Surpise, Surprise

Do you have any idea how hard it is to coordinate the schedules of 17 people? After years of not being able to get together as a family, we started an annual family dinner…around no holidays whatsoever. The second Saturday in March every year (honestly, this will be the 2nd year, but I’m optimistic), our house fills with the love and laughter of my family. We get to spend time together and maybe get a decent family picture. When we were younger, it was hard to get a good picture

Every time we have people over, we try to make things different than the last time they came to visit. But with extra hours at work this week, there was no way I was going to get anything done, and I’m okay with that. Then yesterday I got a text from Michael letting me know there was a surprise waiting for me at home. Yikes!

Behind this door is our teeny, tiny half bathroom on the first floor. Most everything to redo this bathroom has been sitting in this bathroom for about a year now…waiting…and waiting…and waiting for it’s turn to be shown some TLC. This is a closet under the stairs turned bathroom, so it is a very odd shape, but endearing – can a bathroom be endearing? The biggest problem with this room was paint. Poor Ashley was plagued with questions about her thoughts on paint. I can do that to her because when I ask her questions like “Do you think hopsack would be okay in the bathroom?” Ashley knows that I’m not asking her if my bathroom would be a good place to don a burlap sack and hop from one end to the other. Ashley knows that I’m talking about our obsession with Sherwin-Williams. On Thursday we were tossing around words like Latte, Hopsack, Hubbard Squash and Festoon Aqua for the half bathroom

This was the beginning of that half bathroom. Check out this wallpaper that was in there. Yes, it is textured mauve and teal that had been faded over time.

There was a lot of wallpaper in that room. Cora spent hours one work day before we moved in scraping wallpaper (yes, she’s sitting behind the toilet)

Then Michael spent hours this week finishing off the wallpaper and here’s what it looked like.

I knew about the wallpaper coming off, but we were still trying to figure out the color. Turns out that I pestered Ashley about color for no good reason. The surprise that Michael had for me was the bathroom…in Hubbard Squash. I just had to decide where to hang the towel ring and the toilet paper holder. I took votes and opinions from my facebook friends about the placement of the toilet paper holder. Right side or left side? What do you think was decided??? Keep looking.

Michael and I are pretty frugal people. We got a pedestal sink to go in this bathroom for $40 (not yet installed) and then we spent $20 on this lever for the toilet. Never thought our splurge would be the lever for the toilet, but we love the way it looks in there. And Michael says it’s “built like a tank”. I’ll let you take that for whatever you want.

Here’s the toilet paper holder…on the left wall with the paper over the top

It still needs some changes, but it seems a lot more put together than it did just three days. It’s almost a John & Sherry worthy transformation. The new sink needs to be installed, the mirror will be coming down and replaced with one in a beautiful frame, a new light that has yet to be decided on and I have my heart set on this soap dispenser. Not to mention that these curtains have got to go!

But the half bathroom is half done and ready for house full of our family and hopefully Noreen can get a good picture of my brothers and sisters and me. But some things never change…this was last May!