rosemary on the tv

As  you might recall, the hall bathroom was a bit of an eyesore. Ugly gray paint on the walls, ceiling and most of the tiles, slung across the floor and dripping from the light fixture. Pink tile. One million awkwardly placed bar towel racks. After painting the ceiling white, I struggled for awhile with which green color to paint the walls, before suddenly deciding it was navy blue or nothing.

Thus began the mess. The hall bathroom had lots of imperfections in the walls, made worse by all the towel racks that needed to be removed and patched. Oh yeah, and a vent that was surrounded by a shoddy patch job.

Foreman Lula checking things out. So as you can see, what I’d planned to be an afternoon paint job turned into a week long construction project. But finally, it was finished. And it was lovely.

So what’d I do?

1. Awhile back, I painted the ceilings off-the-shelf white with Olympic Zero VOC paint. I got out that same can of paint last week to paint the trim bright, shiny white.

2. I painted the walls Benjamin Moore’s Bold Blue using their Aura interior paint, which is not only LEED and Green Guard certified, but a great paint for dark colors. I only barely needed a second coat of the stuff and did this whole bathroom with less than two quarts.

2. We removed all the bar towel racks (three of them) and replaced them with three towel hooks and a hand towel rack. We also replaced the toilet paper holder with a one that matched the towel racks and moved it up and over, because it used to be in a very awkward spot (close to the toilet and very low to the ground).

3. We replaced the patched up and painted over vent cover with a shiny new white one.

4. I added a floating shelf above the toilet and am considering hanging a second above it. I haven’t decided. What do you think? Another shelf or no?

5. I took a couple of IKEA frames from our recent Dallas trip and filled them with a couple of my favorite photos from Pinterest. Printed off on a color printer. Because spending money on artwork isn’t at the top of my priority list right now.

Is this bathroom finished? Of course not.

What I still need to do:

- Replace the brown, paint-splattered shower curtain with a new white one. I’m thinking floor to ceiling with navy grosgrain trim.

- Replace the brown, dingy bathmat with a white or navy one. I think navy might be a bit more forgiving. What do you think?

- Replace the off-white window shade with a pure white one. That shade was supposed to be white when I ordered it, but I was so desperate to get some privacy from the neighbors that I hung it up instead of returning it. Whatevs.

- Get a vanity! I have my eye on this one.

- Get a nice big mirror to replace the medicine cabinet. I’ve never shown you inside that cabinet because I’m so scared to open it. It’s like something straight from a hospital in a zombie movie. Rusty metal, broken glass…sheesh. My hope is to find something thrifty and paint it white.

- New light fixture. The current one is rusty and covered in paint.

- And, of course, replace the doors. The thing at the end of all my to-do lists.

So, yes. I still have a long way to go, but I’m still very pleased with my new bathroom. The dark paint camouflages the many imperfections in the wall, compliments the pink tile and somehow, surprisingly, makes the bathroom feel bigger. I think the blue walls feel like outer space or something.

What do you think? All opinions are welcome, but favorable opinions are preferred.

So let’s talk about this genius idea. Mom sewed the skirt pieces of my bedskirt then directed me to find an old fitted sheet and put it on the boxspring. Then she came over and pinned the pieces to the sheet.

And as I type this, she’s sitting next to me sewing the pieces to the sheet. And when she’s finished, we’ll put the sheet back on the boxspring and VOILA! A bedskirt.

That, my friends, is what we call a Lana Hallmark Original. Just like the tag said in every piece of clothing I wore as a child growing up. Yes. She had her own tags.

Also, Lula helped. GPOYDT!

(See what I did there?)

Get it? That was a Rachel Zoe reference from someone who has watched one episode of her show. So hopefully you’re at least as familiar with her silly sayings as I am.

So anyway, check this out:

I chose the Gilbert chair from IKEA, because I wanted to contrast my grandmother’s very vintage dining table with bright, white modern chairs, and the Gilbert was the best price. They look nice and feel sturdy and are surprisingly comfortable.

We used the money from our yard sale to buy six of the chairs, which we’ll need whenever we extend the table by inserting the leaf on special occasions. For now, the other two are around the kitchen table, but if we wanted to store them, the Gilbert is stackable! Bonus!

While we were at IKEA, Aaron surprised me by deciding to buy a rug for the dining room. I passed by this large jute rug and oohh’ed and ahhhh’ed, so he picked it up and put it in the shopping cart. A man after my own heart. I had wanted an 8′x10′ rug, and this is 6’9″ x 10′ (because no matter how good something looks, IKEA has to remind you that you’re buying it cheap by making it not quite perfect) which is plenty big enough to cover the bulk of the dining room. Lula thinks we bought her a personal chin scratcher.

We also got a bunch of small stuff – blinds for the kitchen, picture frames, some serving bowls and other kitchen stuff, but these were my favorite small purchase:

Uhhhhhh, you better hope you get invited to the same Christmas parties as me, because I will be making moose-shaped cookies all December long, folks.

And there you have it. The dining room is quickly approaching completion. I still need to make curtains and style the piano, and eventually I’d like to replace the bookshelf with a buffet to store our glassware. And I’m currently trying to decide if the stencil wall needs a piece of art or not. Your opinions are much appreciated.