pondering home improvement

as the title of this post suggests, today i continue to ponder home improvement projects. naturally, i have a very long list of things i'd like to improve in our house -- some projects are quite simple, some extremely complex and expensive. i will confess that we have one rather major project started, but not yet finished. more on that project another time. suffice to say we will be hiring a contractor to finish the work.


what i've learned from that little project that grew is to keep it small. and finish one thing at a time. and don't rip out the whole bathroom. so my ideas have shifted from "tear out and replace the entire kitchen" to "refinish the cabinets". it seems far less invasive than tearing out all the cupboards and countertop and is more at my level of skill, which is basically novice. also i tend to get bored and frustrated pretty easily, so i'm trying to start small (like not with the kitchen).


master bath
so specifically, today, i ponder the master bath. the one we haven't torn up. and i ponder it as a series of small projects that are not dependent on one another and do not need to all be done at once. in no particular order...


refinish the cabinets
i have been reading all about this product from rust-oleum "cabinet transformations" and am very intrigued. i absoutely love the idea of refinishing the cabinets with no sanding. i also love the idea of slowly updating all the 90's oak we have in new colors and with new hardware. so this is one project: refinish the master bathroom cabinets.

put a frame around the giant full wall mirror
i saw this idea on another site and completely love it. i love the look of framed mirrors, but i loathe the idea of ripping off this gigantor mirror, fixing the wall and replacing with smaller mirrors. so the idea here is to get some moulding (probably crown) and build our own frame, paint it and literally stick it on the edges of the mirror.


paint
the room desperately needs painting. i like the idea of a lovely green -- i've got my eye on fennel seed from the martha stewart collection. i am also considering painting the wood color trim something white-ish. but... that might be down the road.


new blinds
the ones we have are old and ratty. i want to replace with something that lets in the light, yet provides privacy (similar to what we have now, just new).


new lighting
we currently have those "broadway" lights above the gigantor mirror... backed in shiny gold. it's awesome. i forgot to mention this sad fact - our house was build in '89 - '90, so everything is oak and/or gold. luckily the previous homeowners did replace some of the terrible light fixtures in the living/dining room areas. anyway, i hate these lights with a firey passion. i hate that when all the lightbulbs work, they radiate a million degrees. i hate the harsh light they give off. i hate that i can't remember the last time all the bulbs did work. and i hate that they take a specialty bulb. yeah, so i plan to replace these lights with something beautiful, but i don't know exactly what yet.

gold fixtures
one of my missions is to rid this house of the gold fixtures. in the bathroom, this includes the roman tub faucet, the shower escutcheon plate, and the frame of the sliding shower door. most of this i'm not too worried about (i probably should be). the big problem is the roman tub faucet because it's attached to the wall, in betweeen the tile, so removing and replacing is going to be a nightmare -- especially since wall-mounted faucets seem to be hard to find. i am pondering using some type of metallic spray paint to refinish, but this requires more research. i've also emailed delta faucets to see if i can get replacement parts in a totally different finish. we shall see...

replace the sink faucets
pretty straightforwards. ours are crappy chrome one handled thingies. functional but boring. i like the brushed nickle or stainless steel finishes.


replace the toilet
something newer that works better and is chair height. i am not worried about this, since we have already replaced one toilet. cake!


stretch - replace the vanity countertop
this is one of those things that scares me. mostly because we have to involve other people. like a contractor of some kind. i would love to put down a slab of granite though. but this is still tbd.


other stuff i would love to change, but are bigger projects than i am willing to ponder today
flooring - currently a carpet, vinyl combo. lovely.
tile - currently some kind of shade of pinkish purple.
doors - replace and add a door to the room. this might be soemthing we do later on.