Friday, February 19, 2016

Our master bath and baby ramblings

While I would love to totally rip our master bath out and start over, there is no way that is happening, so we are making the best of this teeny room.  It's certainly a NICE remodel, but it's nice for someone else.  The travertine/traditional look is definitely not my style.  Here is how it looked when we bought the house:
You can barely see the burgundy valance over the window.  It was coated in dust and was taken down immediately!  I absolutely hate this dark sage green paint, and the previous owners used it in the master bath and bedroom, and the half bath in the lower level.  It felt so good to prime over it!  This makeover is not a WOW or anything, but I think it looks a lot better now.
I used BM Natural Cream on the walls, the same color we used in our Minnesota house main bathroom.  It is a nice warm gray.  I couldn't tolerate painting the walls to match the fleshy/yellow beige of the tile, and there is veining in the tile that matches the wall color, so I think it works ok.  The rack above the toilet is from Amazon, it was so easy to install and give us a nice place to stack a couple towels.  It was hard to find a towel rack because that little wall is only 24 inches, and most '24 inch' racks are actually almost 26 since the measurement only accounts for the bars.  Love Amazon!
The window is bare since there is privacy glass, but I may do a little window treatment one day.  For now, it's fun to be able to use whatever color towels we want.  The ugly wood TP holder is a project for another day!
We had to replace the faucet the first week because the existing one's pop up drain assembly wouldn't open and the sink couldn't drain.  How that got past inspection, I have no idea...it was seriously like it was super glued down.  Replacement drains wouldn't work with the existing faucet because it was all one piece, so an entire new faucet was needed.  What an expensive problem!  We are finding the previous owners used cheap materials and we are now fixing all their mistakes.  I chose the Moen Banbury faucet and got the matching towel bar since there wasn't one before. 
I would really like some hardware on the vanity, since you literally have to claw the drawers open, but I can't find anything I like.  I feel like satin nickel to match the rest of the bathroom would be too obvious, so I'm thinking dark to match the dark glazing on the wood.  But the fancy edges make placing a knob on the door hard, so maybe a large pull in the middle of the door to match smaller pulls on the drawers?  Or, nothing on the door and just pulls on the drawers?  Help!  Another thing I really need to do is update the can lights.
I would love to rip out that dumb soffit and move the box to the wall for a nice normal vanity fixture, but that is just not a priority right now.  In the meantime, I will just get new flush can inserts and call it a day.  I also fight a daily battle with soap scum on the glass enclosure. 
I try to squeegee the water off after every shower to prevent this, but that doesn't always happen, or work.  I'd love to hear any good methods for keeping the glass clean!  So, that is the tiny bathroom we use to shower and (at least for me) basically nothing else.  I wish there was more room, but it's nice to have, anyway.  Life has been very hard this last month.  Zach's face usually looks like this unless he's nursing.
He still will not sleep decently unless being held.  He usually sleeps for one 2 hour stretch per night in the rock n play (the rest of the night on me) and a single 1-2 hour nap in the swing during the day if I'm lucky.  Some days he doesn't really sleep all day long, just little cat naps while nursing.  It's so exhausting and it's not just me, he is also super tired.  But he won't tolerate a swaddle, he won't take any pacifier I've tried, he won't even take any bottles - so I'm trapped at home with him.  He is also so big that it's tiring to wear him in the carrier.  He weighed 14 lbs 4 oz at his 2 month check up!
I was dairy free for four weeks, and we didn't really notice a difference in his behavior or desire to be held/hatred of laying down, so I started eating some earlier this week.  Then he became extremely fussy and cried even while being held, so I'm back to no dairy hoping it will at least cut out some gas.  It's hard, but I still manage to find some happy baby moments to take cute photos of Zach.  I am determined to take as many photos/videos of him as I did with Ashford, I think it's so sad that first kids always have more!  I've committed to doing a 365 book of Zach, the same as I've done for Ashford in 2014 and 2015.  It will be so fun to see him gradually growing in each photo!  Here are some of my recent favorites:
This one has a little glimpse of a new rug we got for the living room.  The living room is in transition right now since Shaun wanted the sectional downstairs.  It's such a mess!
And despite Ashford not wanting to participate in photo sessions with his brother, I managed to get some cute shots for Valentine's Day...
There has been some exciting progress on the lower level, I will try to clean that up and take some photos for you all this weekend!