Target Bathroom Necessities

I don’t know about you, but my consumption of home delivery services has escalated during recent months. I have been using a grocery delivery service for years, but since they’ve added Target to their available retailers, I’ve gone off the deep end. In an effort to save time I have been ordering everything from eggs to toothpaste to small decor items. Target also does the parking lot pick up service which I love… so I know if I wasn’t using a delivery service, I’d be doing that instead. I unconsciously started ordering more and more beauty supplies and decor items from Target as I realized how convenient it was. I walked out of the house yesterday and realized I had used nearly all Target products to get ready and was pretty much dressed in head-to-toe Target items. And that’s when I decided this blog needed to happen. Here’s a quick round up of my current Target bathroom necessities. I own and use every single thing I am sharing in this blog.

I am mentioning this Hearth and Hand stool because I’ve shared it before and had lots of questions about it when I shared it in a photo of my bathroom on Insta. I use this stool for storage next to my bathtub, I sit on it when I’m bathing my girls, and it’s so pretty just sitting there as part of the decor. Love this thing.

We have this soap dispenser and the matching small vase. I shared it several months ago on my Instastories. I think this set is versatile and matches lots of different aesthetics.

Based on some celebrity recommendation I purchased the Kristin Ess Signature shampoo and conditioner set. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and it is one of my faves that I make sure stays on my hair rotation. I recently tried the dry shampoo and love it too. So now it is part of my daily hair routine.

I recently was surfing the Target beauty reviews online and decided to try this Raw Sugar brand. I am OBSESSED. I pretty much own one of every single product that I could get at my local Target. It’s that good. The packing is pretty (I have been ripping off the stickers) with the white containers and bamboo-look tops. The products smell amazing and so far I am so impressed with the quality. My current obsession (I actually love it ALL, but if I HAD to choose) is the hair masque. I bought it with the intent to rotate it and maybe use occasionally, but now that I’ve used it, I can’t live without it. I’ve been giving out these products as gifts, too, because I love them that much. Currently using the body wash, body scrub, hair masque, hand soap, hand sanitizer

I haven’t been to a nail salon since I can’t remember when and at-home manis have become my norm. I did my own double blind design, peer-reviewed study of the best nail polishes (I included every single brand I could think of) and the Essie gel couture polishes outshined all others. Ok, so the science wasn’t publish-able but I was shocked that OPI or some of my other more flashy brands didn’t outlast the Essie. So, now I’m on a mission to collect more of the Essie gel colors each time I place a grocery order 🤪 /// current fave color: Haute to Trot /// currently wearing: Couture Curator

I didn’t include make up in this post just because I felt like it was gonna be 12 pages long if I did that… but I have been purchasing most of my products from Target. Also, I didn’t link any items because they are clearly all available at Target, but if you need/want a link just let me know!

anyway, if you are shopping Target and would like to consolidate as many items as possible from one place, I highly recommend trying out these awesome products…. and let me know what you think about them or if you have any other favorites!

happy shopping,

DIY Faux Shiplap Powder Bath

Shiplap is all the rage, right?! It really is a great way to add instant character and charm to any space. We have several rooms in our home that we are planning to add shiplap, both horizontal and vertical designs. Due to time constraints and our wish to DIY some projects, we decided to drywall our entire home during the build process and later add shiplap as we carve out time. I have read that having the drywall behind the shiplap actually improves your home’s energy efficiency, I can’t confirm that, but it’s on the inter-webs, LOL. Of course, if you don’t have drywall then you would probably just want to stick with the store-bought tongue and groove shiplap.

So for our powder bath, the inspiration is dark navy with brass/gold features and nautical themes. I love the idea of dark colored shiplap so I’m excited that this is the first room we decided to tackle.

There’s lots of DIY blogs and youtube videos that can give advice on creating faux shiplap, but we just took Purebond birch plywood bought from the Home Depot and ripped it into eight inch pieces. There’s all kinds of looks you can create with shiplap, but for this room I wanted modern and sleek. Using larger size (eight inch) planks give a more modern look especially when wood filler is used to even out all of the imperfections and nail holes. It really looks sharp! To add to that, we did a double nickel gap (just used two nickels stacked) to create a more defined gap and add a more modern twist on the traditional shiplap look (which is six inch + single nickel gap tongue and groove).

Next, we hung all of the shiplap in the bathroom. This was a tedious task because Matt is such a perfectionist and wanted every single board and angle just right. After that step we did the caulking to fill in corner gaps and wood filler to create perfectly smooth boards all the way around the room.

Lastly, we sanded and painted the shiplap. Using Benjamin Moore Hale Navy, we started with paint brushes and rollers. We quickly realized that getting the paint into the gaps proved very tough. Eventually we ended up at Home Depot late on Saturday night purchasing a paint sprayer with high hopes. The sprayer just wasn’t spraying evenly enough or finely enough to coat those gaps for us. On a last ditch effort we tried a small tip artist paint brush, and ……. TA DA! It worked! It wasn’t super efficient, but it got the job done.

Scroll to the bottom for a look at the before and after. Also, if you go to @summer_onthecoast on instagram and view my highlights labeled “Navy Powder Bath” you can watch this whole project take shape in the videos.

The total cost fo the materials (not including the tools) was just under $200. That includes wood, paint, and caulk.

BTW, This was NOT a weekend project (especially if you’re a newbie or a perfectionist ;-) This took much longer than I had originally anticipated.

And if you want to get real technical, here is a list of lessons learned from Matt:

Ripping the plywood - using a portable Rigid brand table saw bought from Home Depot to rip the plywood into 8 in strips, we continually had slippage from the table saw fence. This caused us to have slight variance with a lot of the strips. We had to go back and re-cut several of the strips, and it just added unnecessary time to the project. I ended up just using clamps to brace the fence in place, but it was pretty frustrating. I am not ready to dump the table saw just yet, but I am going to tighten down every screw on the fence and evaluate performance again on the next project.

Ensuring level boards on a 4 walled room - most of the projects on youtube that I watched didn’t address ensuring all sides of of the wood strips are level. We started from the top and worked down, but it is not advisable just to measure from the ceiling, to get a starting level line, due to the ceiling drywall often not being level. To ensure that the boards were level, we used a laser level set up on a tripod. The laser/tripod combo comes in handy for just about every project I do.

One whole wall at a time versus one single complete row at a time - most of the videos online show only one wall being put in at a time. In order to maintain level rows on each wall, I decided to do one row at a time on each wall. This ensured that the wood stayed level across the four walls. I used the laser level to check all four walls at once, basically after I completed every other row.

Make fixes immediately - for the most part, all of the boards lined up end to end. On one of the boards, however, I slightly dropped the board as I was nailing it in. Since I didn’t realize the mistake until I had nailed the whole board completely, I figured I would just “work it out” as I continue putting the next rows in. Unfortunately I didn’t easily get that slight error worked out, and it plagued an entire wall. I might be the only one who notices the error, but in hindsight I would have just been quick to remove a board if it wasn’t perfectly level. Even with glue, brad nails are removed very easily.

Painting between the cracks in the wood - For this project, Summer actually painted the whole bathroom blue before we started because a lot of people recommend doing it. There were also a lot of recommendations to paint the edges of the boards. After doing this project, I would recommend neither. My recommendation is to just get one of the sharp tipped brushes from the Home Depot, and paint between the boards as part of the initial trim work. In order to get the either the top or bottom edge of the boards blue, I felt that I also adequately painted the drywall in between anyway, so no need to paint the drywall beforehand. I also tried to use a paint spray gun to get in between, and that turned out to be a disaster. All it did was pool paint on the edges of the boards (that I had to take a brush and smooth over), and get blue paint on the white ceiling. So maybe there is an expert in painting that will say otherwise, but for faux shiplap, I will just be using a sharp edge brush from now on and not painting beforehand.

Look where the edges will be visible - I found that I had to intentionally paint either the top or the bottom edge while painting in the gap. So for eye level gaps, I had to paint both the top and bottom edge. But from about 7 feet and up, I only had to paint the top board of the gap because the edge of the bottom board isn’t visible as you look up.

Sorry this post is sooooo late… but we sure hope it is helpful to you! Again, don’t forget to visit @summer_onthecoast on instagram and this whole project with photos and videos is saved under my highlight labeled “Navy Powder Bath.”

Thanks SO MUCH for being here,

Give Me ALLLLLL The Hot Water

Have you ever been frustrated about having to wait for hot water? Have you ever run out of hot water? Girl, that is one of my biggest pet peeves. #FirstWorldProbs.

I take a daily shower and two to three times per week I soak in my tub, too. On the weekend, it isn’t uncommon for me to soak in my tub then immediately get out and take a shower. It’s a girl thing…. if you know, YOU KNOW. But, here’s the thing: I don’t want to run out of hot water and I don’t have the patience to wait minutes for hot water, either.

This is our Rheem Performance Platinum Hybrid Electric Water Heater with 80 gallon capacity

Here is our secret sauce: an 80 gallon hybrid hot water heater with an added circulator. When we were prepping our home build we chatted with our local power company about their recommendations for energy efficiency and one of the big things they mentioned was considering this hybrid unit. We were initially contemplating a tankless hot water heater but those are not very energy efficient unless you have a gas hook-up. Our home site did not have a gas line close by and the gas company told us we would be responsible for paying to have the line run under the roadway and several houses down to get to our home. The price and hassle just did not appeal to us. Especially after researching this hybrid water heater. It runs off electricity and one of my husband’s favorite features is that the unit itself breathes out cool air. We have it installed in our garage and with fully insulated garage walls, we have never had an issue with our garage getting hot. It’s awfully nice to live in Florida and pretty much have a climate-controlled 2.5 car garage to work in without having the cost of ducting AC.

So, if you are planning to go electric with your water heater and you want a bomb system, you should definitely check into a hybrid unit. I’m telling you, it is a D R E A M to always have hot water, no matter how many people are taking showers back to back or soaking in the tub.

Wishing you all the hot water your heart desires,

Matt’s take: Since most of my stuff is out in the garage anyway, I appreciate the fact that we have an extra element of climate control. My Dad and I spent about 7 hours (at least) lining the walls of the garage with insulation to ensure that the cool air put out by the water heater would not be easily lost. In my opinion, it has paid off so far; there are hot summer days that I will walk out into the garage and the temperature is around 75 degrees or so, which is really nice. One thing to keep in mind is that the cool air is not blowing constantly like in an AC. The cool air is only pumping out when the water heater is cycling. So there are times when the water heater will blow cool air, then the garage door will open and let the cool air out, and it will take a couple of cool air cycles from the water heater to cool the room down, so it’s not instant cool. Definitely worth it though.

A note on the circulator: Because our water heater is on one side of the house, a circulator was needed to ensure that the whole house can get hot water in a timely manner. The circulator uses the same amount of energy as a fan, and the circulator must be plugged into an outlet. Since there may be times in the day or night that you don’t require instant hot water, an outlet power control device can be plugged in between the circulator plug and the wall outlet, allowing you to control the amount of time that the circulator is receiving power. Also, running the water heater at the super energy saving economy mode is not recommended with a circulator, which we found out by getting some intermittent lukewarm showers. When we switched the water heater to the standard setting energy mode, no problem getting all the hot water we ever needed even with the circulator.

BTW, our electrical bill is so low, which speaks to the efficiency of this machine. We pay practically the same as we did in our previous home. Insane. Just to compare, our first home was 2200 sf (newer and well built/insulated) with only 3 family members living in it with 1 AC unit. Our current home is nearly double the size, now with 5 family members, 2 AC units and 3 climate zones.