Yipes, Stripes!

In keeping with the ode to paint this week that will hopefully boost my creativity and drive so that all of our painting wishes come true this summer, I present to you, my guest bath.  You saw it already in this post here about the lame curtain I made.  (Lame, but it does the trick and is the right colors.  So, I’m ok with lame for now.)

I feel I should tell you that this bathroom is by no means complete.  Last fall I painted.  And bought new towels (because nothing says bathroom redo like new towels do!).  Oh, and hung mr’s picture.  But that’s all I did.  

There’s more to come.  Someday there will be new fixtures and new lighting and seashell accessories and a fun mosaic frame around that ginormous mirror.  Someday.  Don’t you love someday?  It’s such a beautiful and perfect place... We are working on a shoestring budget here.  I'm sorry.  Did I say shoestring?  It's a lot more like a velcro budget.  

Not the best pictures, after all, it IS a bathroom.  It’s not all that big either, and no windows to boot.

I painted it all a satin creamy white color (something like English Cream or English Cottage or English Toffee... wait.  That last one doesn’t seem right.  Toffee?  Isn’t that brown?  Well you get the idea).  Then I taped off the lines and painted them some Caribbean sea inspired colors.  Something like Caribbean Sea and Lagoon Blue.  You know the ones.  I used glossy so they’d pop. 

The lines were hard.  I didn’t know what I was doing, I’ll admit.  (like I ever do...)  I had seen it on HGTV - of which I watch way too much and get way too many way too big ideas.  It’s how I get in over my head - and I knew I wanted it.  I used a level and a yard stick and drew straight lines.  I taped them meticulously.  (that part took forever) What I didn’t know was that you are supposed to peel off the tape when the stripes are still a little tacky.  Whoops.  AND it helps to go over the tape with the wall color and let it dry before you paint the lines within the tape parameters.  It seals the tape, see?  Well, I wish I’d known that then, so I wouldn’t have ended up with smuginess that I still, to this day, have not quite fixed.  It looks ok, it’s really not THAT bad - but it bugs me to no end.

I’m still happy with the colors and the stripe idea, though.

Oh, and that shower curtain?  Funny story.  That was one of the only things that mr and I agreed on right away without debate or persuasion when we were using those fun little scanner guns.   We found it at Bed Bath and Beyond and when no one got it off our registry, we were kind of disappointed and resolved to go and get ourselves.  Well, they didn't have it anymore.  So we asked if any other stores in the area had it.  They did not.  So we made them call corporate and ask if any stores in the COUNTRY had it.  (No, I'm not kidding.  That's how obsessed I can get.)  And they said no, it wasn't being carried anymore.  BUT, they DID have a solution.  They had a few in some warehouse somewhere so they could ship it to the our store.  When they called us weeks later to tell us it had come in, I was giddy.  With all the excitement of Christmas morning, I carried that precious, long-awaited box in my lap.  When we got home, I ripped the box open - envisioning the perfect, FUN shower curtain hanging in our small and drab basement level apartment (it already seemed so much cheerier just thinking about it) to discover THIS 

shower curtain.  So right then and there, I drove all the way back to the store, gave them the yucky plastic FISH curtain back and demanded my lovely calming island one that was reminiscent of our honeymoon.  Which wasn't calming, by any means, but was still special.  Anyway, they finally did find us the right one and we finally did hang it up in that little bathroom and it finally did make it cheerier.  

So, I really love the curtain but I hated the flowers on it.  So I took a scissors to it.  Yep.  Cut those suckers off.  

Somehow this

 looks like “Tween girl who loves Kris Allen and reads all the Twilight Books because the writing style is like, so deep” 

but THIS 

is like “Relaxing on the beach under a beautiful cabana swaying peacefully in my hammock.”  Right?  Well, I think it makes all the difference.  You can think I’m crazy if you want to.  Go on.  Think it.  I won’t even try to dissuade you.

So there you have it.  Stripes.  Not the most exciting redo, yet, but those stripes have inspired me with an idea for the family room... which will happen later on this summer.  mr doesn’t know it yet, but when he agreed that the family room needed to be painted, he agreed to stripes.  bwah-ha-ha-ha!

PS.  In looking over these photos I realized it's best to clean your bathroom before offering up "after" pictures to be filed throughout all time in the stores of blogistory.  Oops, sorry.