My house needs an underhaul: a budget project thread.

I just did 2 kitchens and 4 bathrooms back in June with that TrafficMaster Allure product (in the "Corfu" color) and it is a nice product - both to work with and the final finish. I've come to really like the product.

For one thing, it is thicker than any self-stick tile I've ever seen (twice as thick as most of them!) so it has less chance of tearing/being cut through. It also allows it to be installed on less-than-prefect subfloors or over existing flooring without telegraphing imperfections.

It also doesn't actually stick to the old floor at all. It has tabs on the edges much like laminate flooring does. The pieces stick to each other so you end up with a once piece floating floor. When you lay in the sections you can heat the seam with a heat gun or hair drier and soften up the glue so that you can push the sections together tightly and the seams disappear completely. Because of the tabs you also end up with a water tight floor, something you don't get with self-stick tiles. Any DIYer could install this stuff with ease. The last bathroom I did was about 3 hours to remove the toilet, sink/vanity and baseboards, install flooring and resinstall everything.

My only complaint about this stuff thusfar is that color choices are pretty limited. I wish they'd come out with more patterns.

I'm going to take a fresh look at blues today. I don't use blue much probably because it is so cloudy here that blue just seems to look gray.

I too think pink would be fun but I know my choice would be nixed.

I'm not sure what the floor is but it is glued down atop the old wood flooring. I worry about using wood look Pergo type things because it would make the transition into the room awkward. Plus Mr. B's disdain for fake wood.... being a hardwood importer/vendor and all....

Whatever it is, it is a little bumpy so it would need to be removed before putting anything down on it. It is starting to seperate at the threshold which only increases it's ugliness.

Fabric is a great way to choose color combinations! I love the green and chocolate brown combo but this room is too small for such a dark color. Green and brown are my two favorite colors.

I too love a variety of color, osso. I have picked a color palette so I'm not too worried about choosing different colors while keeping the flow of things working.

I'm looking forward to hearing your underhaul experience and ideas, jespah!

The windows have a roll down shade on them. It's nice because it does protect the windows frames from shower water. I would love to find a way waterproof way to protect the windows while leaving the view out and blocking the view in.

Light fixtures.... yeah.... new light fixtures would be a big improvement.

So.

Paint, light fixtures, flooring are all needed for my underhaul.

I'm going to take a stab at that floor today and see what's what.

hmm, don't know if i'd do the blue myself. i like bathrooms that are breathy, fresh, relaxing.... i think i could see a pale lemony yellow, with white ceiling, which wouldn't clash with the green, would make it look bigger (especially if it's already small).

i like gray and white combo in bathrooms, but don't think that would work with the green at all. but blue and yellow both would.

I posted this a few pages back:



After my last post I went in and yanked a tile loose and the color is the exact same green as the darker color in the top part of the water. Now I'm kind of leaning towards the chartreusey color of the water in the middle section.....

i concur, that would be my inclination as well.

Chartreuse as a wall colour in a cloudy kinda place could be a bit mmmmm off-putting. As much as I love chartreuse (and I love it a lot - one of those great 1940's colours), I'd paint a huge patch of it as a test before committing to it.

i think if it's light enough and more yellow than green (i am stubborn that way), it could work. i'm picturing this kind of a color:

Good point. Those really pure colors don't work well in hazy light. That's part of the problem -- this tile color is really pure.

Surprisingly, the dusky orangy yellows look pretty good with the tile I pulled off.

Dusky orangey yellowy sounds nice.

Peachy colors look pretty good with it too.

Peachy colors are good for bathrooms since they warm up skin tones so nicely.....

I walked out of the paint store with a kind of bluple color.

I'm gonna go get started!

Yeah, I was starting to think purple-y, considering the blue and pink ideas floating around. You're right; the flooring's got to go. Tell me how it goes because both of our bathrooms need new flooring. Dunno if I'd do it all myself -- we aren't really good enough to take out a sink, for example -- but I like getting ideas.

I tend to decorate in tiny little stages. Most of the rooms we spend time in have curtains that we got for essentially the purpose of freshening things up. The plant room, for example, is all white. White walls, white trim, white sheer curtains and white hardware. It works because the furniture that's in there is dark brown wood and of course the plants themselves provide a lot of color.

One area I want to do something about it what we call the nook. It's kind of a fake room and I use it for exercise, plus there's storage in there so our old taxes and whatnot are in there. But it's got the most godawful wallpaper. I'd love to give it a blue-green almost pottery look on the walls, almost make it look like an aquarium. Hmm. But that's for another topic.

Purple and green should be decent together.

No you can do that topic here! I'd love to hear how you devise it. Glazes?

The bluple is looking pretty good. I was hoping to have a photo to post tonight but I'm having to do all the cutting in veeeeerrrrry carefully. The walls are bumpy so tape doesn't really work and the cove over the shower actually has a curved ceiling and the windows have tiny little spaces so I'm having to do it all freehand and some with a tiny little artists brush.

I did get the ceiling and trim painted a nice creamy color and already the room looks a lot better!

When I told Mr. B I was painting it blurple he rolled his eyes took Mo to the driving range!

I did mean take up the subflooring if necessary, especially if it's just plywood. I suppose the tube rests on it though. Call me fearless. I'm sort of like Boomer's husband in not liking a lot of fake-o stuff (groans while looking at my own NM place).

Did like Dag's lemon-yellow-green. That's one of my favorite colors, speaking viscerally, and you don't see it used very often. At least I don't.

I am too late, but I found some great bathrooms that are green, and
both have lots of wood to complement each other.




this one is too large to post

click here

and look what they did - that looks like your tiles and bathtub, boomer

click here

Ah okay. Well, I've been talking about the nook for a while. Will try to grab some photos when I can. It's small but it's also got a lot of crannying going on, plus there's carpet and I'd rather not destroy the carpet so I'd have to deal with that. Don't even know if it would be a this-year project given the proximity to our bedroom (fumes) plus overall new job fatigue.

I wish my bathroom was that big, CJane! Those rooms are great. (I kept thinking of little Jane's pink shower while I was working on this project -- I love that room).

Okay here's the before:



And here's the during:



I found this black and white floor in my garage -- a remnant from the old house. I don't think there is enough to do the entire floor (maybe though) but I'm thinking that I could make some "rugs" out of it somehow.

Tart it up with some black accessories....?

What do you think so far?

Wow, I really like that! I didn't think I would like the purply with the green but it's nice.

Thanks! I surprised even myself with going with blurple.

I have some prints kind of like this:



That I'm thinking would look good in a fat white mat with black frames...

That looks great Boom!