We bought our house 6 years ago and it was very livable when we moved in. We didn't really need to renovate anything, but there were things that we wanted to eventually update. Everything had been painted white before we moved in (not something I would have done, but what are you going to do?), so we've spent the past few years painting each room a color that we love. However, there are some projects that we've held off on.
For example, we have a powder room on the main floor that had weird, textured wallpaper on three of the four walls. Someone had also put green leaf contact paper all of the wood of the vanity in lieu of painting the wood. The wallpaper has been peeling up for a while now, but because I didn't feel like I had the know-how to remove it, I waited. And the next thing I knew, it had been 6 years and we still had an ugly bathroom that was probably the most used room by guests who visit our house.
Over Memorial Day weekend I decided that I wanted to attempt to take the terrible wallpaper down and do a little decoration of the space! Well, wasn't I surprised when the wallpaper was super easy to remove! From start to finish, it took us about an hour and a half to peel, scrape, and wash the walls. After everything was said and done, we'd spent about $100 for the whole project. We bought two colors of paint, cabinet pulls, curtain tie backs, fabric, thread, and thrifted the mirror and the gold toilet paper caddy. Everything else including art, a roll of window cling, shelves, and towel bar were already in our house or garage. Not too shabby for a room redecoration, if I do say so myself!
The whole experience taught me a pretty significant lesson; I'm a settler.
I can live with anything for a LONG time. Don't complain, don't rock the boat. It's not that bad, right? If you start down that path, who knows what could be waiting for you? It might be worse than what you already have. Sometimes that's a good quality and sometimes it keeps me in less than ideal situations for much longer than necessary. Sometimes living with things feels like the easier path of least resistance, but all you're doing is keeping yourself in a box. This bathroom project has taught me that I can push back on my deep-seated settling tendencies, even when it's hard.
Sometimes when you do, you get an awesome bathroom out of the deal!
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| The colors we based the room on. |
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| Rick trying his hand at wallpaper removal. |
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| The original wallpaper in all its "glory". |
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| You can see the steller contact paper on the vanity. Ooof. |
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| New cabinet pulls are such a small, but nice touch. |
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| I thrifted a hammered gold basket to hold a couple extra rolls of toilet paper. |
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| Just a few pieces of art we love! |
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| I sewed some simple eyelet curtains and installed some fancy tie-backs to pull in the dark color from the paint chips. |
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| Our original 1960's countertops finally match the rest of our bathroom! I know they're not for everyone, but I just love these countertops! |
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| A thrifted mirror to pull in some more gold. |
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| A thrifted towel bar that I bought three years ago. I knew we'd find a place for it! |
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| The windows in this bathroom are really ugly, but we can't do much with them right now. Rick put up a window decal that we had leftover from our upstairs bathroom and I think it looks awesome! |
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| Rick still wants to put a second plant shelf in this window since it gets such awesome, filtered light. |
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| This antique picture makes me laugh every time I go to the bathroom! Hello, winky! |
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| A little knick-knack shelf for all my little friends! |
