Stamps Like Champs: The Latest Projects

I feel like all my blogs lately are starting with something along the lines of "It's been a while..." Well this blog is starting with the same sentiment because it has been a while. Three projects have been completed since the last blog: the deck, Steve's workshop, and the powder room.

The deck was finished a few days after the first of the year. They started mid-December and having a new deck all winter long was such a tease! For local people - we went with T. W. Ellis to build our deck. We didn't look at anyone else because we had a couple recommendations for them, including one from Bob Ward (our builder). Apparently, Bob Ward sub-contracts to T. W. Ellis when people want the deck the same time as the house. We went with gray Fiburon (trex) flooring, white vinyl rails/posts, and black balusters. We chose the black balusters because of Barry's recommendation (who we worked with at TWE) that it would still preserve a natural looking view instead of white balusters breaking that up. And he's right; we are so glad we went with that! In the vinyl railing, we also added lights to each post. We went with the Saturn lights, but I'm not remembering the brand. Google "Saturn deck lights" and you'll find it.

Barry was awesome to work with! He presented us with several product options and several drawing options. The deck we chose was a combination of two drawings. Chris and someone else (can't remember his name right now) were the two who actually built the deck and they were great as well. They'd start right around 7 each day, unless the weather didn't cooperate.

I'll be completely honest - a trex deck is not cheap. Sure, adding lights to the posts was a bit of a splurge, but really the investment is on the trex. But, we don't have to stain our deck ever. Maybe we power wash it each spring, but that's nothing compared to having to stain it every couple of years. That's worth the investment to me! Enjoy the picture (I didn't take many pictures once it was done because I hate being cold).

The finished deck.

Next up is Steve's workshop. Between the house, the deck, and the holidays, our bank account and credit cards took a nice hit. We knew we needed to ease up on the projects we have planned for the house to let our finances recover a bit. We had some Christmas money burning a hole in our pocket though. While Steve doesn't put up much of an argument at all about the interior design ideas I come up with, and he often does the work without complaint (ie: installing ceiling fans and new light fixtures, helping to paint, installing tile, and more), I let him use what he wanted out of our Christmas funds to build his workshop. What he doesn't know is that this is also a gift to me for future interior design projects, but shhhhhh...don't tell him that! :-)

When we built the house on paper, we added a three-car garage to it. Initially when we saw the cost, we had a bit of sticker shock and took it right out. But then we remembered that we'll have a garden in the yard. Someday I'd like a party barn if possible. In addition to the garden, I'd love to have a greenhouse. But where would we store things like lawnmowers and snowblowers? We'd have to build a shed without the three-car garage. But then we'd have all these buildings in our backyard which didn't sound too appealing. So we put the three-car back in.

Steve bought the storage pieces from Amazon, WalMart, and Lowes. In the tall cabinet, he's storing bigger tools and a nail/screw/etc. organizer. In the drawers he is storing various hand tools. He added pegboard around the windows and workbench to put commonly used tools. Along the outside wall, he built collapsible work benches so that we could still get a car in the garage if we ever needed to. The collapsible work benches are pieces of pine. He also added brackets to the ceiling to store lumber and he re-used one of the wire shelves we removed from our closet for extra storage. We were allowed to keep the wrong kitchen cabinet that the builder put in, so Steve hung that for additional storage too. Make sure you grunt like Tim "The Toolman" Taylor while checking out the picture!

The Workshop! The TV was actually a broken TV we picked up - it was only a $30 fix. So he has a workshop with a TV, Alexa, and a Fire stick!

The last item to talk about in this blog is the powder room. No other projects were really on our radar after the workshop because of the financial reasons I've already said, and I was dealing with a neck/shoulder/back issue (it's almost healed!!) that would have made anything for the house difficult to do anyway. But winter doldrums set in a couple weeks ago and I also got sick of looking at a very "blah" powder room. Paint isn't too expensive to do and it's a small room, so I thought this would be easy to tackle!

The problem was, I had absolutely zero vision for this room but I knew I needed to do something to it. A while ago, I wanted to make the wall that the toilet is against a shiplap wall, but Steve explored that avenue for me and it wouldn't have worked without having to move the toilet. Every time one of us went into the powder room, we'd always comment how dark of a room it was. That sparked a vision - I wanted to brighten it up in there! But what color? I kind of wanted to do purple because it's my favorite color, but that was what we did in the last house and I wanted to do something different. We discussed Sea Salt since that is what is in the family room and foyer, but I wanted a different color and something that wasn't so "safe." Steve suggested doing something similar to our front door color and I agreed that it was a great idea! We went to Sherwin Williams to get paint swatches and we ended up narrowing it down in the store to Spa and Bora Bora Shore. What's funny is that those were the two colors we were trying to decide between for the front door! When we got home, we put both in the powder room with the lights on and off and we both liked Spa better - which is the same color as the front door.

I had the paint color, but had no idea what else to do in that room. What color towels? What color rug? To Pinterest! I ended up finding a picture on Pinterest of a full bathroom that had a Spa-like color with black and white accents. I wanted to do that! The problem is, it's a powder room, so there's not a lot of black and white accenting to do. Unless...we change out the chrome fixtures!! I thought this was supposed to be just a painting project...oops.

I searched everywhere for black fixtures. Did you know there are very few options to choose from that are black fixtures?! Every single one I liked was either too expensive or it wasn't black. I even went to Home Depot - that's how desperate I was to make this vision work. Thankfully, I didn't find anything there either. Anyway, so black was out. What's the next best thing? Rubbed bronze. At first glance, it's dark enough that it does look black. We replaced the towel bar, toilet paper holder, and faucet - all were Amazon purchases. The light fixture is from Wayfair. The rug is from Amazon and the towels & mirror are from Target. Enjoy the pictures!