is it 2011 yet?

man, we have had one of those "one thing after another" seasons over the last six weeks. you know the kind. . . the car that starts becoming a money pit, unexpected medical bills, sick kid after sick kid, a growing list of household projects on a shrinking budget, blah, blah, blah. . .

i seem to be unable to rest until this little cottage of ours is to our liking.  with the last several weeks being so hectic i couldn't tackle some of the larger projects but i did manage to get our tiny little bathroom updated.

it was one of those projects that just happened. you know the kind? i didn't have a plan or a vision and it wasn't on my agenda for the day. as a result i didn't even snap a before picture for you, so i'll have to 'paint' you a picture of the before.

here it is today. not an "after," but an "almost done."

what we started with in here were walls that were a fleshy color.

i honestly don't know how to describe the color; most of the house was painted

with it. fleshy with pink undertones. not attractive. the cabinet

in this bath was a standard oak with modern silver pulls.

because i needed to do this one on a dime i went to

our shed and pulled from paint we already had.

the vanity was painted alabaster by sherwin williams and i used some old rusty pulls

i had on hand from a project that never saw the light of day.

the walls are blue hubbard, a sherwin williams color i had mixed

at home depot with behr paint and primer in one. this color was

used in our front room and i had just enough left over for

our small bath.

the wall over the toilet had a standard towel bar. i removed that and filled

the holes and personalized the space a bit with pics of

the boys and warmed it up with a couple candles.

you can see the wall across from the toilet in the reflection of the mirror. that is the only

floor to ceiling wall space in the bathroom. the previous owners had

a vertical towel holder on that wall that held about six towels.

i put up a chippy shelf with four rusty hooks.

i picked  this up at hobby lobby for 50% off, making it $10.

so, now we have a place to hang our towels. hanging them over the doors was

not working for me! :)

this is another hook i had on hand. it has three different

sized hooks that pivot. i took down the ring towel hook on the wall

beside the vanity and replaced it with this. i need to go back and

paint the silver screws i used to put it up. i touch of hammered bronze spray

paint should do the job!

and because i love to display my blue ball and atlas jars i had to

make a spot for one. i just shoved a bunch of

white candles in and called it done.

to finish it out i will frame out the mirror and change the lighting

and faucet. i will likely put a couple cute knobs on those

two faux drawer fronts on the vanity, too.

but for now, it's a big improvement!

and the best part? the total out of pocket was $10 because we used what we had.