House updates: a finished bathroom and basement progress

Long time, no post! I hope everyone (err... everyone that still reads) had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. I really can't believe it's a brand new year! One of my big goals this year is to blog on a more regular basis. I really enjoy looking back at old posts about special events, projects, and my growing kiddos and last year I slacked big time.

Ever since we moved at the end of last summer, we've been working on some sort of house project. Though our house is new, there has been quite a bit we've been doing to inject a bit of character and make it our own. The main level is all one color: a basic builders beige. While I don't hate it per se, there's a heck of lot of it. So far, I've painted 3 rooms and the end result of each leaves me so amazed at what a can of paint can do! Most recently I tackled the kids bathroom (small rooms first!). I finished painting just before Christmas and the little details the week after. Here's the before, when we first moved in:


And the after:

I knew i wanted to do fun stripes (and what a pain in the butt those turned out to be) with some sort of whale artwork. I ended up settling with white (Behr's Polar Bear) and grey (Behr's Dolphin fin) for the stripes, and found this great Etsy seller for the whale print. I love that it isn't overly juvenile like some artwork I had looked at. Nothing wrong with that, it just wasn't what I was going for.
I also switched the towel bar out for individual hooks, which I like a little better. I think the colored towels and soap dispenser add a little more color and make it playful. I do think that the print would benefit with more white space around the artwork, but finding a square frame has proven to be difficult, and holy crap custom framing is expensive ($73 dollars, to be exact). Overall, I am extremely happy with how this room turned out! It looks so much brighter, cleaner and bigger.

Our other main concern is getting our basement finished. I may or may not have mentioned that over half of our stuff is still in storage since the basement of our old home was finished and fully furnished. When we moved in:


And now:

The bar area

The living room

Storage closets outside the hallway- one will be my craft closet, the and the kids will have the area under the stairs for a play area/hide out!

The office

full bathroom

Guest room

We framed, ran electrical and plumbing, and had drywall hung (which we hired out- best decision ever). Most of the painting is done, and the bar cabinets are on order. Our next goals down here are to make this space livable- trim, tile in the bath and bar and carpet in the living room and bedrooms. Then we'll get counters in, and install stone on the back bar wall! Hopefully we will have the whole basement completed in the spring. Since we are doing the work ourselves, things progress quite slowly since free time is, well... limited. =)
Thanks for reading! My baby girl is turning ONE in just a few days (crazy!)- I'll be sure to share some pictures with you!