After Sean's parents helped us tackle the
kitchen, den and dining room, I was mentally (and fiscally) spent and couldn't really get inspired to work on any new rooms. Last weekend I "got my groove back" and painted a second hutch that I purchased at salvation army (same time as the green one) for the dining room. pictures will be posted soon.
This bathroom was particularly difficult to tackle for 2 reasons 1) the peach toilet, sink and tiles 2) the psychadelic orange and and metallic silver flowered wallpaper.
I was kind of stumped about where to start until i got a phone call suggesting that my "sanctuary" green might fit the bill. Initially I imagined myself spending hours pouring over fabric section at JoAnn's to find the perfect paisley or striped combination of peach and green to make new curtains and tie it all together. But as the green went up on the walls things just started to fall into place.
You see, I had this picture just sitting up stairs waiting to find a home. Sean took me to a "starving artist" sale (held in a hotel lobby, classy indeed) a few months ago hoping we could pick up some decent looking art at a reasonable price. And we did!
Anyway, once i put that up, the old orange curtains went from looking dowdy and dated to kind of sassy and fun. Total cost of renovation so far $0 (Green paint was leftover from the hutch, curtains came with the house, and I had the painting in the upstairs closet!)
In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that i did pay $70 at Lowes (plus a coupon for 10% off) for a new mirror. I kind of lucked out on this one because I REALLY would have bought a less expensive less ornate mirror but the space was really narrow and this was the only one I could find at Lowes that fit the space. Score for pretty.
I didn't get a picture of the old mirror in place, but I did take one of it on the counter. Its actually not a terrible mirror, but its too gold and too small (even for this small bathroom). When I stood in front of the sink I could see my neck and chin and thats about it. I think I can take it apart and paint it black or something cool to update it.
At this point I had the major elements covered, but the wallpaper actually REFUSED to come off the wall so I just painted over it... I ended up having to putty some ares where the wallpaper was loose, which didn't look that great, and once the geren was up you could see every imperfection in the wall behind the wallpaper. It kind of looked like a disaster (this is actually what made me go look through our pictures and find that painting).
So then I moved on to covering the rest of the major flaws. I had taken a shelf (gold bars with a smoky gray glass) down from above the toilet and done a poor job patching the holes so I wanted to replace it with something more modern. I agonized over the options at home depot while talking on the phone with my mom, only to come home with my white floating shelf and find out that even though it technically fit it was really too big for the space. SOOOO as i stopped in the upstairs bath to stick something in there, I found what turned out to be the perfect shelf to cover my ugly patch marks.
The flower pot and red and orange gerbers are from JoAnn's thanks to a Christmas giftcard (total $18). I also picked up 3 orange hand towels from Kmart for $4.99 a piece. The monkeys we already had (and Sean has informed me they cannot stay there long term)
I also got an $8 towel ring (yep to cover more issues with the walls) and am here to tell you that all towel rings are NOT created equal and it might be worth your time to and money to buy the $15 version instead of the $8 one!
And I leave you all with a short novel about my bathroom (pretty sad huh) and plea to help me find more of this light switch plate. The house came with 4 (I pilfered this one from the upstairs bathroom) and I love them, just wish we had more!
