I loved our house, but every time I drove up all I could think was, “It would look SO much better if those shutters were…” fill in the blank.

Major projects like kitchens and bathrooms came and went, babies were born, life kept chugging along and we never painted those silly shutters.

I finally had my mind set – it was going to be black or gray. Those were classic. Those were safe. Except…

…every time I took the kids on a walk, I passed this one house a few blocks from ours. The shutters and front door were a cheerful blue, and I began to notice that I smiled every time I walked past.

And then it clicked – that’s what I wanted – not something safe…

I wanted something that would make me smile every time I drove up to our house.

Blue is certainly still a classic color – just look at many English cottages! I was sold.

You might know by now that I love Fusion Mineral Paint. It is awesome stuff; I’ve used it a bazillion times around our house and have been nothing short of impressed.

But could I use it on vinyl shutters?!

People use it on their front doors all the time – even on a bicycle, as I saw recently! Why not shutters?

Just a note – our roof has a really generous overhang around the perimeter – the windows never actually get a lot of direct rain or snow. This made me even less concerned about durability. I’m confident, though, that even if you don’t have a deep overhang, it would still hold up well.

I’ve used Fusion Mineral on our dining table, black bench, the twice-painted table, and a number of other projects. I’ve scrubbed pasta sauce off that dining table countless times over the last year and it’s held up like a champ. Toys have been scooted across that bench over and over again for well over a year and it has yet to flinch. And that’s without any sort of topcoat. It’s incredible stuff.

To prep, we removed the shutters from the house and gave them a good cleaning with plain old dish soap and water.

We let them dry and power washed the siding while we were at it.

Then I gave them two coats of Fusion Mineral Paint in Liberty Blue.

What a difference even after just one coat! (Still wet in photo.)

Don’t freak out if the paint looks a little like camouflage while it’s drying – it will even out! When I first saw the shutter look like this…

…it was a total “oh no!” moment – but trust me, it doesn’t look splotchy now in the slightest. Fusion Mineral Paint is also self-leveling! Woohoo!

You know what impresses me even more than how well 2 coats covered? It didn’t take away the texture of the shutters! They still have that faux-wood grain visible! Just make sure you don’t get gloopy with the paint – use a light hand and try not to go back over what you just painted, because it’s already starting to dry.

My husband purchased new shutter pins and I painted those too. He rigged up this block of wood with holes to stick the pins in so I could easily paint them. (Make sure you check your pin size before purchasing! They come in different sizes.)

After doing this, I would actually recommend painting the pins after the shutters have been re-hung. As he was hammering the pins in, the paint chipped in a few places, resulting in touch-up work. It’s totally up to you – the block was super convenient, so if you don’t mind touch-up work, then you could do it that way.

It is amazing how much paint can make a difference!

(Okay, well, some landscaping too…)

This would have been a 2-day project except that I ran out of paint. We started first thing in the morning, washed and painted the shutters, then let them dry overnight and put them back up the next day. As it so happened, my paint took most of a week to come in, so my neighbors had to look at a half-done house. (Sorry, neighbors!)

It took 1.5 containers of paint (500ml each) to put 2 coats of paint on 10 shutters – 6 long shutters and 4 short shutters.

I am totally in love with the blue.

It’s taken me a few weeks to get to writing this post, and so far the paint hasn’t had any problems. Even the finished shutters that got left out in the rain before we re-hung them were just fine. I will keep you updated as the seasons go by as to how they hold up, but I feel really confident that they will be A-okay!

Guess what – I smile when I drive up to the house now!

Well, we didn’t quite finish before baby came. At one week postpartum I was [very carefully] helping my husband line up the toilet with the screws on the floor so that we could get that porcelain attraction off of our driveway (it looked soooo classy, let me tell you!). Don’t worry, he was doing the heavy lifting!

Before our renovation, we were the proud owners of a very PINK bathroom! I suppose it was somewhat charming in a vintage kind of way, but not what we wanted long term. (Don’t you love the mangled blinds? They came with the bathroom…)

Besides the fact that it had pink floor tile, pink wall and shower tile, and a pink bathtub, it also had some structural issues that needed attention…like the fact that…

The. Shower. Leaked. Into. The. Basement.

Sound familiar? Yeah, that was pretty much the story of our new-homeowner lives. (Here’s the story of the other shower that leaked!) We found out about this one when I was cleaning the shower and my husband was working down in the basement. I had the water pointed at the shower wall to rinse off the soap and suddenly heard,

“Melissa! Turn it off! Turn it off!”

It was forming a significant lake on the basement floor.

Our pink bathroom also boasted not one, but TWO heating vents in the same room. It was certainly the warmest room in the house having two vents and being positioned directly above the furnace.

The bathroom had no exhaust fan. Steam would build up in that room in no time flat. You can imagine extreme steam + heat from two air vents in a small bathroom = major sauna!! We added a recessed light / exhaust fan combo, and my husband drilled a hole in the side of our house to install the exit vent. Fun times! That was the meanest looking saw blade I’ve ever seen – it was a metal blade shaped like a circular cookie cutter with large teeth. Eek! I held the ladder – that was my job!

The vanity and sinks were old, the faucets had seen better days, and so on.

The only things we kept were the toilet (which was fairly new), the mirror, and the light fixture. The light fixture is not exactly what I would pick given the opportunity, but it was fairly new and worked perfectly well, so we stuck with it to save some money.

One November Day, we gutted it.

Apparently pink cast-iron tubs shatter like glass when hit with a sledge hammer! Pretty cool. (No, I was not the one doing this, but I saw a video of my brother demolishing it!)

Over the next few months, my husband rebuilt the bathroom while I prepared the nursery and acquired baby supplies. I am so thankful for him. <3

As always, family and friends were right there when we needed them and we are so very grateful! We could not have done it without you all!

It took a team of strong men to move our vanity in! (This was before we re-did our family room, by the way!)

I was very, very pregnant…

We finally finished a week after baby boy was born – the toilet re-installation was the icing on the cake! Okay, that just sounded wrong…those two things should never be in the same sentence.

Besides many aesthetic changes (tile, paint, trim, vanity, etc.), major changes we made to this bathroom were:

• Installed exhaust fan that vents to the outside.
• Removed and closed off the extra air vent.
• Opened up the walkway by removing the “doorway” between sections.
• Gutted and rebuilt the shower to not leak into the basement!

Because this bathroom functions as both a guest bath and the kids’ bathroom, we wanted it to be cheery and fun. We decided to paint it a bold blue to contrast with all the white. I also have a thing for birds, so that’s kind of the theme…my husband calls it our “bird bath.”

Details:

• Paint: “Soft Turquoise” by Behr
• Vanity: Kitchen Bath Collection Bella Vanity with Carrara Marble Countertop
• Faucet: Came free with the vanity and has no markings (sorry!)
• Shower Tile: White Subway Tile from Home Depot with a decorative border from Menards
• Floor Tile: Jupiter Grey Porcelain Tile from The Tile Shop (12×24)
• Shower Fixtures: Moen (except in chrome)
• Shower Curtain: Lenox “Chirp” Series
• Bird Garland on Window: Homegoods
• Pom-pom rug: by “Fresh Home” found at Homegoods
• Hand Towels (my favorite): by Grandeur Hospitality
• Eucalyptus: Trader Joe’s

We’ve been enjoying our new bathroom every since. <3 As always, it was a lot of work and a lot of mess, but very worth it.