From drab to fab

This is it peeps. This is all I have for a “before” picture. Can you see through the doorway there? Just a little bit? That’s our living room. Yep, the smarty pants builders put a bathroom right off of the living room. You’ve got guests over, someone has to use the restroom, and everyone else gets to hear it. Awesome. Also, we all know how often bathroom doors get left open. So, since you can see directly into the bathroom from the couch, it needs to look nice. It also needs to match the living room decor.

What you can’t see in this picture, is the space to the left of the toilet. One of the builder options was to put a bath/shower in to make this a full bath. The lovely people who built the home opted not to do that, which means there is a huge empty space where a bath tub should be. Luckily we have enough full baths in this home, so we’re not even going to go there. But we definitely need to fill the space a little.

So let’s get going, shall we? First we started off with a coat of paint. Can I tell you how difficult it is to paint around all of those pipes behind a pedestal sink? Difficult. My lovely husband took out the toilet for me, so that process was not as tricky. It would have helped had I primed it first, since the builders used icky glossy paint (what’s the point when there’s no bath?). Anyway the paint just smeared and slid around all over. Plus the lighting isn’t so great, so I kept having to go back and touch up spots.

Fast forward a couple months: we FINALLY get around to adding the molding. This part went fairly quickly, as we had done this in the living room previously (reveal to come later). Everything I know about molding, I learned from Sarah, Miss Thrifty Decor Chick. I can’t am too lazy to point you to a specific post, but if you spend even 5 minutes on her blog, you will be sure to find at least one of her many molding projects.

OK? So would you like to see the finished product already? Alrighty then. Just a word of warning. My camera is lame-o, as in LAME with a capital L. That, and the bathroom is too small to get it all, and the lighting isn’t too wonderful either. OK. Here she is:

What you can’t see here, is that there are actually 4 columns on the left wall. Hopefully you get the gist.

I chose not to put boxes on the right wall, because it would get tricky with the toilet and the sink. See what I mean about that huge space back there? That back right corner is still begging for something. I’m planning on getting some sort of little bench to put there when I find the right one.

Here is the best before/after shot. Well, it’s actually AFTEr/BEFORE, since I can’t seem to get them to trade places.Too bad you can’t see any of the molding. Do you see in the before picture how the doofi (that’s plural for doofus, you know) put the towel holder in pretty much the worst spot ever? Not to mention it was crooked and shiny. When you hang a towel there, it covers up the light switches. Brilliant. I bought a new one that matched the other hardware in the room, and we moved it to a more efficient place. 

As you can see, we still have ugly light fixtures and boring builder mirrors that need to be replaced or framed. That will come in time friends, in time.

So there you have it. The first “reveal” of our remodeling/decorating efforts. Much more to come. We are finally starting to get some of the projects completed.