only stuck to two colours more than the fact that the chest is a lot bigger. Now the toilet rolls have a safe home!

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