Mountain Cottage Bathroom Update

 

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Thought I'd give everyone an update of the progress of the mountain cottage en suite bathroom.

If you recall, I put together an inspiration board way back in the planning stage. Most of the fixtures have been purchased. The only thing different are the lights and the Shaker door has a horizontal rail. 

As of Sept 30th, we're  happy to say that Mr. DIY has finished all the framing, rough electrical, rough plumbing and insulation and has passed all of those inspections.

The bathroom currently looks like this:

The red door used to be the front entry door on the porch.

Just so you understand the layout, I've included a top view

Here are a couple of perspective renderings.

Now that all the inspections have been passed, Mr. DIY can start on finishing work: the flooring, drywall, install 3 doors, the vanity, toilet, lighting, heater, tile on the bath surround. Of course, that will be after Christmas and New Years....There's lots of Fall cleanup and chores to do. 

And, of course, I'm looking ahead to having the whole front third of the mountain cottage plan. The old bathroom will now become the laundry room and a new closet will be built in the foyer. This house will finally have the storage it needs. I'm not sure how the previous owners could live here full time with no linen closets and very little storage. 

We're also planning on having some concrete work done...

The new siding has been Zinssered and painted to match the house. One of these days, we'll choose a new color and repaint the whole cottage...and plant some new landscaping.

Now you're up to date on the Mountain Cottage bathroom project.

Thanks for stopping by,

Pam

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Bathroom Project at the Mountain Cottage

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I'm happy to report that our downstairs bathroom project is now underway after more than a year of planning. 

Since it would entail building in the porch which would take Mr. DIY months to do on weekends and one or two weeks of vacation time, we decided to hire the first part of the project out to a contractor.

It's taken awhile to find a good contractor and then get on his schedule, so I had plenty of time to plan, plan, and plan some more. Here's the floorplan of our mountain cottage as it was before we started. 

Our goal was to  have a large bathroom accessible from both the bedroom and the foyer.  Since the porch was above/inside the foundation and under the roof, it could easily be built in. 

The bathroom project basically involves the whole front of the house. 

Steps:

1. Install a new front door (new porch will come later)

2. Hire contractor to build bathroom exterior

3. Paint the front exterior

4. Rework the wall between bedroom/bath, install pocket door

5. Finish bathroom interior(plumbing, electrical, sheetrock, fixtures)

6. Remove walls, build new entry closet

7. Move laundry room to former bathroom- install cabinets

Looks like we're going to be at this awhile. 

  Here's how the front of the house looked before:

The first thing Mr. DIY had to do was install a new front door.

A couple of weeks later, the contractor and his team got to work. They worked fast and got to this point after one day. 

No more worrying about whether or not the porch floor would give way...the new floor was so sturdy and level. 

...and that's where the in progress photos end. I don't have any pics of the walls going up because I was in the hospital for the next 4 days. 

I came home to this!

Eventually, we hope to add a portico over the front door and we plan to add a tall shrub to make the space to the left of the new window a little less noticeable. Mr. DIY will also be installing a new matching window to replace the one on the right. 

Here's how the room looks now:

The old front door will be replaced with a new interior door. 

Here are  a couple of perspectives of the design concept for the space.

 I'm excited to get this far! I have the all the fixtures picked out and will show you what I have planned next time. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Pam

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A Week at the Mountain Cottage Pt. 2

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Last time, I shared a few things Mr. DIY and I worked on at our mountain cottage on our "vacation" in May. Our time there is always a working vacation, working on a project, planting something in the garden, and maintenance. 

We always love looking at the view from the porch. 

In addition to the staining the cedar posts, railings and  grape arbor, Mr. DIY installed a retractable, nearly invisible screen door. Our old one had deteriorated and had to be replaced. Mr. DIY and I had a retractable screen when we lived in Long Beach, California and it was the one item in our move to North Carolina that never made it. Never knew what happened to it.

 

Mr. DIY found the retractable screen at The Home Depot, but Amazon also has a similar screen. 

The only thing that could be better about the one we purchased is the handle where you close it is tricky when you're inside, especially if you're only using one hand. The handle should be larger/more curved (cuplike) so you can pull it into the channel to close.

Of course, there's always tending to the garden in the Spring. I was excited to see so many on our largest blueberry bush. We came back a few weeks later and the birds had eaten all of them! 

I see a bird netting cage in Mr. DIY's future. 

I did some digging around on youtube about bird netting and the consensus was that tulle (as in bridal tulle) was better, kept bugs out and was easier to use than actual bird netting. This is what I ordered. 

The birds (or critters) also ate all of our clusters of grapes. 

I bought these for next year...

Hopefully the critters will leave some apples  for us.

Our garden was a bit larger this year. Mr. DIY planted potatoes, several heirloom tomato plants (+ a few volunteers  came up from last year), 1 zucchini, 1 yellow squash and 2 watermelon plants in the back on the right.

Note to self: give watermelon 10 times more room than you think! I think we had the vines under control until the end of July. We came back after a couple of weeks and watermelon vines were everywhere and a watermelon was growing through the closest tomato fence and another one was hanging in a tomato plant.  

The first watermelon we picked wasn't ripe enough. We looked up on Youtube when to harvest a good watermelon ...thumping, a creamy yellow spot where it sits on the ground and a dried up tendril near the fruit. The 2nd was overripe and by the time Mr. DIY brought it home, it had sloshed up in the car and was all water. So the tendril couldn't be totally dried up. 

We hoped the 2nd and third watermelons were good and they were delicious! The large watermelon on the left was too heavy for me to carry! This past weekend, Mr. DIY brought home 2 more gigantic watermelon and (seeded) and 2 seedless. We sent our daughter home with one. There are still several more watermelon growing at our mountain cottage. It's a good thing I love watermelon!

That's about all we have for now. Next time, I'll share more photos of the grape arbor. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Pam

square paver marks my sweet Buddy's grave. 

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A Week at the Mountain Cottage

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 Is anyone still out there following me??? I know it's been awhile and thanks for stopping by!

There's lots going on at our Mountain Cottage, even though I haven't posted since March and  it was a year before that post!

Mr. DIY and I spent a week there a few months ago and the weather was so beautiful. 

There are always lots of Spring projects.

Mr. DIY built a grape arbor last year (I'll do another post about it next time). He built it so long ago, the cedar posts were already turning silver. Here's how it looked from the porch before he put some stain on it. 

The grape arbor looks so small way down the hill. 

Here's Mr. DIY staining the arbor

Here's how it looks now:

The sun was shining so bright, it's difficult to see it. The finish is Valspar Mountain Cedar. We were going to stain the porch and stair railings the same finish, but I felt it was too dark, so I perused through Pinterest and after calling Cabot for help, I found this:

We headed straight to Lowes and picked up some Cabot Australian Timber Oil in Natural. Of course, I second guessed myself and wondered if I had chosen enough color. I wanted  a bright golden color that would keep  the look of the natural cedar. 

Here's Mr. DIY staining to stair rails...

And here how the stair rails look after installing  the post caps and staining:

The Cabot Australian Timber Oil in Natural is exactly how wanted it!

It's been a few months since the cedar was stained and it still looks great.

Here's how our mountain cottage looks from the view side of the house.

Do you remember how it looked before Mr. DIY reno'd the porch?  

Don't you think it looks so much better now?

That's enough for today's post. I'll share a few other projects Mr. DIY worked on that week next time... Hope you'll come back to see more!

Thanks for stopping by,

Pam

If you'd like to see the whole porch reno, click HERE

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How To Install Floating Shelves

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Last time I shared how we plan on making this bathroom into a laundry room in a couple of years, but fixing the floor and toilet became a priority, so we didn't want to spend a lot of money on the mini makeover. 

This is our only bath on the main floor so it was important to have as much storage for bathroom essentials as possible. If we were going to keep this as a bathroom, we'd certainly add a built in medicine cabinet like the beautiful one upstairs Mr. DIY made, plus we'd be moving everything around and make a linen closet too. 
See the beautiful and spacious Pottery Barn Inspired Medicine Cabinet HERE. 

Mr. DIY  found some white floating shelves that were just the right size for our bathroom. They were $22.98 a piece. That price included the bracket and screws.

The first thing to do is decide the measurement from the floor and the measurement between shelves.

After that, he marked the wall.

The orange thing stuck to the wall is a stud finder.

He also used a level...

 I'm a stickler for making things level. So is our youngest daughter. Just ask Mr. DIY. 

He measured from the floor and marked the holes in the bracket with a pencil. (I think that measurement was 57".) Then, the brackets were attached to the wall using the wall anchors in the shelf kit. 

Since I wanted the shelves 10" apart, he spaced the brackets about 10 1/4" apart because the shelves are wider than the brackets. 

Here's a photo from the Lowe's website that shows how the shelf slips onto the bracket. Once the shelf is on the bracket securely, a screw attaches the shelf to the bracket. You can see a hole is pre-drilled in the shelf. He put the set screws on the bottom on the bottom shelf and on the top on the top shelf so you can't see the screws when installed.

Perfect.

These ready made shelves are great to add extra storage for bathroom essentials. 

Bottom shelf holds  pint Mason jars with Epsom salt, cotton balls, Qtips and a basket of hand towels and wash cloths.  The top shelf holds extra TP.

Storing these bathroom essentials leaves much needed space in the bathroom vanity for toothbrushes, toothpaste, a comb, brush and other toiletries. There is still room under the sink for a few cleaning products (no little ones in the house) and a few more rolls of TP. 

If you missed my post on the bathroom mini makeover, you can see it HERE.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Pam

*This post contains affiliate links, which means, I'll make a small commission if you purchase something off of one of the links, so thanks in advance.