Hall Bathroom Update #diy #theswalehouse

There is a good reason that there were no pictures of the upstairs hall bathroom in the MLS listing - it is terribly small (and thus hard to get a good picture of) and it was painted a lovely baby poop brown.  Who chooses colors like that and thinks "hmm...perfect color for a bathroom!"!?!?!?!

View from in the tub

 Yeah, not pretty.  One goal this summer was the get rid of the brown!  (I sense a theme here, last summer it was bye bye brown kitchen cabinets....)  Warm white here we come!  In the process of course, I discovered that not a lot of time and care was put into flipping this bathroom in 2012 when it was done with the rest of the house.  Example #1: the extra large and yellow quarter round trim that doesn't go the full way around the bathroom, which made me paint the trim.

I picked a warm white: Behr Twinkling Lights as this is a northern facing room that doesn't get a ton of direct sunlight.  Even with Paint + Primer combined it took 3 coats to get a good coverage. 

First coat done!

Compared to the earlier photo, SO MUCH BRIGHTER AND BETTER!!!  

Example #2: the extra large hole behind the light fixture that left it hanging off the wall by a quarter inch.  Not safe!  To fix the light, I ended up just screwing in a piece of scrap wood behind the base of the hole so that the bar of the fixture would have something to rest on, thus holding it steady and flush against the wall.  (Don't forget to turn off the power when working near any wires! And then don't forget to turn the power back on when you're all done :-) 

That little piece of wood you see was all it needed!

Two screw holes I can patch no problem.

Here it is brighter and all put back together:

Someday we'd love to redo the floor as some tiles are missing, and get rid of the brown tiles in the tub, but that will be another summer project down the road.

A Favorite Hike #MDI #SargentMountain

One favorite hike, that my family has done 10+ times (basically every time we head to MDI), is up to Sargent Mountain, then down and up Penobscot Mountain.

From: http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/acadia-map.jpg

The little pond isn't seen on the NPS maps,
but you can see it on Google Maps (my text edits).

To start we would park at the Jordan Pond House in the morning, make reservations for afternoon tea and popovers at the Pond House, then start our hike.  Sometimes we would go up to Penobscot first, climbing up the built in ladders and then picking blueberries on the ridge to accompany a PB&J lunch, then a quick swim in the little pond just over the hill from Penobscot before climbing up Sargent to the peak, then back down to the Pond House for those tea and popovers.

Other times, we would go up to Sargent first, following the trail along Jordan Pond first, then after Sargent stop at the pond, then up Penobscot, over the ridge (collecting blueberries in remembered tupperware for pie that night), and down to the Pond House.

It makes for a lovely day!

If you don't have strong hikers, you can always to do the loop around the pond which is pretty flat and has some boardwalk.

Extended family hike (2017)

View from Penobscot Mtn

Those bushes in the lower left? Blueberries!

This is waiting for you at the end!

Here's recipe for popovers if you want to try to recreate them at home.