Goodbye Creme de Menthe Bathroom!
At the risk of hearing much verbal abuse for my obvious lack of Marthaness, I thought I’d post some photos of what is soon to be my outdated bathroom that has served us well, but outlived it’s useful life.
I must first explain how home decorum does not flow naturally from my bones. I don’t care so much about house beautiful, but am more concerned with having surroundings which are comfortable, and fairly low maintenance. Although I certainly can enjoy a home that is decorated beautifully and kept spotless, I am not the woman that can emulate such a lifestyle. For better or for worse my husband–and I’m thinking more than likely my kids–are quite comfortable with clutter. My house is reasonably in order with certain pockets of disaster that ebb and flow in their hazard level (garage, basement, and the occasional desk or counter top come to mind). Although my home is not the cleanest in the world, it definitely is not the dirtiest in the world either. So, although my husband is fortunate enough to receive an amazing meal most times at my hands, he’s probably not going to see dust and clutter free surfaces most of the time.
TOP TEN THINGS THAT I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT MY OLD BATHROOM:
- The god awful color that I intended to be a delightful pale green, which, once applied, decidedly was NOT! I intended it to be a very serene shade of green, but unfortunately it more reminds me of one of my mom’s favorite cocktails, a grasshopper, which could probably pass as a day glo colored drink.
- The rusted light fixture. I am a huge Target fan, and actually have stock in them
because I found myself there so often and figured I may as well be making money on my purchases. However. You sometimes get whatcha pay for there as evidenced by the rusted light fixture. - In conjunction with the lovely fixture above, I will not soon miss the annoying toilet paper holder or towel hook either. Although they are not rusted, they do posses the quirky quality of falling off of my wall–repeatedly. Can I tell you how much fun it is to get up and two am to pee and hear the clinkety clacking of the toilet paper fixture falling off the wall? Not so much.
- Shower door be gone! This little sucker can not get out of my house fast enough. As much as I am always looking to save a buck, the one area I did not want to scrimp on was the shower door–we are going frameless all the way, baby. I hate all of the cracks, and crevices that crud works itself into–places that will never see the light of day and grow all sorts of unmentionables that can’t be easily gotten to with cleaners, toothbrushes and the usual potent chemical mixtures. Considering it’s probably the original door and 24 years of age, that’s a lot of old crud.
- While sitting having a quiet family dinner, we heard a thunderous crash coming from upstairs–which we initially blamed upon my ever tinkering son, poor Tommy. I’m also sensing a recurrent theme here, as upon going upstairs to find out what had made such an awful clatter, we come to find that our perfectly adequate Target medicine cabinet had worked it’s way out of the screws that were holding them to the brackets and it had bounced off of my toilet and up to gash my windowsill, before crashing onto the floor. It looked as though a murder scene had taken place in my
humble little bathroom as stuff was floating in the toilet, glass was shattered everywhere and not one, but two bottles of fingernail polish exploded all over the floor, walls and cabinet. Talk about mess. Talk about further motivation to stop my 6 month procrastination for remodeling this room. - Leaking shower fixture. Being that I am not the most handy girl on the planet to repair such a thing, our handheld shower fixture over time has developed a pin hole leak where the shower head rests. This slow leak makes it virtually impossible for mold not to build up no matter what I do. The
environment is so damp and dark, it’s a perfect home for pesky, fuzzy yucko mold to rear its ugly head. Even though I scrub the grout with a toothbrush with every shower, it’s not enough to keep up with it, and I will not rue the day it is departed from my shower. - Tiny 1×1 tiles. I don’t know exactly why I don’t like them, but I don’t. Probably because there is so much grout, which gets moldy and icky and yucky. This is the number one reason we are in need of remodel as water has worked its way through the crumbling grout and made it’s way to the ceiling in our downstairs foyer. I can only imagine what they might find once they take the walls down.
- Toilet. Who knew toilets wear out over time as well? I guess I could also do a rehaul and repair some of the issues from mineral buildup over time, but I am so looking forward to the new Champion 4 that is going in there soon–you know it’s that one that can supposedly flush a bucket of golf balls. After far too many plunges and near overflows, I will be happy to be the proud owner of a toilet that will not soon need plunging again.
- Vanity. Far exceeding my Martha craftiness quotient, I tried to paint my dark brown cabinets to a lovely off white color. I don’t know what I did wrong–maybe I didn’t sand enough, maybe I didn’t let it dry long enough or applied the paint too thickly, but it never looked great. Over time, the paint chipped off, and revealed it’s dark brown roots. Not so attractive.
- The bleeding walls. When we first bought our home, the previous owner had decorated many walls with very busy floral wallpaper. There were four rooms with it, the bathroom included. Our taste definitely runs on the plainer side, and we knew eventually it would all need to be taken down. I decided to tackle our master bath as it was small. Since I had two kids under three still underfoot, I wanted a small project. The main motivator was Tommy’s magnetic appeal to the edges of the wallpaper–perfect for tiny hands to grip and pull off the walls for fun.
I managed to take well over a month to finish this task–which was a total nightmare–in between naps and episodes of spongebob in the bedroom. The walls were not sized properly and as a result the paper, if not done slowly and carefully ripped off chunks of drywall along with it. I puttied, washed and sanded down the walls–as well as coated with two coats of primer and two coats of paint. After several months it became apparent that I had not done nearly a good enough job as weird yellow goo was oozing from my walls. After inquiring at the good old Home Depot, I found that it was more than likely caused by the wallpaper paste that was not completely removed from underneath. After more than a month already spent in that god awful room already, there was no way I was going anywhere near the paint department anytime soon.
So hopefully, this time, we will get it right. This time a contractor is in place, and we are gutting it from the top down. Tiles selected, shower door chosen and fixtures awaiting delivery–hopefully soon a room with a little more subtlety will appear…