Bathroom woes

No, there is nothing gross about this entry (although with three boys in the house, I'm sure things could get dicey in the future!). I'm just thinking about redoing parts of the bathroom, giving it a good facelift.

The problem with me a decorating is that it doesn't come naturally to me. I research and surf internet photos until the cows come home and still can't decide. Then I do decide on something and then question myself about it the next day. Then I bite the bullet and actually go out and price everything. Then I throw it all away and start again. Really all I end up doing is finding a picture I like and trying to imitate it the best I can. But since my space is different from that space, it never ends up looking anything like what I hoped.

When we bought the house, I kind of liked the "feel" of the bathroom. It's a nice shade of blue, and had a very gender-neutral feel. It was something I could like and something all the boys in this house wouldn't think was too girly. In fact, when we moved in, I had a photo of the bathroom as the previous owners had it decorated and I went out and bought the same shower curtain and towel set they had. (That's how unoriginal I am!)

But the bathroom could use a little work. The floor is a dreaded peel'n'stick sheet of fake looking tile. The vanity is literally the cheapest thing available out there. It's too large for the space, meaning that if something falls between it and the bathtub it's lost for all eternity, and you feel squashed when you sit on the toilet next to it. The bathtub, vanity top and shower tile are all different shades of brown-beige, and do not match or coordinate in the slightest. They say that to up the value of your home you should do the kitchen and bathroom first, and since there is little we can do about the kitchen, the bathroom seems the next logical place to start.

I thought I had it all done. I thought I'd go a little more modern, with a dark espresso coloured vanity and some fantastic deep brown tiles that look like slats of wood. Some bathtub paint to get the bath a nice white colour and a coat of tan paint would nearly complete the whole thing. And then I realized that when you walk through the rest of the house (nearly 70 years old) there is a distinct country, laid-back feeling, and to open the bathroom door into something more modern would just not fit the bill. And so all my plans, once again, laid to waste.

Decorating is much the same as clothes shopping, for me. I'm excited to do both, but am quickly frustrated by the process. Somewhere in my artistic mind I know exactly what I want, and yet I am never able to find it. I get hooked on this specific idea that I can't seem to articulate and nothing satisfies me.

But I will do this bathroom. I will decide on something and just do it! At least getting some ceramic tiles down and a vanity that doesn't look like it's perpetually dusty and going to fall apart at any second will be better than what is there now.

(For those of you who know the fix-it type that I am: no, I don't plan on doing it all myself. The bathtub I can do, and I'll likely install the new vanity myself also. But I have no desire to try tiling on my own. People tell me it's actually fairly easy, and two people have even offered to loan me a wet-tile cutter. But this is one job I'm willing to pay for!)

More later...