Bathroom Moodboard

With building set to commence soon, I've been thinking a lot about all the different elements of each room and how they'll work together.  This is not my strong suit and it brings me a lot of stress.  Usually once I live in a space for a while I have a better sense of what I want and can better visualize when I'm just changing one thing at a time.  Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury with this build.  One area I've found particularly stressful is the bathroom.  Fortunately, I think I'm almost done putting everything together.

White headboard ceiling with recessed lighting

Recessed medicine chest

Walnut floor tiles

Ikea vanity- not that faucet, though

Large white subway tile in shower

Frameless shower doors

White river stone shower floor (lighter grout)

Initial hooks for towels

toilet paper storage

Missing: 

bathroom faucet- Finding a one hole faucet that I like and is reasonably priced is hard!

light- Initially I wanted sconces, but we're putting the vanity right up to the shower doors and since the medicine cabinet is large, there won't really be room for sconces on the sides.  That puts me at a bar light and the designers initially said two lights may be enough for such a small space.  I have yet to find any at Lowe's or Home Depot that I like.  

Toilet- Scott has a Toto toilet he likes that we'll be ordering.  It's just a basic toilet so I didn't bother posting a picture up top.  

Towel bar/ Toilet Paper hanger/etc- This is what totally stresses me out and what would best be left for the end.

Anything else we're missing?

Functional Beauty

Long before we ever thought about moving our family into a garage, I spied this key hanger on a rare trip to The Container Store.  

At $20 for the small one, I left it there, but I couldn't forget about it until one day I caved and bought it for our mudroom renovation in our suburban house.  I loved it, but I wanted it installed horizontally to work with the space, which Scott refused, so it sat unopened in a box.  When we made the decision to downsize to the garage and decided to hire a designer, I pulled out the tree and joked that I wanted to hand them this as their inspiration piece for the space.  It's fresh, functional and inspired by nature- everything I want for the space.  

Needless to say, that didn't happen, but the tree now hangs vertically in our apartment and every time I hang my keys I'm grateful I ponied up the money for something that truly brings me joy.  This key hanger reminds me that functional things can also have artistic value.  When scouring the web for clever storage ideas for the tiny garage, I came across this cloud as a way to store toilet paper.

I'm in total lurve all over again.  At $125 it's pretty dang expensive, but it would allow us to continue buying our tp at Costco and have it on the wall instead of taking up valuable space in a cabinet or cupboard. I checked the measurements and it will fit by the hair of its chiny-chin-chin.  The key tree taught me that if there's something that you truly find beautiful and it's functional, it's worth paying big bucks for it.  Since I'm not banking on a generous benefactor to pick this up, it may be something that doesn't get purchased until after we're in the space for a while (renovations are expensive, yo!), but I'm really looking forward to it hanging over the toilet and am planning the bathroom with that piece in mind.

Are there any other cute, functional things we should consider?  Pinterest and home sites are full of great ideas, but I haven't been on there lately.  Occasionally, people on the Konmari pages find cute things and post pictures of them, but I haven't tagged any of the ideas so would be appreciative for any leads.

What are we doing to prepare? Konmari

Things are pretty quiet on the garage front.  There's still a few more weeks until the builder begins and we're in a quiet lull.  Some have asked me what we've been doing to prepare between when we lost the builder in March and now.  I already mentioned some of the work that Scott has been working on at the garage itself, but I've been steadily working on getting things ready at home.  One of my friends read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and shared it with our group of friends.  It took our entire group by storm.  Before we knew it, we were all buying the book and KonMari-ing our houses.
If you haven't read the book it's a system to declutter your house and permanently keep it clean (she claims she's never had a client relapse).  She lays out categories for every item in your house and recommends you work through each category in a specific order, starting with clothes.  You gather everything in each category in one place (so if you books in different rooms in your house you have to gather them together before you can begin that category), hold each item and ask yourself, 'Does this spark joy?' If the answer is yes, you keep it, if the answer is no, you thank it for its service and get rid of it.  I debated skipping over clothes since I got rid of 8 bags before moving to the apartment, but thought that I'd do it anyway.  Here are all the clothes I own on the bed.

Since I had so few, I was able to go through them quickly.  I was surprised that I had another 1.5 garbage bags to donate once I was finished with the process.  I wound up with a summer uniform of sorts, there's one style of shirt I have in several colors and a few pairs of khaki shorts.  There are a few other things I kept, but definitely not the amount of choice I'm used to.  However, now when I put open my drawers or look at the closet, I'm so happy to wear anything that I own.  It's made my life so much easier.  Kondo recommends only doing your own things, but since my daughter is only 2, I did hers as well.  I left Scott's things be, but he has been going through and slowly weeding out things that he doesn't want or that don't fit quite right anymore.  Here's a picture of the closet that all three of us share.

My stuff is on the top left and you may notice that it's my year-round selection.  If I went further and did a capsule wardrobe it'd be pretty empty, indeed.  Scott's stuff takes up more room, but he also needs to maintain a professional wardrobe.  We will each have a closet about three feet wide at the garage.  This closet is 4.5 feet wide, so I think that we'll be sitting really pretty when it comes to clothes.
I've gone through several other categories for Konmari, but I don't consider myself a graduate because there's still a lot of clutter in the apartment.  Unfortunately, there isn't much built-in storage here so there aren't a lot of places to put everything away.  Add to that the knowledge that much of our stuff is still packed away in a storage unit awaiting the big move, and I've lost steam.  I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff, simplified where we keep others, but the great, clutter-free reveal will have to wait a few more months.
While the author makes the important distinction that this method is about keeping only what you love and not just getting rid of stuff, it does jive really well with minimalism.  It was a nice framework to help make those tough decisions now that we're getting towards the end of our stuff.
There are some Facebook groups dedicated to this.
Konmari Adventures: This group has a lot of great before and after photos and is very active.  Any questions you may post will get answered quickly.  If you're on there for any length of time, you'll see the same questions come up over and over again, and there is some drama :(.
Joyce Parker Lives Here: Inspired by an inside joke (a husband thought she was saying Joyce Parker approved instead of saying it was a joy sparker), this group is light hearted and doesn't take itself too seriously.  There are also great before and after shots on this page and I find myself going here more now.
KonMinimalists: These two definitely work together, but it's not a very active page.

I believe I've gone through every nook and cranny in this apartment (removing everything for a category before beginning was a great help) and only kept what we truly need and will use.
Is there another way we could be getting ready to move?  I'd love to start tacking the storage unit during Mother's Day Out time, but right now our key is MIA.  Hopefully it'll show up soon.

Uncomfortable in the Bathroom

Great news!  We had a meeting with our contractor this morning to discuss a contract and he casually let it slip that he would be finishing up his current project a few weeks early and could probably start our garage mid-September.  It was all I could do not to jump up and do my happy dance right then and there.  Forget getting moved in by Christmas, we could be settling into our new place by Thanksgiving!
This is great news for us, but it means that we have to have decisions made and everything ready to go.  I've been picking out tile, granite and deciding what style doors we want, but I haven't been able to get comfortable with one room- the bathroom.  A few months ago when we acknowledged we had to dump the staircase in favor of a ladder, I came to peace and immediately felt comfortable with the decision.  Using the ladder just seemed to be the right choice and it made me happier about how the space would get used in general.  There's just something about the bathroom layout or design that's just niggling and I can't put a finger on the exact issue.

If you look at the bathroom, you walk in and there's a blank wall directly to your right.  On that wall we're planning to put hooks to hang our towels.  (The thicker wall depth will actually be built-in bookshelves towards the main space.)  There's a weird little jut-in there anyway.  You will face the vanity directly. You can see where there's a shower door drawn, but we'd like to have a shower door.  The toilet is off to the right with a pocket door for privacy (I cannot wait!).  Right behind the door into the room will be a small linen closet.
Seems small but functional, right?  Here are my concerns:
1.  Shower- We are going to have a pretty plain shower.  I love white river stone for the floor and we found a large scale (4"x12") white subway tile that we'll use on the walls.  I really wanted the shower head to be on the exterior wall so that you would face towards that wall when showering.  Codes doesn't allow that because when you turn the shower on, the water would hit you immediately.  It could be costly and weird to separate the shower head from the controls, but I'm assured it can be done if it comes to that.  I just worry that it'll look weird when the shower head and built-in shelves are all on a wall that can't be seen.  Most of what you would see is a plain white box and I have a feeling that'll look awkward.

2.  Vanity- The vanity will be bumped right against the shower door.  This means that we won't be able to use sconces :( and will have to use a bar light above the medicine cabinet instead.  The vanity will be the workhorse of the bathroom, but it also limits the options of what we can do with the shower.  If we want to move the vanity, then we could have more play with the shower.  We haven't measured it yet, but the vanity is assembled and it looks like it would fit on the wall directly to your right as you walk in.  The problem would be that the towels would then go on the exterior wall where the vanity is currently placed.  Your view into the room would be our towels and I'm not sure that it would be a good look, either.

3.  Laundry 'Chute'- A few weeks ago it occurred to me that since our bathroom and laundry area are adjacent, we could fashion an opening into the room that would allow us to drop our dirty clothes directly into the laundry basket on a cart next door, rather than leaving them on the floor.  Scott agrees this would be awesome, but we can't figure out how to make this work design-wise, especially considering it (currently) would also have to work with our towel hooks.

That entire wall on the right is just awkward, regardless of whether it eventually holds towels, the vanity or a laundry chute.  The framing is already up, but what changes would you make to the space to make it feel 'right'?

Getting Floored

Random Fact: The one thing that drives me crazy about winter is always having cold feet.  Way back when I first agreed to the crazy idea of moving my family into a garage, I demanded said that I wanted radiant heating.  Having lived in a McMansion with super-high ceilings that made it difficult to uniformly heat before, Scott immediately agreed.  Since the garage is already built, we have to install the radiant system on top, meaning that we'll need something to cover it.  But what?  Thus began the big debate that lasted for months and has only just been resolved.

When you look at our space, you can see that it doesn't have a ton of windows.  This will help keep the cost down and also help insulate us from the noise around our bustling neighborhood.  Tall ceilings will help, but we will also have to use a light paint color to keep it light and airy feeling.  In images of spaces I love on Pinterest, I've noticed that they all have wood floors.  We love the earthiness this gives to the space and definitely wanted to incorporate them in somehow.  The problem, for anyone looking to install radiant heating, is that radiant heating and wood floors don't get along.  The heating can warm the floors too quickly and the floors lose moisture, making the perfect recipe for cracks.  We weren't really thrilled about the idea of our floors being cracked.

Concrete was another option.  We could lay the radiant system and then pour 1-2 inches of concrete over this.  I loved the idea that no kids or guests or dogs could do anything to hurt the floor.  It's easy to maintain and would stay pretty cool in our hot summers.  When I found out that you could stain concrete to look like wood I was sold.  This was the option I wanted, I'll pass what's behind door #2, thank you very much.  Unfortunately, Scott wasn't down with this idea.  He pointed out how hard concrete is and didn't want anyone falling and getting hurt, or worried that it would be hard on my back as I spend so much time in the kitchen.  When a builder told me that it was a pretty expensive option, I begrudgingly agreed to look at other options.

Scott offered laminate flooring as an option.  Because it's not real hardwood, it's much more flexible and works better with radiant systems.  Unfortunately, we have laminate floors in our current apartment and even though the building is just now one year old, there are already scratches and scuffs in the floor.  It just doesn't wear well and there's no way to fix an individual plank.  I would hate to have company and a child damage the floor and have a friend feeling guilty about it.  It would be kind to our pocketbook, but it just wasn't the right solution for a young family.

We then came to engineered wood.  It had a bit more flexibility than real hardwood with more durability than laminate.  Our suburban house had engineered wood so we knew how it wore and what kind of maintenance it required.  I wasn't in love, but it seemed like the best option for a while.  We told the builder and most of our friends that this is what we would use.

Except then we would have to choose a different material for the bathroom floor.  Wood and bathrooms don't mix, even though Scott was loving that look on some Pinterest boards.  I was having a really difficult time choosing a tile for the main part of the bathroom floor.  When I met with a friend who was good at design she suggested I use tile that looks like wood.  She then showed me some pictures of a friend's house who had done that very same thing in the basement of her house.  I had to admit that it looked really good and tile is the number one conductor of heat for radiant floors.  I was still worried about the wear and tear.  I was afraid that it would chip and then we'd be stuck.  I mentioned this to the builder and he assured me that tile was one of the most durable choices we could make and could be more economical than other choices.  I ran it by Scott and we came to an immediate consensus.

GREAT HEAT TRANSFER+ GREAT AESTHETICS+ DURABILITY= TILE

I wish that choosing the right tile would be easy now that we've decided what to go with.  A recent trip to Lowe's left us more confused than ever.  I liked tiles that had a reddish hue, like this:

I think it'll add warmth to the space.

Scott didn't like that, but preferred a darker tile like this instead:

Please try to imagine it without the light grout, that's just tacky.

As if the color weren't tough enough to choose, there's also lots of texture options like this:

We spent about five minutes perusing all our options before we realized that we were overwhelmed and in over our heads and called it a night.  Honestly, Scott usually has a better eye for design than I do so I would tend to defer to him, but I want to be sure the space doesn't feel cold.  What would you go with and why?  Is there something that we haven't yet considered that we should?

Forget Everything you Thought You Knew About (the) Design

We always knew that some of the things that we were planning to do in the garage weren't to code.  We naively thought that we could just do the minimum, get the Certificate of Occupancy and then add in the pieces that wouldn't be allowed (I'm talking to you, staircase).  When we went to visit my husband's family for Easter I spoke with several family members who are either in the trades or very familiar with the building process.  They basically told me that if the building is not built to code then should anything happen our insurance company would have an easy out to not pay for the damage.  Since this is a pretty expensive undertaking, this was enough to really give us pause.  Scott spent an some time with a local building inspector asking questions and he basically confirmed that a staircase would never be allowed and while the upstairs could be used for storage or host a loft office or something, there could be no bedroom up there.
Just like that, my beloved staircase and the wall full of storage needed to be completely reworked.  We met with the designers again, looked at our options, and made some decisions.  Here's where we landed.
BEFORE:

AFTER:

Essentially, the main living space remains the same, except the large closet is removed.  There will still be an entire wall of built-ins about 2 feet deep.  The lower areas will be our closets/clothes storage with an extra area for other storage.  There will be built-ins that go all the way up to the ceiling to give us that additional storage of what we don't use that often.  I'm still trying to figure out if a sliding ladder will be the best way to access that or not.
Instead of stairs we'll have a small doorway directly above the downstairs bedroom.  It will be accessed by a ladder that is on a track that can be slid out of the way when someone isn't upstairs.
The upstairs will be a true tiny house style sleeping loft.  We decided that our daughter will have the downstairs bedroom as her main room.  Since we co-sleep, we'll start out downstairs with her and when she's ready for her own space, we'll start using the upstairs bed.  A bed will be pretty much all that is in that room and then we'll still have the storage/mechanical room.  I have to admit that this change brought me a lot of peace.  I was apprehensive if we would be able to utilize a room with 5 ft ceilings as a regular room.  Having a full staircase to a small space started feeling like it might be really awkward.  Channeling the tiny house designs and instead using a sleeping loft definitely feels like the right choice.  It now seems like an extra bonus space rather than a room posing to be something it could never be.
The change also opens up a bit of space in the main living area.  The closets will only be 2 ft deep rather than the original 5 ft.  There will still have to be clearance behind to open the doors and use them comfortably, but I think we'll enjoy that extra space on a daily basis.  The only thing I'm a bit sad about is losing indoor space to store our stroller.  Since this is a walkable neighborhood, having a stroller is a must and ours is large (I also use it to run).  We can try to store it in the outdoor storage shed, but I wonder how user-friendly that will be.  Luckily, our daughter is already two, so hopefully the days of the stroller are coming to an end in the not-so-distant future, making this a smart move for the long term.

So What's Been Happening?

When we last left off we had just fired our builder.  After meeting with several other builders who quoted really high pricing, we felt the need to pause for a minute and really examine what we were trying to accomplish.  In addition to the stress around not having a builder, things were ramping up and stressing out my husband at work.  Responding to the stress in the home, our daughter started acting out and had some needs we really thought we should address.  Luckily, Scott works for a supportive company and they granted him a two month leave of absence.  We took that time to reconnect as a family.  We took long walks together in the middle of the day, explored lots of kid museums in towns, visited more parks than I can mention and went for paddles.

She settled back down and started talking more, which is what we were hoping for.  All that time together as a family helped reaffirm that our goal remains the same: have our time together spent having fun adventures and not taking care of our stuff.
During the two months we had some sub-contractors lined up to do some of the projects.  The water line, that we tried to have run started in February, finally went in by a plumber we found who was reasonably priced.

See that trench?  Yours truly got to fill it in during Mother's Day Out days.  It was fun.  Not to be left out, the sewer line was also run.

We joked about installing a moat for our daughter to keep the suitors away, but after a few weeks it, eventually, also got filled in.
We found a framer through a friend and he was able to frame in the downstairs during that time.

To date, that's pretty much where progress inside the garage stopped.  In the nights and weekends since Scott returned to work, he's been steadily moving out his tools and such so that the garage actually looks like a worksite, not just a couple of rooms on one side and a full garage worth of stuff on the other.  I'll have to get out to get more current pictures.
We found a framer and a plumber, but not an electrician or anyone else.  We are now at the point where we really need to suck it up and just hire a damn builder.  We've hemmed and hawed long enough and it's go-time.  I was set to swallow my pride and call a builder I spoke to before, when I had lunch with some teaching colleagues from times long gone.  I was telling them about my project when one of them immediately rattled off a name and assured me that he was very reasonable and would do a good job.  She used him, her family's used him, and she recommends him to all her friends.
I met with him earlier this week and I agree that he will be great.  I sent him an almost-desperate sounding email that same afternoon throwing myself at him and asking how we can get on his roster for October (he's booked until then).  In speaking with him, he told me that our project, based on where it currently stands is a 6-7 week project, provided I can be quick with decision making.  DID YOU HEAR THAT?  WE COULD BE HAPPILY SETTLED INTO OUR TINY GARAGE BY CHRISTMAS!!!  I'm just a bit excited.  I found someone online to design our radiant heating system and we're hoping to have the plumber have that installed by the time we begin to really make the most use of the next few months.  Expect lots of design questions, friends, because this girl finally has some motivation to get cracking.