Kid Stuff at Sassy Seagull!

 There is something magical about being a kid at the beach. Times of hanging out with cousins or friends having fun. Sleepovers.  Resting by playing board games or reading a good book after a long day of riding the waves and building sand castles. Ice cream outings in the evenings after supper. Simple pleasures.

I wanted to design a room at the Sassy Seagull cottage just for kids. There was one tiny bedroom in the cottage that seemed like just the spot. Here are the "before" photos...

There was a closet in the wall that adjoins the front master bathroom. I decided to steal it for the master bedroom/bathroom side and close up the wall on the bunk room side. There will be hooks and drawers for storage in the bunk room instead.

Part of the floor had to be pulled up because there was some rotting and there were also some foundation issues under the house needing repair.

And then we had to steal a few inches in order to widen the next door bathroom to fit all the fixtures back in. Those few inches made a tiny room even tinier and I had to rework the arrangement of the bunks. But it will be functional and cozy.

Once the wall was framed out and the plumbing and electrical were completed the walls were clad in paneling to match the rest of the room.

Then the floors were sanded and stained and the room was painted.

Finally the the light fixtures were installed. I love to give each bunkmate his or her own reading light with their own on/off switch. It gives them a measure of control over their personal space and kids seem to love it! I found a fixture at Lowes that has a grille over the cover that helps give it a nautical look.

I loved this starfish flushmount light at Shades of Light and thought it would be perfect for the ceiling!

Now all we need for this bunk room is bunk beds! I'll save that for my next post! Thanks for stopping by! See you soon!

Sassy Seagull on The Tybee Tour of Homes!

Wow! It's been a long while since I've posted. Now that spring is here I am thrilled to think about tuning up our Tybee cottages for beach season!  I'm also super-excited to announce that our cottage, The Sassy Seagull is going to be on the 

Tybee Tour of Homes on May 5, 2018! 

We've been working hard to make it a fun time filled with lots of inspiration and great ideas for all of the tour patrons. We hope that you will come for a great day of touring and having lunch at Tybee! Click here for details about the tour, tickets and such...

My last post was a wrap up with pretty pictures of the vintage clawfoot tub bathroom reno at Sassy Seagull cottage. If you missed it and want to catch up, there is a link below plus a few "blast from the past" posts at The Sassy Seagull...

Clawfoot Tub Bathroom

Beach-y Master Bedroom

Quirky Little Kitchen

From Dive to Dining Room

Living Room--Welcome In!

I'll be back soon with some all new pictures and posts!

Where's My Rubber Ducky?

This is the story of how we got here...

...when we started out here...

You can see more "before" pictures and read about my plan for this room in my last post.

Aaaaand...here's what happened. 

We stole the closet space from the bedroom next door that was jutting into the bathroom.

Once the linoleum flooring was removed we discovered some rotting and decided to go with tile instead of refinishing the floor. Floor and Decor had some great choices of floor tile with a classic vintage vibe. This basketweave one for $2.99 per square foot...

This hexagonal tile for $2.57...

And last but not least, this selection for $2.39. I liked all three choices so I went with the least expensive one. No need to spend unnecessarily. Here is the winner...

And I went with a gray grout color to accentuate the design.

The plumbing needed to be reworked so we took a few inches from the next door bedroom to make a bit more space for the tub and to allow paneling to be installed to match the rest of the room.

When we rebuilt the closet for the master bathroom to use we made it a little less deep and a little less wide to allow more room for a larger vanity.

I found some goodies at Home Depot. This vanity was a bargain considering it came with a cultured marble top and sink.

And when I saw this brushed nickel beauty I knew I had found my vanity light...

The faucet and drain on the old tub had seen better days.

Sandpiper Supply, a plumbing supply store in Savannah, was where I found this Moen line of fixtures. The style, Brantford, was high quality but at one of their lower price points. I thought it had a lot of bang for the buck!

And the star of the show, the clawfoot tub was spruced up so it could show off. The outside was sanded, smoothed out with some Bondo, and then painted with Benjamin Moore's 2044-60 "Crystal Clear". Then I found Mike's Bathtub and Tile Refinishing on Angie's List and had Mike resurface the inside surface of the tub.

And y'all. Just look at this...

Yeh. I love the way it turned out! The shower curtain came from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

I found an oyster shell mirror on eBay. And we even had room to squeeze in little built-in shelves to hold towels in between the vanity and the closet.

And one other thing...Check out the towel hooks. This was made out of repurposed wood. I found it at a flea market in Nashville.

So happy with this bathroom! 

Now where did I put my rubber ducky? I need a good soak...

Making A Plan!

In my last post I showed you the first of two master bedrooms at The Sassy Seagull. In this post you'll get to see the adjoining bathroom. Before.

This is what we saw when we set eyes on the room...

The room was on the small side and very dated but it had one feature that we were excited about! How about that old clawfoot bathtub!?!  Yay! Here it is once the occupant's possessions were gone...

So here was the plan I came up with for this room: 

1. Remove the old linoleum flooring. If there is a wood floor in good condition underneath, sand and refinish it. If not, tile the floor with something appropriate to the age of the house that has timeless appeal.

2. Get new fixtures for the tub since the ones on there currently are kinda grungy. 

See what I mean?

3. Remove the sink and vanity as well as the wall cabinet above the toilet. Replace with a larger new vanity and new sink. Put some paneling on that wall that matches the other walls.

4. Take the closet space from the kid's bunk room next door and use it instead for the master bathroom/bedroom. It bumps into the room already (see where the wall hooks are) 

 but it doesn't need to be quite so deep or wide--allowing more room for a larger vanity. 

5. Get new vanity lights, an overhead vent/light, and find a gorgeous beach-y mirror and a cool towel bar or towel hooks.

Sooo...that's the plan. I'll show you how it went down in my next post! Thanks for 

stopping by! 

Now We're Cooking!

Last week I posted about all of the crazy quirks in the kitchen at Sassy Seagull and how we planned to remodel it. Let me pick up where we left off...

I chose basic white shaker cabinets--a style that suits this little cottage--simple 

and timeless.

I found these knobs and pulls at Home Depot. I liked the aged, galvanized look and felt it had the feel I was trying to capture in this vintage cottage.

I used Wilsonart laminate countertops in Designer White...not fancy or luxurious (which fits in with with the down home feel of these quaint old Tybee cottages) but 

very budget-friendly!

Once these elements were in place we stained the floors, installed the sink and the appliances, and painted the walls with Martha Stewart Living's 

"Glass of Milk" in semi-gloss. I also had some pretty blue penny tiles installed as a backsplash.

Here's a closeup of the tile...

SomerTile FXLMPML Retro Penni Matte Light Porcelain Floor and Wall Tile

Last but not least, we had some leftover boards that were ripped down from some of the walls in the cottage to allow for wiring and plumbing to be updated so we decided to salvage them and reuse them by cladding the peninsula with them.  They add such a fun touch to the room! And they were free!

So here's the kitchen...

I used curtains in the window that pick up the orange of the stools. They are not pictured here because they were installed after I took these photos. This is the fabric...

P. Kaufmann Indoor/Outdoor Coral Splendor Stripe fabric

A few more photos...

And that's how we went from this...

To this...

SaveSave

A Quirky Kitchen

Have you ever played "What's Wrong With This Picture?"  Well, take a look at these "before" photos of the kitchen at Sassy Seagull cottage and let's play!

What's wrong with this kitchen?

Some of the things that stand out to me are (1) the countertop and cabinet end at a window (2) there is a electrical panel box next to the upper cabinet which violates code and  (3) the overall look says "tired".

Here's another view of the room...What else do you see?

At first I wondered if an appliance was missing at the end of the counter to the right of the sink but then I realized there was a gap there because of the closet door. And although it is not obvious from these photos, the floors were buckling and we suspected (correctly) that there were structural issues to deal with.

So these were on our to-do list:

(1) Gut the kitchen

(2) Repair the structural issues to shore up the floor joists. 

(3)Relocate the electrical panel to the new laundry/utility room.

(4) Close up the window on the left side of the room so the base and upper cabinets could run all the way across to the wall. This was a tough call but having cabinets won out. We compensated by replacing the center window with a slightly larger one.

(5) Replace the flooring with wood floors and clad the walls with paneling to match the rest of the house.

(6) Add pulldown attic stairs so that access could be available to the attic for storage and for servicing the systems such as HVAC, wiring, plumbing. The stairs were added in the walkway that goes through the periphery of the kitchen and not in the work area. You can see just a bit of them in the ceiling on the right.

(7) Close up one of the closets on the right side of the wall so that the counter and cabinets can run all the way across without obstruction. As the next photos show, the lost closet space was recovered on the living room side of the wall as a built-in bookshelf.

Looking from kitchen side through to the living room before the wall is closed up.

The roughed-in bookshelf

The finished bookshelf in the living room.

(8) Turn one of the other closets into a built-in pantry/storage area with shelving.

 (9) Add a peninsula for additional workspace, storage, and seating.  Here's a not-to-scale hand drawing of the plan.

Next week I'll show you how it all turned out!