It's that time of year again, time for the Journal Your Christmas class. Here's my December 1 entry.

Here's the album, an 8x8" binder from Making Memories.

And here's the detail in the little window in the center:


I'm frankly amazed I found the energy to sit down and do this last night, because I am beat! Monday and Tuesday we moved everything out of the living room and dining room and I painted the living room. Yesterday the new carpet went in and we started moving things back in. I'm continuing to move things back in today. It sounds simple enough, but when you have nice new carpet, you want to make sure everything's dusted and clean before it goes back in, you want to sort through things and toss stuff you don't need or want--it's a lot of shuffling around.

Plus, I have about 8000 books in the living room...here's where I had to stash them on Sunday!

It's ridiculous. I've been going through them as I put them back and getting rid of a few. Not enough, but every little bit helps. What can I say? I love my books! Except when I have to move them!

I am head over heels in love with my new carpet. The old carpet was, I believe, original to the house, which would make it 23 years old. It had the standard builder's grade pad underneath, about 1/4" thick. It was dirty, matted berber and it smelled like the previous owner's dogs whenever the weather was damp. We tried to have it cleaned a couple of times, but it never really helped. When the carpet guys pulled it up, you could see all these liquid stains on the subfloor...I don't even want to know what those were, although I can guess. Ick.

The new carpet is feathery soft under the feet, with a 1/2" thick water-resistant pad. It's sort of a mottled light brown, what the carpet people call a frise, I think, with lots of thin crinkly fibers. I am in love!

But I'm so pooped I have to keep resisting the urge to just lay down on it and fall asleep, like that baby in the commercial!

Bookshelf.

I moved around my study a couple of months ago, and found some extra wall room for a small bookshelf. I'd been wanting a small shelf for my childhood books, which have been in boxes in the closet for several years.

But I couldn't find one anywhere! I wanted something nicer than the pressed-board things you get at Wal-Mart and screw together with an Allen wrench. I found a perfect shelf at a consignment shop, but they wanted about three times what it was worth. So Todd said he'd make me one.

While I was out of town this past weekend, he finished it up for me. But it was too nice to hide on a wall in my study! So I placed it at the end of our long upstairs hallway, and it looks like it was made just for that spot--even though it wasn't.

And all my books fit on it, with room for a few knick-knacks. Todd used these tiny brass screws at the joints, which I think look wonderful.

Thanks, creative husband of mine! Love you!

Kitchen snowballs.

In true "if you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, my kitchen cabinet project has mushroomed into something a little more complicated. Not terribly complicated, but I can't start working on it just yet.

I was inspecting the cabinets and realized that, like the vanitites in the bathrooms, the countertop sort of wraps around and covers the top inch or so of the cabinet. Which means that the countertop really needs to come off before I start painting. (Otherwise, there's a ridge of paint that you have to sand and then you have to prime and paint that dumb little unfinished gap once the countertop does come off--annoying.)

I was going to start on the bar as sort of an appetizer before tackling the main course of big cabinets. So should we pull off the bar countertop so I can paint before finding a countertop, since it could take a number of weeks to get one in? No. We need to look at countertops now, so I can paint while we wait for it to come in.

I also found some cabinet doors at the Benjamin Moore store that I really liked, and took Todd in to see if he thought he could reproduce them. But since we were there anyway, we had the very nice man run us up an estimate on getting the cabinet doors pre-made from the company (I would paint them myself)...and we also picked out a countertop and added that to the estimate.

Hopefully, the Benjamin Moore estimate will be coming to my inbox today or tomorrow and then we can decide where to go from there. We also got an estimate from Lowe's on the countertops, but not the doors, as their cabinet companies only sell the whole cabinet set-up, boxes plus doors.

I did find a shade of white paint I liked at Benjamin Moore for the cabinets, called "Mascarpone," which is the soft Italian cheese that everyone* on the Food Network always mispronounces as "MARS-capone," which is one of those little things that drives me up the wall.

*Except Giada de Laurentiis, who over-pronounces it: "maaaahs-caaaaar-POOOOOH-nehhhh," which is almost as bad.

The countertop is a laminate called Ebony Star, which is black with lots of white speckles. I know everybody and their aunt insists on granite countertops these days, but in this house, it would be like sewing diamond buttons on a flannel shirt. Plus I don't really like granite, nor is it in the budget.

Then there's the issue of a new backsplash and possibly a new kitchen sink, since ripping out the countertop will probably muck up the tiles that are on the backsplash now, and why put a 20-year-old sink back into a shiny new countertop?

So you can see how these little ideas always, always snowball! The painting will hopefully be commencing in a few days. By which time I will probably have lost my desire/energy/focus to do it! That shiny new countertop will be the carrot to my painting-loathing donkey self, though.

Summer stuff.

We finally caught a break in the weather last week for a few days, and I was able to spray paint the little wicker basket on a stand I picked up for free at a yard sale a few weeks ago.

I just love before-and-afters, so here's the before again:


And the after:


How I love cheap projects! I want to get one or two more small plants to put in it, and maybe some different garden-type odds and ends. This is just a random collection of stuff I grabbed from the house to dress it up.

On the Fourth of July, the weather went back to insanely hot and humid after several wonderful cool days. We have so many projects we want to do on the front of the house, but there's no way to do any kind of sustained work outside in 100-degree heat. So I started thinking about what I could work on inside, and the kitchen cabinets sprang to mind.

I've been pondering what to do with the cabinets ever since we moved in four years ago...they are a nice quality oak finish, but the doors and lower edges are in bad shape. We decided long ago to do the same thing we did with our bathroom vanities: keep the cabinet, but paint it, and make new doors and paint those, too, plus add new hardware. It's worked out really well in the bathrooms.

However kitchen cabinets get much more use and abuse, so the process is a little longer and a little scarier. But since it will be probably two months before the weather is fit to work outside, this seems like a good way to accomplish something despite the weather.

Right now I'm trying to figure out what type of doors I want, and what color to paint them. I know they will be white, but I can't decide whether to go with the same white as the trim in the rest of the house, or whether to use a slightly warmer, creamier white. This all feels slightly terrifying! Nobody really looks at bathroom vanitites (At least I don't) but kitchen cabinets are right out there for all the world to see. Gotta get it right!

So think good thoughts for me as I research and buy my materials and unscrew that first cabinet door!

Flowerbed before-and-after.

I am really making an effort to stay on top of the flowerbeds this summer, and try to keep them from getting so messy. (Last summer was particularly bad because we traveled to Ohio for over a week, and then I had my breast-reduction surgery at the end of July and couldn't do anything strenuous with my arms, like pull giant weeds!) It's early days yet, but so far, so good. We're not going anywhere this summer, which should help...it's always during our week-long Fourth of July trip home that the chaos starts to snowball.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Todd and I (but mostly Todd) took on an area that badly needed attention: our front flowerbed.


As you can see, this was a sad spot. We put some work into it last year, adding some rock "walls" and lots of plants, but coming into this spring it was weedy and overgrown, and the landscaping timbers around the edges were disintegrating. With some new timbers and fresh mulch, everything looked much happier:


Then Todd took on the mailbox post and devised a new design for it, plus a coat of paint, and a solar light for the top. Oh, and some new house numbers:

I want to add some brightly-colored annuals in with the perennials, but I think we have definitely accomplished something here. What a good feeling that is!

Spicy!

Whipping a small portion of my life into shape is just about one of the most satisfying things I can think of. Even if all else is chaos, at least I can look at one tiny bit of it that I've managed to control.

This week, I took control of my spices. I whipped 'em right into shape.

I wish I had a "before" picture, but I can sum it up pretty well, I think. One drawer full of big and small McCormick-type bottles and a few packets. One cupboard with a completely overflowing wire basket full of little plastic tubs from the bulk food store. And the other odds and ends stuck in front of my flour and sugar canisters in another cupboard, where I had to whisk them from side to side depending on which canister I needed. I had every size and shape of spice bottle/bag/tub you can think of, and every time I cooked something, I spent 2-3 minutes rummaging through everything in search of whatever I needed.

So I took my problem to a "foodie" forum, and someone suggested Alton Brown's system. I haven't watched his show in ages, but basically he puts everything in little tins and then sticks them to strips of velcro inside his cupboard doors.

And voila!



The bottom cupboard door (first picture) has all my culinary spices. The top cupboard door (second picture) has my baking spices and various spice mixtures. Since I had a little extra room, I went ahead and velcro'ed my extract bottles and my toothpick box, too. Since the flours, sugar, brown sugar, etc are in that cupboard, it's nice to have all the baking stuff together.

I had one or two bottles that had more spice than would fit in the tins, but I just put those back into my original spice drawer, along with things like the popcorn salt and the Mrs. Dash and that kind of thing. So everything has a place, and order has been restored. Now to tackle the bathroom...

The unveiling.

Well, it's been--what, four months, five months? since we started redoing our guest bathroom, and I think I'm finally ready to show it off. The delay has mostly been because I couldn't figure out what to hang on the walls, and waiting for Todd to make a new door for the medicine cabinet. 90% of the job was done ages ago!

Just for fun, here are a couple of pictures from the day we took possession of the house (December 2005.)

We replaced all the wooden--wooden! in a bathroom!--fixtures almost immediately: towel bar, TP holder, and that nasty toothbrush holder under the medicine cabinet went away and never came back. Boy, were they gross. We put in nice new nickel towel hooks, towel ring and TP holder.

In January 08, we finally got around to replacing the light fixture over the sink--I don't think I have a picture of the original, but it was one of those long strips of wood with the giant bare bulbs sticking straight out of it. Very chic.

Here you can also see the notorious ducky wall paper border that I hated so. Wow, I almost sort of miss those ducks.

Ha! No, I don't!

Finally in February we moved the guest bath to the top of our long "home improvement" list, and here's what we did:

-painted all the trim a nice crisp white
-scraped off the wallpaper
-painted the walls Laura Ashley Sage
-put in a new floor, and new white quarter-round, and sealed it all up good
-painted the vanity box white
-made new doors and drawer fronts, painted them white, and added new hinges and drawer pulls
-put in a new countertop and faucet
-replaced the mirror (because we broke the old one trying to re-mount it!)
-replaced the medicine cabinet and made a new door for it
-sewed a new shower curtain (courtesy of my mother-in-law)

Now it looks quite lovely, if I do say it myself:

You can see that the medicine cabinet door has yet to be painted...I kind of like the natural wood, but I'll probably be painting it white sometime this week, along with the doors for the master bath vanity.


The floor is a little bit more yellow-brown than I thought it would be from the sample in the store, but it's still a major improvement on what was there before. And I've been trying to find the purple bathmat that goes with the towels at Kohl's but no joy yet, so it's the brown one from the master bath for now.

It's so nice to have a room that you walk into and feel good about, isn't it? We have done so much to this house, but so often all you focus on is how much there is yet to do. It's good to look back and know that we got it done and made something ugly into something pretty.

Now on to finish the master bath--we've been surrounded by paint cans and rollers and tubs of spackle in there for far too long!

My day.

Still no Hyundai. I was going to take Todd to work this morning so I could go grocery shopping, but I was too tired to organize my coupons last night, and today I am coming down with the cold that Todd has been fighting for almost a week. Such a generous husband, giving me his cold. Such a sweetie!

So, stuck at home again, I hauled out some of the stuff I bought at Michael's last weekend. They were clearancing out a bunch of the home decor stuff they've had out since January, and I finally made my move and snapped some of it up.

I keep a low bench right outside the front door with various decorative items on it, and when I found a bunch of birdhouses and pitchers at Michael's, I decided to get a bunch of it and re-do my arrangement on the bench.

The bench was made for me by Todd several years ago, and I painted it a sort of maize yellow, but that doesn't go with the stuff I bought last week, so I also got a couple cans of spray paint and hauled it out in the yard and painted it today. Of course, I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here's the "after":

I'll have to see if I can find a "before" picture on the other computer later. I need to fill in a couple of gaps with more tchotchkes, but you get the basic idea. I'm hoping that little ceramic angel survives...our porch is like a long, narrow wind-tunnel and I have had more than one treasure blown off the bench and broken.

[Edited to add: I found an old shot of the front door with the bench beside it...this was right before Christmas 07. I got rid of the red chair on the other side today--I've had it for five or six years and it's looking very ratty, so it went to the curb:]

Then I took the same can of spray paint and overhauled this little table that sits between the wicker chairs on the other side of the porch:


Again, I didn't take a "before" picture--what's wrong with me?! My problem is that once I get all revved up to do a project, I have to plunge right into it and I don't want to take the time to track down my camera. This is a huge improvement on this little thrift store table, though--the legs were pale yellow, and the top was off-white with a big apple decal in the center, and a painted checkerboard pattern around the edge. Sort of folk art style. I think plain khaki looks better, esp. with the dark brown chairs. Now I need to find some small, cute plant to set on it...again, something that hopefully won't get blown away when a big storm comes through.

I am a spray paint novice, but I'm always reading other people's blogs and seeing all the wonderful transformations they create with it, and I am totally convinced now. It took about fifteen minutes to spray the bench and the table, and by the time I got deadheading all my hanging petunia plants, they were dry and ready to put back up on the porch. Very impressive.

These birdhouses have been sitting on my front door bench with a couple of baskets and a grapevine wreath, but they didn't go with the scheme any more, so I just set them on the porch steps with the grapevine wreath propped behind them and another little Michael's angel next to them:

Speaking of items that got blown over and broken, this is one of them, a very cute glazed pot I picked up at a garden store in Portsmouth. I couldn't bring myself to throw away the bits, so they've been sitting pretty much where they fell. A couple weeks ago I stuck them in the garden and pulled up a spare sedum to plant in front of them.

Here's the McCoy vase I picked up in Westerville on Monday:


I have a similar vase that I bought years ago when we were living in Ohio:

Here's the bowl I got on Monday, I still haven't found a spot for it to sit yet so it's hanging out on the kitchen counter. Someday when Todd makes shelves for our living room, I'm going to display all my pottery together.

What a gorgeous day today is, sunny and cool. I need to do some cleaning and tidying before my brother's family comes for the weekend, and plan some meals and get some groceries. I hope this cold dries up and goes away fast!

This week...

...this is the Big Project:

I will get this bathroom done in a timely manner, I will, I will...!

(And let me be clear that the filth on the wall was there when we moved in and has proven impervious to scrubbing--so I hung a cabinet over it. Now I'm gonna paint over it!)

While I work, I am singing along with this:

I got this set up the way I want:

I'm putting together this:

...for an Easter basket swap...it's going to be really pretty when I get it done!

Reading this, and not sure if it's worth it:

And there's always, always this, isn't there?

When I get to heaven, St. Peter's going to hand me a full laundry basket, I just know it.

And now I have to go scrounge up some dinner out of this:

I've been trying to get us to eat up everything in the freezer, and we're truly down to the dregs now, though it may not look like it. Not much besides frozen stock, waffles, and random ancient bits of meat. And lemon ices.

Hope everybody's having a happy Monday!

My thrifty makeover.

Jen at Sanctuary Arts is hosting a trash-to-treasure party today, so I'm showing off my most recent trash-to-treasure project. Allow me to re-cap for any new visitors...we are sprucing up our guest bath by taking down the old wallpaper border with ducks on it, painting it green, replacing the medicine cabinet, vanity top, and floor. We had already replaced the towel rack, toilet paper holder, and light fixtures some time ago because they were so ugly, they needed emergency treatment. I still shudder at the memory of the cracked, mildewed, wooden towel bar. Yuck.

We were going to replace the vanity, too, but I couldn't really find any I liked at Lowe's or Home Depot, and neither of us wanted to pay a lot of money for something custom. So I looked around at some bloggers' bathrooms online and saw that although I hate to paint, I could paint the old vanity and save us a lot of money.

Since I forgot to take a picture before I started yanking off doors, here's a shot of our master bath vanity, which looks exactly like our guest vanity did, only even dingier. (It's due for the same treatment soon.)

I painted the whole thing white and Todd made brand-new doors and door fronts for it, which also got painted white.

When it gets a countertop put on it (on order and arriving soon), it will look even better, of course, but I think it looks much better, don't you? And with a new floor put in (also on order and arriving soon), it will be quite breathtaking!

So instead of paying $450 for a new Home Depot vanity I wasn't even that crazy about and which had much less storage, I used paint and primer I already had, and Todd used pine boards he already had, and we made it look like a different vanity for $0. All we had to buy were the new hinges and handles, and we would have had to buy those anyway, since I doubt the stock vanities come with hardware.

A question--do you think the top middle panel would look nice with one of those wooden carved applique things on it (also painted white)? The bathroom is going to be feminine and vintage, with a toile shower curtain, old sepia pictures of women and girls, china, etc. I think one might look nice, I just haven't been able to find one I like. What do you think?

Thanks for looking at my makeover!

It's tougher when you're stupid: adventures in home repair.

When I was in college, a few friends and I each had a piece of paper on our dorm room wall or door, a picture of John Wayne striking a pose in full WW II combat gear, with a saying printed on it: "Life is tough. It's tougher when you're stupid."

One of the friends found it somewhere and xeroxed it and passed it around to the group of us, who were all brainy kids constantly flummoxed by the stupidity we saw around us on a daily basis. Our small liberal-arts college was famous as a home of last resort for rich New England prep-school kids who had plenty of money but not enough brains for the Ivy League education their parents had no doubt planned for them since birth.

Since most of us in my group of friends were attending on a patched-together system of scholarships, grants, and loans, we had brains but no money. A 69-cent taco at Taco Bell was cause for celebration indeed.

Anyway, we felt rather superior to our less-gifted peers, any of whom could have bought and sold us then, and I'm sure could buy and sell us now. Brains are over-rated, I've learned.

Being 19-20 years old also contributed greatly to our smug sense of our own brightness. There's no one as smart as a 20-year-old, and no one more eager to let you know how smart she is.

This is all a long-winded introduction to the events of the past few days, which have proved to me the truth of John Wayne and his adage. Life is indeed tougher when you're stupid. And you grow stupider the older you get, apparently.

I mentioned that on Saturday we plopped down our new countertop for our vanity and discovered that since we'd never thought to measure it, the vanity top was too wide/deep. Standard size is 22" deep; our guest bath vanity is 19" deep.

So we returned it, and got a quote on a custom top at Home Depot. The price seemed good, but we wanted to check at Lowe's. The Lowe's price was surprisingly higher.

The next day we went back to Home Depot to order the top, but now the price was much higher there, too. Turns out the lady who gave us the quote checked the old binder from the manufacturer, which had much lower prices. I'm not quite sure why they don't throw these things away once the prices become obsolete...

Tonight Todd went back to see if he could browbeat the kitchen and bath lady into giving him the lower price. (Todd is a relentless browbeater when he's in search of a deal.) But no deal. So he went back over to Lowe's, which cheerfully not only matched the original Home Depot Price but also knocked off another 10%. Score!

Here's where the stupidity comes in. When he came home from work, and told me about it, I said, "You should have ordered another for the master bath at that price."

He said, "You're right." After all, the master bath is next on the remodeling list, and if we need a special order for one bath, we should get the special order for the other bath while the price is right. Right?

So after we ate dinner, we went back to Lowe's. While we were standing watching the guy type up the additional order:

Me: *chuckle to myself*
Todd: What?
Me: Oh, I was just thinking...I was in the master bath yesterday and I noticed that there's a lot more wall space in there. What if they put a bigger vanity in the master bath?
Todd: Hm.
Us: Nah, surely not. Why would they put two different size vanities in the bathrooms?
The Lowe's guy: So you want the 19" top, right?
Us: Yeah.

As soon as we got home, Todd measured the master bath vanity. Yep, it's 22" deep. Hence, no special order needed, and certainly no additional 19" deep countertop.

It's no big deal, we'll just cancel the order and buy a stock countertop. But how could two people be so stupid?

You may be thinking we're not that dumb. Anybody could not measure a vanity, and then not measure another vanity even after not measuring the first vanity led to all manner of hassle, right?

Well, let's move on to the matter of the vanity doors, shall we? Todd created new doors for the vanity (which look a treat, let me tell you!) The vanity had four doors, two that met in the middle, and one on each side of that. So I pulled off the doors, he measured one to get the dimensions and he built them, I primed and painted them, and last night we went to hang them.

The right center door went on, great. The far right door went on, great. We could tell where to hang them because the hinge marks were still impressed into the wood and the new hinges matched exactly.

Then Todd went to hang the left center door, the one that needs to match up and meet the right center door over the big center hole. And they didn't meet up, they overlapped.

Down to the garage I flew and brought up the original doors. And yes. The center doors are 1/4" smaller than the doors on the ends.

Again, it's not a tragedy. Todd moved the hinges out 1/4" on each side and hung the doors. However, since the hinge holes are already drilled, at some point in the next few days, I will have to take down the doors, fill the old holes, and sand, and prime, and paint that area all over again. Urgh. Just when I thought I had one project, at least, done.

Now you can see how our snafu at Lowe's tonight proves our stupidity once and for all. On Saturday we saw the folly of not measuring. On Sunday we saw the folly of not measuring. And on Monday, what did we do? Not measure!

Todd says he never would have made these mistakes at work. He's a mechanical engineer, for crying out loud. His whole career is based on correct measurements! So I asked him if that meant I bring out his latent stupidity. He said he thought that might be the case. Is this grounds for smothering him in his sleep?

The moral, my children: Never, never assume. Anything. In my younger, smarter days I thought a vanity's doors would surely all be the same size. Now I know better. But I'm still stupid.

Make mine a double.

I've been a bit of a Crabby Appleton lately (where in the world did that expression come from?) so I thought I'd spare y'all that. Nothing going wrong, I've just been walking around with a black cloud over my head for some reason.

Well, nothing was going wrong, till we ripped out all this:

and disconnected this:

and yanked this off:

and plunked down the new countertop and realized it was too big. Silly me, assuming that our vanity was a standard size! Will I ever learn to measure? But really, if you were strolling through a home improvement store and every single countertop was 22" deep, wouldn't you assume your own countertop was also 22" deep? Well, you'd be wrong! No soup for you! (Have too many years gone by for "Seinfeld" references to be appropriate any more?)

So it was back to Home Depot to return it and to special order a new 19" deep top, which should arrive in a week or so. Fortunately, it won't cost any more than the standard one. Whew!

I'm just a little bit over having stuff strewn all over the upstairs--vanity doors, hinges, handles, paint trays, paint cans, paintbrushes, paint rollers, tape, rags, ladder, spackle, the giant mirror, the door mirror, the old shower pole/curtain, pictures, tchotchkes, fixtures, all the soap and shampoo collections from under the sink, cleansers...you know how much stuff accumulates in a bathroom, and it's spread all over everywhere and it's beginning to get on my nerves just...a little...bit.

It's definitely making me re-think painting all the kitchen cabinets and putting in new countertops, since that's a project much greater in magnitude than this previously simple bathroom re-do. The chaos of having kitchen stuff everywhere for weeks and weeks...ooh, the thought gives me chills!

We are going to attach the new doors to the vanity and hang a few things up (as soon as Todd finishes gloating over his unexpectedly freed-up weekend) and that will help with some of the floor clutter. And some of the paint stuff can go away, too, although I do have to do paint touch-ups in a lot of places now that the mirror and medicine cabinet are out and I can reach places I couldn't before.

Someday it will be done! Now where's that bottle of wine...?

Monday, Monday.

Still working on the wallpaper border, but I'm at the point now where Todd has to take over: the area over the shower where I can't put up the stepladder. I'm too short to reach the border when I stand on the tub. This whole project would have been much easier if I was about five inches taller.

In fact, life in general would be easier if I was five inches taller. I could find pants that fit, and I wouldn't have to ask complete strangers to grab stuff for me off the top shelves at the grocery store. And my upper kitchen cabinets would be completely useful, instead of just 2/3 useful.

Now we just have to get down the tiny bits of paper backing and the glue smudges, and again, I think I'm going to have to turn it over to Todd. I tried a hot water/vinegar solution and a sanding block and it's just not doing the trick. I think it's time to pull out the power tools.

The bathroom is ankle-deep in paper bits. It's so satisfying!

Todd has a little more work to do on the vanity doors and then they'll be ready to prime, paint, and hang. I can hardly wait! Can't wait for that butt-ugly floor to get tossed out on the curb, too!

Here's a prettier shot than the wallpaper bits: this is the cheap blue quilt I bought at Kohl's. I have it folded on the chest at the foot of our bed, and it's quite pleasant to look at. Some of the fabrics almost have a vintage look.

The weather has warmed up dramatically, so I'm trying to get more walking in, and getting some Valentine's packages ready to mail to the nieces and nephews. This week will hopefully be all about painting, once we get the walls totally clean. That's it from here!

Painting and scraping.

Since I'm sitting here waiting for paint to dry, I thought I'd show what I've been doing this week, though it doesn't look like much yet.

I decided to paint our existing vanity in the guest bath, rather than replace it. I haven't been able to find any vanities I liked, and the one we have holds way, way more stuff than any of the others I've looked at. So I just decided to paint it white. And I'll do the same thing with the one in the master bath when I get around to it.

You can see how much stuff I've got crammed in there.

I pulled off the drawers and doors, because they're kind of beat up, and I don't really like the style...


...and Todd is going to make me new ones. He's cut the drawer fronts and the panel that goes over the big hole in the middle.


The drawer fronts are just plain boards with a bit of a taper on the edges. For the big middle one, I may try to find some kind of decorative carved piece to put on it.

The doors will have a flat raised border the whole way around. I'm hoping he can cut those for me this weekend so I can get those primed and painted, too. I bought new brushed nickel handles for everything, and the doors willl have brushed nickel hinges also, if I can find a store that has them in stock!

I've also started yanking down the bits of duck wallpaper border that I can reach:

I'd love to know why this border is up there. The original owner lived here for 15+ years and did absolutely nothing decorative to the house at all...so why the duck border? I'm just glad this was the only one he put up.

This weekend I'm going to get up on the stepladder and really attack it. I think it's going to come off pretty easily, because it's old enough that it doesn't have that impermeable vinyl covering on it. So I'm hoping the water/fabric softener solution will penetrate the paper and glue without too much trouble. I can't wait to see the last of the ducks!

Once the border is down and the walls are cleaned, I'll start painting them a nice sage green. And then in another couple of weeks, we'll pull out the sink top and floor and medicine cabinet, and replace them. And then we'll have a sparkly new bathroom. I wish it could all be done as fast as those room makeovers on HGTV!