Bathroom Makeover

One of the things we have done in the past couple of weeks is a little bathroom makeover. We made a new bathmat from old wine corks, and put in a new shower curtain.

Though this is a small and inexpensive change, I am really loving the difference.

Before:


The previous shower curtain was so dark and opaque that it was hard to see while shaving, and the green really didn't go so well with the other colors in the room. Neither did the old red bathmat. Now, we have a pretty cork one instead!



Scott has been collecting corks from every bottle of wine or mead that has been drunk in this house since 2003. This makes the cork bathmat really special, because it is a visual memory of seven years of dinner parties and days at the Renaissance Festival. Now, this reminder is a part of everyday life.

To make the new bathmat, we basically followed this tutorial. I copied the old bathmat for size, and got going with a sharp knife and a pile of corks, as she instructs. Cutting the corks by hand was slow and frustrating, so I enlisted Scott's help, and he decided to set things up on the bandsaw.



He clamped two pieces of scrap wood on either side to form a jig or channel just wide enough for the corks to slide through.



He used a small dowel to push the corks through and prevent them from getting snagged in the opening on the bottom of the table. This method went really quickly, and within a half hour or so we had all of the corks cut up.



We then arranged the corks so that they were nicely distributed and neatly laid out. Some did require the occasional trim at the corkscrew hole site, but in general they packed in neatly. The last step was to hot glue the corks into their final spots. I really wish I had put down wax paper or parchment under the mat before laying the corks out, so that I wouldn't have had to shimmy paper underneath while trying to disturb as few corks as possible. Still, I am loving the final result.



Back to that new shower curtain: I am really liking having a shower curtain that is not plasticized. The liner is tightly woven fabric with some polyester content, so it works well at keeping the water in, but it can be easily laundered. Plus, there is no off-gassing. The waffle weave, hotel-style outer curtain can be easily laundered as well, and it is surprisingly luxe looking for being one of the cheaper options at Target.



I am also loving the shower curtain hangars I bought. I think the metal beads help them move more smoothly along the rod, and whenever I want to wash them, they will be easy to remove.

Well, there's the current house progress!

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Home updates

So, here's an update on some of the things I accomplished last week.



I finished painting the walls blue in the half bath. We still need to fix the ceiling and touch up the edges in some of the places where the masking tape didn't behave.



We also installed curtains in the living room in lieu of the vertical blinds that I hate so much. This was the best photo I could get at the moment with the sun shining in so brightly. I bought these curtains at IKEA, but they were tab-top, and I wanted to create a clean line from the cove ceiling to make the toom look taller, rather than showing a band of green at the top. On the other hand, I liked the regular folds that the tabs created, rather than the random bunching you get with a channel. So I just folded the interfaced top portion down to the back side, pressed and sewed along the former top edge, sewed the tabs down, then threaded the curtain rod through the tabs. Voilà!

Creating this IKEA hack and hemming the curtains was the first thing I have sewn since I mentioned completing sewing projects this month in order to join in the Crepe Sew-Along. My sewing machine was being frustrating, as usual, in failing to maintain its tension and going crazy on the back side of the seam. I ended up using Scott's machine instead, and I like it a lot better. It is a tiny travel machine, but it isn't finicky, and it sews reliably. I also like its case, which includes special places to store thread, bobbins, and other accessories, plus half of the case can be attached to the machine as an extension table. Still, it really is small. I had trouble lifting the foot over the curtain hems at the edges, because there wasn't enough vertical play. The 6" hem was already rising up the vertical because the arm wasn't long enough to lay it flat. Plus, the stitch-type selector dial is not functioning, so it is limited to being a straight-stitch machine, though it is supposed to have a variety of useful stitches available. At any rate, it is still preferable to my mis-behaving machine, and I will be using it for all of the projects I will be tackling this week.

I did go into my stash and decided that it was silly for me to keep some of the projects that I had tried to rescue due to fit issues, etc. Others should be on their way soon, with proper use of muslins.

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