Meet Alaina from one of our fave blogs, An Italian Girl Going Dutch. She’s telling you all about her and her husband’s DIY home remodeling and decorating. Read her story and follow along with her as she updates on her progress and all her decor adventures
Hello there! My name is Alaina over from An Italian Girl Going Dutch and I am so excited to be blogging here at LOVEPOST. I was asked to share some advice, tips and stories for other newlywed couples on house hunting, remodeling, decorating… all my favorite things.
Now, my husband [who I affectionaly call PI] and I recently relocated to Boston. PI got an amazing job offer that would have been crazy to turn down. So off we went – leaving our jobs and renting the house we have spent the last two and a half years turning into our home. It has been bittersweet – I love our home, our neighborhood and our family [mom] and friends [girlfriends!] in Denver, but it’s just time for something new. And we have never been ones to turn down a new adventure. So, here we are in Boston.
But for now, I thought I would share with you the biggest project that PI and I undertook when we first bought our house: remodeling our upstairs bathroom. Usually every year we take a big trip abroad (2008: Germany and Turkey, 2009: Paris, 2010: Morocco and Spain). 2011, however, was be a bit tamer. We decided the year before that rather than taking a big trip we would put that money into our upstairs bathroom, which desperately needs some updating. Here are a few shots of what the bathroom looked like in March last year, before we even closed. And this is what it looked like until we were able to remodel it. Ew.
So the weekend of my birthday, I was showering and I looked up at the bathroom ceiling. What I saw made me want to vomit. The previous owner, or whoever painted our bathroom stock-white, used cheap paint. I can tell this because when it gets wet, the latex base drips in the form of yellow streaks on the walls and build-up on the ceiling that literally looks like pee on the walls. It’s the worst. I got out of the shower and told PI that we should start ripping it out. And my ever-motivated husband went right into the bathroom with a hammer and started smashing 
It wasn’t pretty. And for about two weeks it sat totally untouched because we were out of town, so that kind of put a kink in our plans.
Here’s a photo of the kind of look and feel I would have in the bathroom in a perfect world:
photo from domino, tile from emery & cie
Really, in a perfect world, I would use tile like this (below) with that gorgeous mirror above and some really interesting lighting.
But marriage is about compromise and those of you who know PI won’t be surprised to hear he doesn’t like this tile [or the cost]. So we went with a more neutral, man-friendly way. So far we have tentatively picked brown glass tile with a white stone border.
The look in our house is pretty original, I think. Pretty eclectic. While I love Italian and French designs, I’ve found that i’m most home around Moroccan decor. So I’m really hoping to put a bit of that Middle Eastern flavor into the bathroom with dark tile and differing and neutral glass tea lights around the room like these from Elizabeth’s Embellishments (one of my new favorite stores!).
The tub and shower all ripped out, so that you can actually see through to the closet on the other side. Crazy stuff.
So glad to be blogging here at LOVEPOST and can’t wait to share more about what we did to the bathroom and more soon!
Til next time…
Alaina