Spring Must Be Coming

Spring must be coming, I must be nesting, or else it's that two year itch. Or too much HGTV. As some of you may know, I have a hate-hate relationship with my bathroom. When I got TheCondoThatRummyBought, three things needed work -- the kitchen, the floors and the bathroom. Saddam, as generous a man as he is, only was able to build me the kitchen and refinish the floors before his ass was tossed into a hideous American prison. Sobs. That left the bathroom remaining.

The bathroom in its original state is an inner room -- no windows. The walls were stippled deep purple and dark green, and the bathroom louvered vanity and medicine chest were painted dark green. There was a dark green shelf over the toilet, and the shower curtain and toilet seat cover were deep purple. Welcome to the grape ape cave from hell. On top of that, the shower tiles are a kind of hideous beige, and the vanity top is a stained, gouged faux plastic tan with green "marbling" (that always looks like dirt). The floor tile are those small 60s/70s tiles in green and beige. I went looking for a picture, but because of camera angles, it was impossible to capture the hideousness of the bathroom on film or in pixels. And let's not even get into the inability of the modern "low flush" toilets to move things along.

I have always known that the whole thing needs to be redone, so I didn't do much with it except for repainting the purple/green walls a light shade of pistachio/mint green, putting a small white cabinet over the toilet, and swapping out the shower curtain. Hideous green vanity with horrible top remained, as did the medicine cabinet. Sometime about Tuesday or Wednesday, probably after the eight millionth episode of "Designed to Sell" or "Trading Spaces", something snapped. I started eyeing my tax refund to do the bathroom, although I decided that this year that money should really go into the "Lily's Safety Net" fund, rather than on new tiles and bathroom sink. So I decided to go with the old tried and true designer trick -- slap a coat of white paint on it.

Okay, so it's been five coats of white (dark green really doesn't cover very easily), and I've come to really, really hate louvers, but it's done. I also swapped out the hardware and toilet tissue holder (with the old screws rusted into the vanity cabinet -- proving the corollary once again "there ain't much you can't fix by whacking at it with a hammer for a good, long time" -- good for home repair AND relationships), hung some new hooks and voila! The hideous vanity top is now completely highlighted by the gleaming white all around it, but the bathroom is almost entirely non-cavelike now. The tax refund is now destined for that place that means Lily doesn't have to live on cat food in retirement (although living alone with cats does still seem to be the career trajectory, dammit).

On top of this, I've also cleaned out the crap pile of stuff in the hallway, vacuumed the whole place, washed the throw rugs, and reorged the dresser top. I'm on a mission! Or really really frustrated. I'll let you vote on that.

And as an added bonus, here's a little linky for your perusal. I was given this one by a friend with an even more warped sense of absurdity than moi. Appropriate for any political sensibilities, except for the earnestly grim. And we don't need more earnestness in politics.