Day 4

I made new art for the bathroom.  I had always wondered what kind of art could go in a bathroom.  I know an obvious candidate could be botanicals, but the bathroom isn't exactly the place for a family portrait.  That is just too awkward. But what would be cute?  Bathtub pictures.
Unfortunately I didn't have any of those either, but I did find just about the next best thing.  I found a picture of Byron as a little boy brushing his teeth, and there was one of me from about the same age playing with makeup.

I just turned the pictures both to black & white, resized them, and had them printed at my local Walgreens.  And ta-da! That was that.  And I love it.

His & Hers

Believe it or not, this was actually a Christmas present. As in, a 2010 Christmas present. What?  You believe that? Oh, okay.
I saw these cute little knobs that said 'His' and 'Hers' at Pottery Barn last year, and my mom surprised me with them. I loved them and I thought they were absolutely perfect for our bathroom. And so I took them home, and they sat on the top of my dresser for oh, the past 10 months. The problem was that I was intimidated with how to install them. They didn't come in a package, and so I didn't know what size drill bit to use, and instead of asking my husband, they just sat.
If I knew then what I know now, they would have been in use ages ago. Turns out my husband isn't intimidated by this stuff, but rather very smart. In fact, I was out running an errand recently, and when I came home, THE WHOLE PROJECT WAS DONE! It happened so fast, that once again I felt totally lame for not asking him to do it earlier. Oh well.
Check out our little bathroom spruce up.

Another Bathroom Fix

Several months ago, we picked out some hooks to replace the (insufficient) towel rods in our bathrooms.  (Seen here.) Well, last week, I knocked it down.  I reached for a towel after my shower and the darn thing pulled right out of the wall.  I mean, I know I'm strong and all...not.  Apparently the hooks we got were not meant to hold that much weight.
So...we found a replacement.

Here's a little photo recap of how it all went down.

I love it.  The white really pops off the blue walls and even thought the style is totally different than the previous one, it still looks great in the bathroom.  The only negative was that at the same time that this happened, we also had to schedule some dry wall repair as a part of the year warranty on our home.  The repair would be to the drywall, but didn't include painting.  I know, I'm thinking the same thing.  I just didn't see the point in getting out the paint to fix one room when we would just have to drag it out again a few days later for the next room, so I lived without hooks for a few days. In regular life, I would have been totally fine waiting, but in my pregnancy fits, I was getting antsy.  Either way, it is done now, it looks great, and it is solid.  I don't think I'll be knocking this one off the wall anytime soon!

Problem Solver

Let me tell you a little story.  You are the main character who has come to my house for a visit, and I am the hostess. We are having a fabulous time.  I am providing an endless supply of fabulous food and drink.  After several hours, you need to excuse yourself to use the facilities.  Upon completing your business and washing your hands, your fabulous time comes to an end with the awkwardly placed hand towels.  Wop wop.  That is the sad ending to my story.  I know, I know, I should have been a writer!  Anyway, here are the pictures to illustrate my story.

So here's what happens in the non-fiction version.  You wash your hands, then they either drip all over the floor and toilet in order for you to dry them, or they have to drip dry forever before you reach for the towel.  The reason behind this is that we hung the hand towels on the regular towel bar, because we replaced the towel bar with the hooks you may remember from this post.  (Note:  this picture is from the master bath.  The 'story' takes place in the hall bath.  The same hooks were installed both places.)  I finally realized how annoying it was, so on a recent trip to Lowe's, on our anniversary no less, we solved the problem.  And a few screws later, we now have this.

I feel kind of weird saying this, but I love the result.  I don't have to drip my hands across the entire bathroom in order to dry them off.  And I think the little holder that we picked out is so cute.  We did see several toilet paper holders that looked similar, but I assure you, this was meant for hand towels.  On second thought, would I care if it were a TP holder if it did the trick?  Probably not.

Anyway...that's the end of that story.  We do have another little bathroom problem and solution that cropped up over the weekend, but we are in the middle of waiting for some warranty drywall repair on our home and want to do ALL the touch up paint at once, so I'm saving that project for next week.  Until next time, look forward to more adventures in bathrooming!

A Place for Everything

In our house, the way it was built, there wasn't an immediate way for me to see myself head to toe before I left the house.  On top of that, the bathroom counter in the master bedroom is extra high, so my usual approach of checking out the bottom half by standing on the counter was a little more dangerous than before, not to mention lacked headroom. So the easy fix was to pick up one of those cheap-o $5 full length mirrors from Target.  Which is exactly what we did.  And what we did with that mirror once we got it was...nothing.  Well, actually we moved it from room to room, leaning it up against various walls, hiding it behind various doors, etc.  For months.  This was bad, because our cheap-o mirror was starting to warp from the care we had given it.  So continuing my motivation that comes from my mother's haunting words, I finally found a place for it to make permanent residence - the back side of my closet door (which is actually in our master bathroom).

All it took was command adhesive strips.  Super easy.  I picked up a package of the 5 pound strips, and yes, I used all 6 in the package, but I would be willing to bet that was overkill.  I just didn't have anything better to do with the remaining strips so I just stuck them on for good measure.  And just like that, our nomadic mirror has a new home.  And now I'm happy.
One additional note, I didn't measure when doing this project, or ask for help from anyone.  I did what my mom and I call "ball-eyed" and the rest of the world calls "eye-balled" it.  And it's crooked.  But I'm just going to look past that, and if it bugs me in the end I'll splurge for new adhesive.

Cheap Fix

Although we built our new house from scratch and I was able to hand pick just about everything, there were still several things that ended up being a surprise to me.  For example, in the bathroom, FORTUNATELY our builder was so generous to give us a towel bar.  UNFORTUNATELY, it only holds one towel.  Proof.

Please notice my awesome photoshopping skills.

I am great at distorting images and matching color.  Maybe.

Notice the one towel that fits on this towel bar.  You will just have to trust me that there isn't enough room for two, because my awesome photoshopping skills might not make that clear.  This doesn't work so much for me.  First, I share this bathroom with my husband.  Second, I have long hair.  Long hair = two towels needed for showering.  Follow me if you will, but Byron + me + me = three towels.  So for the past four months, many a towel has found itself on the floor (ack!).
That's where my husband came to the rescue.  On our rainy day off yesterday, I dragged him into TJ Maxx where we picked up some lovely hooks that will hold, get this, four towels!  Woo hoo!  And at only $9.99 each (we picked up two - one for the spare bathroom as well), it was such a cheap fix.  15 minutes later, voila!

Hooks!  I plan to take down the original rinky-dink towel bar and instead replace it with artwork of some sort.  The only thing I have on hand that would fit in the space is a ballerina photograph.  The bathroom is not really the place for a ballerina, but I guess we'll see.  Maybe it would be a good chance for me to try my hand at painting!?!?