2 Changes in 2 Bathrooms

I got a bug up my butt over the weekend* and decided to make a couple changes around the house.

Actually, one of the changes was quite spur of the moment and the other one was a long time coming.

Change #1: My new Robot Friend
robot 2I stopped by one of my favorite kiddie consignment/specialty stuff shops (it’s called Greenberries) to see if they had any outdoor toys and saw something that I didn’t even know I needed.

Until I saw it. And then my breath caught in my throat and I realized that I simply HAD to buy it. In fact, my life would not be complete without it.

And that is how I became the owner of this amazing 3D Robot art crafted by Paul Ocepek at Modern Moose. I love it so much and after visiting his website I pretty much want one of everything. Or maybe just this, this and this.

And this.

And this for Katie at Words for Worms.

robot 1

I’m not even kidding when I say I literally walked into the house, set Jack in his playpen and hung the robot on the wall within about 5 minutes. THAT is how excited I was to see him in his new home.

My robot buddy fits in perfectly in the hall bathroom, which is also Jack’s bathroom. I really wanted the room to be FUN without looking like a kid’s bathroom threw up all over the place. So I’m super happy with a little bit of whimsy in the striped shower curtain and fun artwork. Once Jack gets a little bigger, I’ll add in a fun colored step-stool and the bathroom will be complete!

Change #2: Master Bathroom Upgrade
IMG_1953The crappy builder-grade faucet that lived in our master bathroom leaked out the side whenever you used the cold water. Yeah, nothing makes me more annoyed than something that doesn’t really do it’s ONE JOB well!

Our long term plan for the room is to rip it down to the studs and start anew, however we don’t have the moola to throw in that project right this second.

Instead, we found a nice faucet in an oil rubbed bronze finish that goes really well with our current sink. So until we save up enough to have our total dream bathroom, we’ll be content with a faucet that looks pretty AND doesn’t get my makeup wet in the morning.

IMG_1954

There you go, my two quick updates from this past weekend. I still have a ton more on my list, including painting my front door, installing hardwood flooring and repainting some outdoor chairs. I don’t have an unlimited amount of money or time though, so nothing is happening very quickly!

How about you, working on anything fun?

Do you have a random term you use that is vaguely gross sounding?

 

*Wait, is that a thing? I mean, is that a term that people say? Because I‘ve been saying it for a while and I just realized how kind of gross it is. Maybe I should say I got a bee in my bonnet. I’m pretty sure THAT is a thing…

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Meet my Ugly Green Bathroom

Since moving into our new house early this year, I’ve been attacking each room like a home décor wildebeest. We’ve painted a few rooms, purchased some new things and DIYed a bunch of stuff, but there is still a ton of work to do.

Today I want you to meet the ugliest room in my entire house (it’s worse than the stinky basement): my ugly green bathroom.

Anyone like green? You know you’re jealous — it’s like peeing inside a lumberjack’s shirt.
Wow. Just wow.

It’s so ugly.
And so green.
And I hate it.

I hate it with a white-hot passion… or maybe it should be green-hot? Either way. Not. A. Fan.

Through the nastiness, there are a couple things that aren’t so bad – there is a halfway decent looking floor and good space to work with. Oh, and it’s clean. That is a huge improvement over some other bathrooms we saw when we were looking at houses.

You have to admit, it is pretty hideous though. What’s funny is that my ugly green bathroom was actually done that way on purpose by the previous owners of my house. The teal green pedestal sink* is Kohler, as is the matching teal green toilet. In fact, the bathroom “designers” were so nice as to leave us a replacement toilet seat (still in the packaging). You know, in case we somehow broke ours and wanted to replace it with another teal green seat.

Oh and did you notice that the bathtub is also teal green, with an oh-so-attractive frosted sliding glass door?

Yeah. It’s a freaking forest in my bathroom.

As an added bonus, whenever you clean the toilet, the cleanser leaves a ghostly white film in the inside of the green bowl. So it’s ugly AND looks dirty… even when it’s clean.

Oh, the horrors!

You’ve probably come to the same conclusion that I did: rip it all out and burn it!

So that’s what we’re going to do. The first thing to go was the wallpaper. I am not a fan of wallpaper in general and this wallpaper seemed particularly offensive to my eyes.  Look closely – it’s a horrible plaid with khaki and hunter green. Yes, more green. What the heck is up with the all the green??? Did the previous owners have some sort of fetish about peeing in the great {plaid} outdoors?

Whatever. It’s gone. We had a friend remove all the wallpaper from the entire house back when we moved in. Also, as a temporary measure to make the bathroom a little less dreadful, I hung a shower curtain OVER the glass door. It was just an old curtain from our last house, so it was totally free to stick it up.

A teensy bit better with no wallpaper and a shower curtain.

The only other change we’ve made in the past 6 months is that I got rid of the matching green accessories. Oh yes, there was a matching toilet brush, holder AND a matching plastic trashcan. Apparently, when you go with teal/hunter/ugly ass green, you really GO WITH green!

Besides our little changes, my plan of attack has been to just avoid that room altogether. We don’t have a ton of extra money right now to totally gut the place. Originally we were just going to paint it a complimentary color and call it a day, but I decided that I just can’t live with that.

So now that our schedule has slowed down a little, it’s time to focus on the ugly green bathroom.

Ugly Green Bathroom To Do List:

  • Take down the icky glass doors.
  • Sand and paint the walls.
  • Replace the shower hardware with something of better quality, including a handheld shower head so I can wash Jack easily.
  • Remove the broken hooks on the back of the door and replace with pretty ones.
  • Remove the medicine cabinet/lighting fixture.
  • Remove the teal green toilet.
  • Remove the teal green pedestal sink.
  • Stalk the clearance center at Reico for a new vanity and sink.
  • Install new vanity and sink.
  • Possibly replace floor.
  • Buy and install new sink hardware.
  • Find a cute mirror and hang it over the sink.
  • Buy and install a new lighting fixture.
  • Buy and install a new toilet.
  • Put up new shower curtain.
  • Buy and put up new artwork.

That should do it. As much as I’d like to replace the ugly green tub, that is going to be a budget buster. I’ve looked into one of those bath cover systems, but they’re super expensive. I also thought about trying to just pop out the tub and put a new one in its place, but apparently that is only possible inside my head.

So, it looks like we have some bathroom fun coming up in our future.

While it’s nice to have a list of things I plan to do, it’s also a bit intimidating that there are so many things that have to be done. Oh and everything costs money too, so who knows how quickly this project will be completed. Maybe I should send out a tweet: Will Write for Bathroom Fixtures!

Have you done a partial bathroom renovation? If so, do you have any tips you’d like to share for saving money?

UPDATE: Apparently this post comes up a lot when people are searching for replacement Kohler toilets in green/teal… so I’ve gotten a bunch of emails over the years asking to purchase my toilet. Sorry guys, I got rid of the toilet in 2012!

*I googled the pedestal sink and toilet (which is how I found out they call the color “teal” instead of “ugly ass hunter green”) and they apparently were sold for $563.00 and $417.00!

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