Category Archives: before and after

The Handcrafted Wardrobe: Refashion 2

First off, I know I’ve fallen behind on answering comments lately.  I’ve tired to catch up over the last couple of days, so if you are waiting for a response from me, it may be there now!  Also, if there is something I’ve missed that you need or want an answer to, just let me know.  We are back in family health crisis mode, so I am not around as much as usual, but I’m happy to answer as I can. 

Remember this ill fitting sweater with multiple holes?

I did a bit of altering and reshaping…

Oh, for goodness sakes, stand up straight woman! Honestly!

I think it actually needs to be shorter to work right over that dress above.  I considered turning it into a cropped sweater for just that sort of purpose, but never did pull the trigger on that.  It works better with other outfits, like over this sleeveless dress with a more streamlined skirt…

But that’s the only picture I have of that combo, titled “blurry ghost picture” and taken in the bathroom at the kid’s dance studio between ballet and modern, when I realized I didn’t have anything to post about on Monday.  As it turns out it didn’t matter because I didn’t have any time to post anyway.

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before and after, sewing, The Handcrafted Wardrobe
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The Handcrafted Wardrobe: Refashion #1

Remember that lilac colored men’s sweater?  I didn’t want to do anything drastic with this one.  I wanted to use as much of it as possible.  And really all it needed to be wearable was a better fit and to be a touch more feminine.  It started out like this…

And became this….

Goodness that side view there feels a little scandalous!  Forgive me.  I was just trying to get a visual for you of the altered shape.

For those who are interested in clothing construction, or reconstruction as the case may be, I started by cutting off the sleeves and cutting down both side seams.  I used a shirt that fit well through the shoulders and bust as a cutting guide and sewed everything back together again once the excess had been removed.  I left slits along the lower portions of the side seams because I didn’t like the way it bunched and was gathered around the band at the bottom and wanted it to hang freely and also because it allowed it to drape rather than bag in the front.  I’ll probably be layering it over a long camisole or tank top, which I should have done here, but didn’t think of when I threw it on for these quick pictures.

Taking in the shoulders and bust meant that the sleeves were raised up and naturally became the right length.

And finally, I popped it in the dye pot because that lilac color isn’t really me and in this house anything that light would be stained within moments.

To dye it I used RIT Dye in ‘Wine‘ and the bucket method, which is incredibly simple. Instructions can be found all over the internet.  It’s less purple than it appears in some of these photos, in reality a true deep burgundy.  My only complaint about the color is that I thought I used 100% cotton thread, but I must have used a cotton/poly blend, which didn’t pick up the dye at all and unfortunately that shows a bit in some places, though I doubt most people would notice without it being pointed out.

Now what I really need are some pants to wear with it!  In these photos I’m trying to stand so that you can’t see the holes in my junky leggings.  For the record I’d rather wear this with trousers of some sort.  I don’t think I’d feel comfortable wearing it out in public with just leggings (but I’m willing to post pictures of myself wearing it that way, effectively broadcasting them to the entire world.  I know, it makes no kinds of sense.)  At the moment I own a couple pairs of the afore mentioned thin and holey leggings.  All of them have holes.  Terribly indiscreet holes.  I try to hide them with dresses.  Also a pair of ill-fitting, hand-me-down, sweatpants from Iain.  Also with holes.  And the velour leggings that I posted before, which I still haven’t gotten around to fixing the waistband on.  I think if I don’t come up with a plan on this front, it’s going to be an awfully chilly winter.

What is on your absolute must sew list this season?

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before and after, sewing, The Handcrafted Wardrobe
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The Handcrafted Wardrobe: Make it Work for You

“This is what I’m thinking; real women, with real bodies and complicated lives, with all of the true to life sewing disasters and fashion faux pas, but also the possibility of developing a genuine, soul-satisfying sense of unique personal style that’s entirely one of a kind in a way that only hand-made can be.”

I said it, so now I have to live up to it.  Even when I don’t feel well and the sun won’t cooperate and I’m too tired to actually do anything with my hair and I’m not sure how I feel about the clothing I’m sharing or how it looks on me.  Because there is truth in all of that.  This is my real life, my friends, more days than not.

Because of some of my health problems, I have a really hard time wearing anything fitted around my waist, which is quite limiting and frustrating.  I pretty much live in leggings, hence my proclivity towards dresses and tunics.  But when doing outdoor work there are times when leggings just don’t cut it.  I’ve been trying to figure out a solution to this issue for a while now.  When I saw this chambray jumpsuit, I thought that just maybe something along those lines might be the answer?

In looking around I kept finding advice on pairing a style like this with a statement necklace and gladiator heels (am I getting any of these terms right?!?), and I’m all like, “You know, with a frumpy old cardigan and maybe a battered sun hat, that might just be the thing for hauling dirt…”

I really dread being perceived as trying to be trendy.  It’s a strange hang up.  I sometimes get upset when the styles I like become fashionable.

All the same, with hopes of comfortable and productive gardening, I found myself a chambray jumpsuit on deep clearance and took the plunge…

When I took it out of the box Steve looked at me with some concern and asked if I was buying maternity clothes.

After quite a bit of altering, this is what I ended up with:

I’m still not thrilled with the below the waist bagginess, but I didn’t want to risk restricting range of movement.

Before and After:

I think it likely would have been easier to make one from scratch, I literally rebuilt every part of it.  I’m not sure how I feel about it. The jury is still out (to be frank, I feel a bit silly).

Did anyone else do any experimenting with clothes last week?


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before and after, Mama Care, sewing, The Handcrafted Wardrobe
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A Giant 10th Birthday Post

When I promised extra posting this week, I did not anticipate the wind storm that took out our internet access.  Sorry about that!

Sweater first? “Reversible Revelation” in Wool of the Andes Superwash, color: “Brass Heather”.  As the name implies, it is, in fact, reversible.  There is no right side.  Each has it’s own distinctive look:

This seemed like an excellent idea for a kid who often can’t be bothered with paying attention to what way his clothes go on.  At least for my benefit anyway, since he doesn’t really care if it’s inside out or not.  Hey, he’ll happily walk around wearing just one shoe, while I look on cringing.

The waitress at the college town, hipster, juice bar made a fuss about his “fashionable” ensemble; mama-made pants and sweater, topped with his spiffy hand-me-down brown cord blazer.  Dapper.

Food: This year we decorated gingerbread houses, instead of his usual gingerbread men. Autoimmune Friendly Gingerbread with Creamy Maple Frosting, made fancy with dried fruit and what we call “Yam Creamies”, which I’ll talk more about some other time.  We’re still on the intro diet and not supposed to be consuming sweets, but I made an exception for his birthday (and ended up with several people up half the night with belly aches as a consequence.  such is life.)

And now, the big, top secret project!  It pretty much all worked out as planned. In under three hours, while he was at said juice bar, followed by the music shop with my dad, this space…

became this…

The only part that didn’t quite work out was the light fixture.  I accidentally ordered a plug-in fixture when I meant to get one to wire in.  There are no outlets in that hallway.  But otherwise, somewhat miraculously, everything came together exactly as I had planned.

Both a space to work and create as well as a place to read and relax, plus extra storage besides, was asking a lot out of this petite 38″ x 66″ space.  The window seat has a hinged lid, with lots of storage space underneath, to help lighten the load in Iain’s attic bedroom (hence the boxes in the “before” photo).  I tried to work with what we had as much as possible.  The valence-hung on a rod my neighbor was getting rid of- and the divider curtain were both made from fabric I had on hand.  One of the pillow covers was fashioned from an old work shirt of Steve’s.  My sister painted those sweet pandas several years ago.  I’ve just been waiting for the right place to hang them in this house.  I love how the painting perfectly picks up the colors from all the pillows.  I’m ashamed to say it was an afterthought that just happened to work out brilliantly.

We managed to frame the window seat and build the stool with scraps of lumber from the basement.  We adjusted Ana White’s X-Bench plans to fit the space and finished it with some leftover General Finishes Milk Paint in “Persian Blue”.  It tucks all the way under the $20 cleaned up Craig’s List desk to save space.  A couple of old items refreshed by mingling with a few new accessories and just like that, he has his very own cozy nook crafted out of an area that was previously unused space.  Pretty nifty, that!

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before and after, building, celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Kids, Our Home, sewing, The Renovation Journal, Yarn Crafts
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about a dresser

My Grandmother was a mother of 7, grandmother to 24.  As such I imagine she knew quite a bit about fixing things up and the curative power of paint.

When my mother was pregnant with me, Gram found this dresser on the side of the road, waiting for the trash pick up.  She brought it home and fixed it up, adding a new coat of paint, complete with faux wood grain.  Since that time it’s been a constant in my life.  It’s one of the few pieces we managed to save when we lost just about everything to our mold infested old house.  Once, about a decade ago, I was tempted to paint it.  I slapped on a splotch of primer to see how if it would take and that’s how it remained.  Somewhere along the way I got nostalgic, and once my grandma passed away, I just left it as it was, a symbol of an act of love.  Over the years it’s been moved many times.  During one of those moves we discovered the newspaper stuck to the bottoms of the feet, with little snippets of news from the year of my birth.  Recently we noticed the date stamped on the back, confirming it’s manufacture in 1954.

I/we are working on a long term project, trying to turn the little room off our dinning area into a studio space.  The goal is to purchase only paint for the walls and a light fixture, for everything else we are going to work with what we have.

I’ve been using this dresser for fabric storage for quite a while now.  I seriously considered leaving it as it was.  The main factor that swayed me is that at this point it’s chipping quite a bit and considering it’s age, who knows what’s underneath and with another little one in the house, putting everything into her mouth, it seemed time.

Not bad for something that was considered trash 34 years ago!We used all products that we had on hand.  Once the creamy white (Olde Century Colors in ‘Candlelight’) was on, it looked so fresh and clean that I doubted my plans, hemming and hawing….fuss, fuss, fuss.  I can make myself sick of the simplest of decisions.  But I really wanted the beautiful curvy bits to stand out.  I eventually worked up the nerve to experiment with adding some General Finishes Glaze Effects in Van Dyke Brown on the body.  I compromised by leaving the drawer fronts plain, which gives them a little more pop.  It may be a little strange, but I rather like it.  What do you think?

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before and after, crafts, Our Home, The Renovation Journal
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about a nightstand

I have a friend who during her pregnancies sets a deadline for when her husband has to be done any and all home improvement projects.  She wants to be sure that he’s not working on anything at all in those last couple months/weeks, no stress, just as much relaxing together as they can fit in.  I’m kind of the opposite…more the rub my hands together with an maniacal gleam in my eye while saying, “so, what else do you think we can get done????  huh, huh, huh???” type.  Which is kind of hilarious since the me part of we is pretty pathetic in the renovation department at the moment.  Under the best of circumstances I can be pretty hardcore.  I’ve installed dishwashers, fixed washing machines, laid flooring, hung joists, hung drywall, poured concrete, scaled the roof to fix second story screens.  I’m game for just about anything.  At the moment, however, I can’t do any lifting, can’t be around paint or finishes and consider the physical act of climbing out of bed a somewhat daunting challenge.  Last week I had to ask Elijah to tie my boots for me.  So, yup, I’m a big help.  Picking out curtains, hanging pictures and maybe a bit of light sewing is pretty much my speed at this point.  Oh, and directing everyone else in what to do.  That’s totally in my wheelhouse.  Which doesn’t at all stop me from wanting to get things done.  Call it nesting if you like, but the truth is I’m pretty much always this way.

For my birthday this year I asked Steve to help me get our bedroom closer to “done”.  As a part of this project he built me a little nightstand.  After intense internal debate on my part and a fair bit of indifference on his, we went with the Ana White Rolling C End Table adjusted to fit our space. I like that it can be pulled over the edge of the bed to be used for writing or eating or anything else of that sort that comes up.

For a finish I just picked a stain that we had around because I didn’t really want to invest much money in it.  It ended up being very close in color to the floor and our bed frame and the co-sleeper, but not quite the same as any of them.  And you would think that would tie it together with the rest of the room, but somehow it just made it look out of place.  I can’t really explain it, but it just looked strange and somehow wrong.

Also, I didn’t like how the wood filler showed through the stain…

Can you see what I mean?

But it was still much better to have a table then to not and I do like it very much.  Then, oh then…the lovely folks at General Finishes offered to send me some samples to play around with…and suddenly there was a whole new world of possibilities.

Except….

a previously stated, I’m not really supposed to be around such things at the moment.  But man was I itching to try those out!  It got to the point where I finally bribed persuaded my eldest children to help me in exchange for compensation.  Win-win.

These past few weeks have been so dark and dreary that capturing accurate colors has been difficult, but this is pretty close.  This is the same table after 3 coats of Milk Paint in Somerset Gold.  The milk paint has a really beautiful finish, I can see myself using it for a lot of projects in the future.

After the milk paint we sanded the edges a bit and scuffed it up a little to give it a bit of character (and yes, I actually helped with this part).  Perhaps it’s a bit strange to distress a piece of furniture that has such a modern shape?  I just really felt drawn to soft, muted tones in this space.

Next came a layer of Glaze Effects in Van Dyke Brown.  And this is where I would really have liked to been able to work on it myself.  I tried as best as I could to describe the look I was aiming for and they tried as best as they could to do what I asked, but I still think it would have gone better if I had been the one to actually apply it.  After the glaze, the whole thing was topped with 3 coats of High Performance Top Coat.  I think it’s going to hold up very well.

You’ll have to wait for final room pictures to see it in place, but I think I like it.  It provides a gentle pop of color but without being jarring.

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before and after, The Healing Home, The Renovation Journal
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Elijah’s Equestrian Art Room

Before:

When we first moved in this room was the subject of much speculation.  In a house were every other room was painted the brightest, most vibrant colors, this room was beige to the extreme.  Beige carpets, beige walls, beige trim.  Perhaps they hadn’t decided on the right vivid color yet?  I suspect that there was one person in the family who craved a calm neutral space.  Steve’s theory is that it was the punishment room…”that’s it no more color for you young man!”

After:

The details:

He chose the paint color: Yolo Colorhouse Leaf .07.

The flooring is a local wide plank white pine.

I made the valences and the curtain for the closet door for his birthday.  The valences are burlap leftover from the table coverings from our vow renewal.  The horse fabric came from this Etsy shop.

The little bookshelf was built by Steve several years ago.  The desk was another birthday present.  Steve built it by modifying the Narrow Farmhouse Table plans by Ana White to fit the space. (yup, we’re still pretty crazy about Ana here)  Elijah and I talked a lot about how best to finish it.  He wanted both wood grain and color and he wanted it to be unique.  Inspiration finally came in the form of these wooden bowls.  I used General Finishes Water Base Dye Stain in both green and blue, layering one over the other and rubbing it away in parts to give it the uneven appearance, featuring many different shades.

Owl stencil here.  We decided that the shape of the owl was most like a Great Horned Owl.  That’s what I based the colors and shading off of.  After the initial stenciling, I came back in and added some free hand details and connected all of the pieces.

The lamp over the bed.  The desk lamp came from Goodwill.

The hammock chair was a gift from my sister.

The rug by the bed was Galen’s Christmas present to Elijah last year, made of wool roving, woven on a peg loom.  We dyed the wool for the middle with oak leaves.

And all of the artwork, of course, is his own.  He highly recommends the following books: Draw and Paint Realistic Horses and Drawing Horses: A Complete Drawing Kit for Beginners.

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before and after, Books, crafts, Kids, Our Home, The Renovation Journal
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Renovation Journal: Our Bedroom

When we first looked at this house, one of the few things that we found off putting were the bedrooms.  I thought about it a bit after we left and realized that in recent years we’ve become rather spoiled with unique, sometimes historical (see here and here for glimpses of the bedroom we shared in a home built in the 1790′s, complete with the original hand carved “nails” holding up the wood beams), sometimes large and stunning, always somewhat unusual bedrooms.  I had to give myself a bit of a talking to because really the bedrooms we had just toured were exactly like most people’s bedrooms; a simple square carpeted room with a closet.  Once that really sunk in, I relaxed about it and began thinking of ways to add charming details that would make our spaces feel less mundane and more uniquely us.  It took a little convincing, but I was able to persuade Steve into seeing that with the two of us working at it, we could find a way to make almost any space special and home-like.  And so we moved forward and I think (hope) that he’s glad we did.  I know I am.

Before:

It’s not just a trick of the light, two walls were painted a kind of fuchsia color and two bubble gum.

It is not done yet.  Both the doors still need to be painted.  The closets need baseboards and well, doors.  There is a wall mounted heater that we’d like to get rid of.  But, the carpeted floors are now wide-plank pine, we added some character with a board and batten treatment (tutorials on this can be found all over the web), the cracked plastic switch plate and outlet covers have been traded out for solid wood ones and everything has received many coats of paint….

Paint info: The trim and lower section of the walls are Yolo’s Imagine .04, which is the same classic linen white that we used for trim throughout the second floor.  The upper part of the walls and ceiling are a bit of a mystery.  They started out Yolo’s Sprout .03, which is a beautiful color, but I felt that it was really too dark for the space.  So after painting the entire thing that color and subsequently deciding I couldn’t live with it, I mixed small amounts of Sprout .03 into much larger amounts of Yolo’s Imagine .05, which is an off-white with blue/grey undertones, until I got the color I was looking for.

These photos pre-date our bed moving in and were taken on a day when mother nature was not cooperating, lighting wise.  Due to the cloud cover, the room doesn’t appear nearly as light and airy as it usually does.  I want it to stay fairly simple, but it doesn’t feel quite done as is.  I’ve been studying spaces that I love, trying to determine exactly what it is that appeals to me.  At this point I’m thinking that some curtains of some sort would help.  Perhaps I’ll hang a picture or two.  Our bedding could probably use some upgrading/tweaking.  All of which will have to wait for some room in our budget.  Until then, I am very pleased with how the space is coming along and absolutely tickled pink to be sleeping in our bedroom for the very first time this week!

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before and after, Life, Our Home, The Renovation Journal
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Renovation Journal: painted

As we were preparing to host our Vow Renewal at our home, there were a lot of little home improvement projects going on.  Not the thorough, detailed, complete make-over type, but the “agh, quick just cover up the worst of it!” type.

This wall below had been driving me crazy since we moved in.  All of those scuff marks and scratches?  They do not come off, not matter how much you scrub.  On the other hand, the paint itself does start to come off, if you scrub hard enough.

This is the first thing you see, once you’ve walked through the mud room, as you are entering our house.  It’s the view at the end of the hall.  When we moved in, there was this weird bracket/brace thing sticking out of the wall that we would often stand around regarding, wondering what on earth it could be supporting.  Turns out it was just a random thing, sticking out of a hole in the wall, for no apparent reason.  Which left us with an oh-so-appealing hole right at eye level.

This wall was not on the original to improve list.  But one day I woke up and decided I couldn’t live with it anymore.  The boys and I came up with a plan, if we timed it just right, we could have this little wall totally made-over before Steve got home from work and surprise him.

  One coat of primer and two coats of Yolo Imagine .04 later…

And I managed to hang a picture of the two of us, right where that hole had been, about 15 minutes before he walked in the door.  And…he didn’t notice.  Any of it.  And this my friends if why Steve does not get to pick paint colors…because what difference would it make to him?  After much laughter, all the kids drug him back and he finally realized why we were all laughing.  This isn’t how I intend to keep this wall long-term, but it’s much, much better for now!

Remember that litttle his and hers series I posted a while back?  There was also supposed to be a “theirs”, I just never got around to it.  The two big boys were looking for a way to earn some extra money, so I hired them to paint the hallway.

It started out this bright tangerine color.

When we were in the process of moving to this house and thinking, thinking, thinking on paint colors, dear Kyrie was also moving to a new home and in the process of picking out paint.  She was on this kick wanting to try something somewhat daring.  She was thinking of painting most of their space a sort of an antique gold color.  The color of beeswax was her inspiration.  At first I didn’t like the idea at all.  But here is the thing…Kyrie’s taste is impeccable.  She creates the warmest, most beautiful and homey spaces, without fail.  Because of that, I keep thinking about it and eventually I think I started obsessing about it.  And finally decided it was just what I was looking for to paint the hall.

I never actually picked out the exact color I was looking for.  When the paint we ordered for Galen’s room came, it wasn’t at all what we expected (another quirk of our monitor), but it was awfully close to my planned hall color.  So the Yolo Grain .03 moved to that hall and we ordered a fresh can of Grain .01 for his room.

The hall color has many different moods.  It’s generally kind of a honey brown.  At night under artificial lighting it looks like coffee ice cream (as seen in the photo above).  During the day, when the sun is shining bright it takes on a golden wheat hue.  I’ll have more photos in more areas and more types of light, as we finish the hallway more completely.  The trim in this space is also Imagine .04, an old-fashioned linen white.

We also replaced the dull recessed lighting with a fixture with a bit more character and (I think anyway) a bit of vintage charm.

On to the porch…

remember the porch?

Due to time constraints, we gave up on the idea of re-screening the whole thing and decided to concentrate on just cleaning it up, painting, replacing light fixtures, etc.  It’s a good thing that we opted to devote a considerable amount of time to this, as our garden ceremony was moved to the porch, at the very last minute, due to unexpected rain.

The ceiling is BEHR Premium Plus Ultra in “Vintage Linen”, further proof that paint color names totally work on me.  All the trim is the same brand in “Ultra White”
(Iain is Irish dancing us back down the aisle here, in case that wasn’t clear)

And the homeschooling room/reception space as shown below.  The walls were seriously mangled and the parts that weren’t striped bare were painted a bold yellow-green.  Since the ceiling and trim wasn’t in bad shape, I just painted the walls, a mellower color; “Soft Celery” by Mythic Paint.

In person it’s not quite as soft as it is in there pictures and it leans just a tiny bit more to mint then I’d like, but overall, I think it’s rather lovely.

All of the before/during pictures above are by me.

Most of the “after” pictures pictures are by Dawn Joseph.

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before and after, Kids, Our Home, The Renovation Journal
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upstairs bath re-do, part I

before:

after:

This currently may well be my favorite space in the house.  Yes, the bathroom.  It’s just so calm and serene and (very important) everything is where it’s supposed to be.  No clutter.  Sun-shiny views of snow covered forests, offset by lush greenery inside.  Plus, unlike many of the other rooms in the house, it’s the right color.  While there may not be right and wrong colors in general, there are right and wrong colors for me and this one falls quite comfortably in the “right” category.

Paint Details:

Ceiling- Imagine .01

Doors and trim- Imagine .04

Walls- Water .02

All by Yolo Colorhouse.  The ceiling is a warm bright white.  The trim is a linen white that gives everything a classic, old-fashioned feel.  The wall color is extremely difficult to capture accurately, especially since it changes throughout the day, but it’s somewhere around the intersection of blue, green and grey; lovely and mellow and calm.

  The original exhaust fan in the bathroom was broken.  Since moisture and potential mold growth are a huge issue for us, replacing it was a high priority.  I finally settled on a Ventamatic NewVent light/vent combination fixture.  From their site; “The factory is 100 percent powered by wind generated power, 95 percent of all waste products are recycled and the packaging is of recycled cardboard.”  Sold.

Some other little fixes: we added in a towel bar and toilet paper holder.  I’m not really sure how the family of five living here before us didn’t have a towel bar, but there you go.  I didn’t want to spend the money to replace the light fixture above the sink, so I rigged it up to support a vintage tinted glass shade instead (a $6 investment).  A little basket from another part of the house corrals washcloths and hand towels.  Window wise I found the huge picture window, looking out over the woods, very peaceful, but the little one next to the sink faces the front yard and driveway.  I don’t even really think you can see into it from the outside.  But somehow from the inside, it felt less private then it should.  I liked the idea of these lacy window films, but worried about the safety of the materials used to make them and had no desire to pay $86 dollars to cover half of one small window.  One day I thought of some cotton lace I had leftover from another project.  With my tiny embroidery scissors I clipped the lace, following the edge of the pattern.  A little sewing, a bit of ribbon trim at the top (also from my stash) and a tension rod (less then $3), finished it off.  Much less expensive and perfectly safe.

  I’m still feeling a bit wish-washy about the plant holder.  I just made it a couple weekends ago and it doesn’t look quite how I pictured it, but I think it’s growing on me.

And what is that around our toilet you ask?  That, my friends, is our Squtty Potty.  Yeah, I actually typed those words together.  And I’m going to say more about it.  The way I see it, I have 3 young boys at home and a little girl who thinks that everything they say is brilliant, hysterical and well worth repeating.  In other words…I’m pretty much immune to any kind of embarrassment about potty talk.  And this is important, so someone has got to talk about it.  The theory goes, and this is supported by much scientific research, that human beings are meant to squat to eliminate.  It is amazing the number of problems that can be improved, prevented or cured with this one simple lifestyle modification.  Those of you who remember my Healing Home series, know that I am serious about creating a house the encourages health and wellness on all levels.  We have gut issues, there’s no getting around that.  Leaky gut, IBS, Celiac Disease, crazy food allergies, family history of stomach cancer, you name it.  I’m supposed to be going in for an assessment for possible Crohn’s Disease.  The combination of Elhers-Danlos and carrying/birthing lots of large babies means that I have all sorts of issues with prolapsed pelvic organs.  Not to mention the extra need to quickly and efficiently eliminate toxins from our bodies.  None of this is particularly pleasant to talk about, but there isn’t any way for other people to get help unless someone puts the information out there.  All of these things and more (hemorrhoids, anal fissures, constipation, colon cancer to name a few) can be helped or prevented with this one simple measure.  So, yeah, someone has got to say something because people are suffering and they don’t have to.  What’s more, we are raising generation after generation that are developing problems and in pain when they don’t have to be.  And I want more then that for my family.  Who knew I felt so passionately about such a thing?  Certainly not I.  Until I tried it.  And I can honestly say, it makes a big difference in our quality of life.  *Stepping off my strange soapbox now.*  For more information you can do your own searches on the web or check out the wealth of info on the Squatty Potty site.  For such a serious, yet taboo subject, those guys have quite the sense of humor.  Ours is the Squatty Tao Bamboo, which is actually on sale right now.  Call me crazy, but I actually like the way it looks in the room.  I think the bamboo adds an appealing, earthy element that breaks up all the white with a bit of warmth.  It’s a nice touch.  The kids all think it’s fabulous, as they no longer have to sit uncomfortably with dangling legs.  And it stays tucked out of the way, under the toilet for anyone who doesn’t wish to use it.

I think that about wraps up the bathroom tour.  Oh, except for Hector!  Hector the luna moth, named by Elijah (congrats to the .02% of you who actually got that joke).  That’s obviously an old picture, as we haven’t seen Hector in many months, but all summer long he took his daytime rest on our bathroom window.  I especially appreciated his efforts to color coordinate.

There is still a lot I want to do in this space.  A bit of custom built storage.  I might add some artwork, I might not.  There is still a vintage medicine cabinet up in the attic waiting to be fixed up and installed.  Steve wants to replace the floor some day but that is a long way down the line.  I’d love to replace the switch plates with something like this, but I’ve yet to find an excuse for spending nearly $30 on switch plates.  Steve is entirely convinced that there is no such excuse and so we live on with the plastic ones.  But it’s better.  Much better and time to move on to other more pressing projects.

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before and after, Our Home, The Healing Home, The Renovation Journal
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