snapped

Last week was a struggle for me, due to clashes with my not-yet-teenager daughter. And Thursday morning I snapped.

For many years my method of coping when life feels out of control has been to rearrange furniture. Beorn would know things were bad when he would arrive home to a completely new set up in the living room or find our bed on a different wall. But after years and years of doing this... I've hit on the perfect (for me) arrangements, so moving furniture isn't much of an option. So, my next option became serious deep cleaning and organizing. But Thursday morning I tried something new - spur of the moment home improvement.

I looked at our awful bathroom wallpaper and said "enough is enough" and started pulling it off. "We have a ton of paint downstairs (left-overs Beorn's previous employer was getting rid of) so why am I living with wall paper I hate?" I had most of the paper off by the time Beorn got up. He looked at what was going on and said "as long as we're doing this, why not take down the acoustic ceiling tiles?" Then I said "why not take down the cabinet over the shower as well?" So down it came. Beorn cleaned off the ceiling tiles, I textured and then he painted. Then I mixed up some paint and came up with a color we liked and painted the walls and did a lot of spray painting. Beorn hooked up the new light. In the end, we did a pretty massive remodel of the bathroom. My mom even came down and bought us a new toilet for an "anniversary gift."

So, we now have a beautiful blue bathroom and spent only $10. We bought a frame for the mirror for $4 at DI and hung it vertically over the sink. We bought a new light fixture at the re-store for $5. And bought some paint brushes at the dollar store for $1. The paint for the walls was FREE. The spray paint for the fixture, vent cover and towel rods was purchased with a leftover Home Depot gift card. The stuff to texture the ceiling and the ceiling paint we already had. We still need to put in new baseboards (waiting for time to go to the re-store again) and someday we'd like to put in new faucets. But over-all the bathroom looks AMAZING and you can't beat the price!

Unfortunately I can not post pics. I started taking "before" pictures as I started work. Then Nini came in and asked to take some pics. I let her. She played with the camera for a bit and then dropped it. On the tile floor. It died. Hard. I can't complain, though, since it was a free camera. It was among the things left behind when a friend moved a couple years ago. She had asked me to dispose of several boxes for her, so when I found a broken camera in there, I thought I'd try to fix it. I got it working and it has served us well.

I'll have to see if I can borrow a camera...


YAY! borrowed camera!

The "before" pics were taken before we moved in. They are of the same wall, just not pulled back as far as the "after" pic, but you get the idea...

BEFORE
Cabinet over shower.
Old light fixture and overpowering wall paper.

AFTER
So much better!