History of the Laundry & Bath

This laundry & bathroom area is the most difficult to describe for me because we moved a few walls around. There were only two film photos in the album the former owner gave us, but after chatting with the original owner's sister, it sounds like this is basically what it looked like in 1959/1960 when the home was complete. I also heard it was the first room done, since the family was living in the garage while they completed the interior of the house - they lived here without a working bathroom (and an outhouse from what I hear...) for a year or two.


This is the original laundry room - round, bubble tile to the ceiling in peach/mauve/goldenrod yellow of all sorts of sizes. We actually uncovered some of this - albeit painted blue - when we took out this room to make way for the hall bath. A door to the exterior of the home, which was not visible when we closed on the house. The cabinets here were metal, and I LOVED the knobs.

  This is what it looked like the day we closed on the house. This is from a different angle, of course, but the washer/dryer and cabinets are sitting in the same spot as the top photo. You can sort of tell that the tile is still on the walls - just painted periwinkle blue.

  And here's what it looked like after we had new walls framed in, the tub installed, and the washer & dryer moved onto the other side of the wall (to the left, into the garage, which we made an interior room). On the right is what it looks like today; because there was no window, we decided to turn the old exterior door (which was apparent in the brickwork outside) into a glass block wall.

  The bathroom & laundry room were originally separate. The original owner's sister said this was a "wild" bathroom. She was in awe of the bubble tile - she personally didn't like it, and wondered where in the WORLD you'd get round tile, when "everyone else had 4" square tiles" in their bathrooms.

Can we talk about the magenta countertops with double vanity and chrome-rimmed sinks for a second? WOW - love it! And it looks like there was a little storage area right above the sinks and under the mirror - maybe a mini medicine cabinet? The wallpaper! The drapes! That pendant is interesting - doesn't look too "modern" to me, but the lighting here wasn't super modern (from photos).

There was a separate tub (as seen in the reflection of the mirror) and a standing shower. I don't have photos of the toilet & shower, but I'd assume it was Mamie pink like the tub & sink.

  Here is what this room looked like when we closed. The window is in the same spot, and I'd guess the double vanity is where the tub/shower is in this photo. The island double-facing sink that the previous homeowner put in was hilarious to us - and was the first thing we took out.

  This is looking into that area from our bedroom. We opened it up to the master bedroom & closet, and you can see the left side of the room is plumbed for the shower. I think the toilet was always in that spot, based on the plumbing we took out of there when the floors were out.

  Today it's looking a lot more modern. We went with a simple white subway tile (grouted in gray in the shower, and white on the backsplash). The window is in the same spot, and the toilet isn't far from where it originally sat.

  Since we made the original laundry room into a second bathroom, we needed to find a spot for our washer & dryer. Instead of putting them in the basement, we bumped out the garage wall out a bit, and put in a 48" wide room to stack our full size washer & dryer. This also acts as a drop-all spot when we come in from the garage - which means this room is trashed most of the time! Since this photo was taken, we've added hooks & some prints to the walls to make it a bit more "lived-in".

Guest Room | Before, During, After

This is the first of three bedrooms in the house. It's the first door on the right in the hallway, and the larger of the two small bedrooms. It only has one window, but it gets plenty of light! If we ever have another child, this will become a nursery, but for now, this is our guest room and my home office, which I use daily Pearls Events.

It was pretty bland when we bought it, but I knew with some new floors, a retro light fixture & some paint, it would be much more our style. The floors in here were stick-on laminate tiles. They were right on top of the plywood subfloor, and I doubt they were original, but we have no idea what we were prior. Maybe carpet?

The windows in this room were non-operable when we bought it; someone, at some point, had screwed them shut. We replaced all the windows in the house with the same type of window they originally were - these are slide-bys, which we love! They open up super wide - the window is 5'4" wide, so on a nice day, you get a great breeze in here. Plus, with the large overhangs we have on this house, we have a lot of shade, so it doesn't seem to get too hot in here.


While it may look like we only slapped some paint on the walls and brought in furniture, the back portion of the house had two layers of drywall - the first layer not finished and the second layer finished - even on the ceilings! Our only guess is that they used the first layer as an insulation, since there was not any in the entire house.

We also replaced the floors - we used a maple hardwood with a gray stain through the whole house (except bathrooms, laundry & basement). We replaced all the trim with new and had it stained to match the floors, as well as all the doors in the house.

 This closet had some sweet wooden square tiles in it - if we didn't take the whole house down to the studs, I wanted to keep this. But, the ceilings in the closets were lowered (for no reason we could determine), so out this came so we could re-drywall in here too.

While our builder had never installed slide-by closet doors, I did want to stay true to the original design, and requested he replace them with the same type of door. We originally thought we might paint all trim & doors white, but after the doors arrived, I LOVED the wood grain, and we decided staining was more true to the home anyway. Staining cost us a bit more in labor, but it was worth it to us. I think stain will last longer too - it doesn't show as many dents as white paint does!

 This is no where near the size of my former Pearls Events office, however, this little Kroehler desk does the job. And that closet is full of my wedding planning arsenal - file folders of invitation samples, linen samples, etc. While I sometimes miss meeting clients in my home, I do love how much more simple things are! (and I have an office space downtown Grand Rapids that I use for client meetings now!)


And remember me mentioning the two layers of drywall? Well, you cannot BELIEVE the amount of nails in each and every stud. It took days upon days of working on removing rusty nails from the walls & ceilings in each room. Here is the "during" photo after our initial inspections and after the wool insulation had been put in the walls. We also insulated the ceiling, but he couldn't do that until the drywall was up - then he shot it into the cavities.

You can see the room's resource list in the entire guest room/at-home office reveal here.

Master Bedroom, Closet & Bathroom

I am pretty sure I spent more time measuring this room than any other in our house! The reason? I really wanted a king-sized bed and this room is quite small compared to a new-build master bedrooms. The obvious wall for the bed was under the small windows, but because we made the room a bit smaller to have a walk-thru closet, the only spot for the bed became the wall which was shared with the closet.

In the end, it IS large enough to walk around the bed, and I'm thankful for all the measuring I did :)


The bed faces the large floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side of the house, and we get some great morning sun; we love how it turned out! Our bedroom wasn't quite done (and still isn't!) when Kristen of K. Holly snapped some shots in here, but I still love how it looks in her photos.

We've since added some Thedor prints above our bed, and a couple of orange polka-dot shams to break up on the all-white sheet look I had going on here. Here's an updated photo on the Facebook page to share the slightly updated (and more colorful) look.  I know this room will continue evolving as time goes on - I'm actually still looking for something to put above the orange bookcase on the wall between the small windows and the floor-to-ceiling windows. There's a photo of it here as it is now, and I want to add a long frame (which I already have from my old office) with some art in it. Art is yet to be found!


We LOVE this simple bed from West Elm. While shopping for a bed, we did search and search for a vintage one, but king-sized beds in the 50's and 60's were quite few and far between in Michigan. I couldn't find anything I LOVED, so instead, after much debate, I ordered this one from West Elm. The wood color is perfect and I really love that we have a headboard and footboard; this room with minimal furniture seems more finished to me.


Past the bed, is the walkway thru the closet and into the bathroom. Originally, there was just a standard closet here with large, mirrored doors and no access to the bathroom. Our closet is about 6' wide - large enough for us to both have our own side. I took the side with the long portion so my dresses would have a spot. Ideally, we'd have built in drawers in the cubbies, but for now, the ones I picked up at Target work just fine.

Greg's side is almost the same, except instead of the long portion for dresses, we found a little white dresser for all his t-shirts and boxer shorts. We couldn't make the wall organizer any longer because the pocket door is hidden in that wall!


Another small-for-2014 room is the master bathroom. It's about 6.6' wide, but perfect for a double vanity, toilet and double shower. The vanity is exactly the same as the one in the hall bath - they both have faux drawers up top, and the second drawer down is cut to fit around the plumbing, and then the third drawer provides the most storage space.

You might notice we don't have a linen closet in our bathroom - there really wasn't any more room - so our towels are in the guest bath and we just grab one before showering. It isn't a huge deal and keeps everything in one spot when I put laundry away.


It's a little tight between the toilet and the door to access the shower, but we swing it in and it seems to be working fine for us so far. The shower is HUGE and we love it! We didn't have a specified size for this when we started, but we just made it as wide as the room (which was determined by how big we needed the bedroom & closet to be to function properly)

We are very happy with how this portion of the house turned out. We don't hang out in our bedroom very much, so having a smaller room was just fine for us!

Master Bedroom & Closet Resource List

• Bed | West Elm
• Linens | Hollywood Duvet & Shams via Jonathan Adler
• Light Fixtures | Rejuvenation
• Paint Color | Ralph Lauren's Impressionist (same as the laundry room)
• Closet Organizer | Custom by our builder, Bruce Vugteveen

Master Bath Resource List

• Cabinets | Custom by our builder, Bruce Vugteveen
• Countertops | Wilson Art
• Faucets | VIGO via Amazon
• Sinks | Kraus via Amazon
• Shower Heads | Danze, Amalfi via Amazon
• Shower & Bathsplash Tile | Daltile via Home Depot
• Floor Tile | (no idea brand name) via The Tile Shop
• Toilet | Ariel Platinum via Overstock
• Paint Color | Paint Color | Ralph Lauren's Impressionist (same as the laundry room)
• Light Fixtures | Stella Small Sconce via Rejuvenation