January 2, 2011

Sorry Dad: Quick and easy bathroom re-do

I am preempting this post with a note about my dad.

I love him. He's always worked hard to provide for me and my younger brother. Not only is he a hard worker, but he's a perfectionist, so it's like he's working twice as hard to make sure everything is just right. Especially when it comes to projects around the house. He takes such pride in everything he owns and everything he does. He's caring, he has patience. He bends over backwards for our family. I've learned a lot from him throughout the years.

He was especially helpful when I bought my own house almost 3 years ago. He helped me paint everything from my 14 foot walls to my (now) pristine white baseboards. He's taken numerous trips to Lowe's and Home Depot with and/or for me to find knobs, light fixtures, paint colors, tools, ideas, and more. He has spent tireless hours working, lifting, painting, demo-ing, hauling, attaching, hanging things in, to, and from my house. Of course, I've thanked him and taken him out for dinner a couple of times, but nothing could truly repay him for the time he's spent at my house helping me make it a home. And the extra time I've gotten to spend with him is priceless.

And with that, I want to apologize to him. Partially because I'm about to re-paint a couple of the walls he helped me with and I feel guilty for not telling him about it first. And partially because I am nowhere near as patient as he is, so while I am paying very close attention to detail and taping and cutting in and doing all of the techniques he has taught me throughout the years, I'm not laying down all of the paper he does to catch paint drips and I didn't get paint samples to put on the wall first. I just bought the paint and started. And with that, whenever I do a project without my dad's consent, knowledge, or advice, I am adding it to a segment called 'Sorry Dad'!

On that note, I have a pesky little guest bathroom that's pretty much the smallest, darkest room in the entire house. When I first began decorating almost 3 years ago, I was really into bright colors and a Hawaiian theme. That's cool for a large room, but not such a great idea for the world's tiniest bathroom. My inspiration was these cool little vintage postcards I got in Maui a couple of years back...
Framed vintage Hawaiian postcards
My original idea was to pick up the pink in the hibiscus flowers in the top postcard. I picked out a bright pink to create an accent wall in my mini-room. I forgot to take a before picture, but here's one of the wall after I primed it...
You can see the pink through the white, so you get the idea of the color. People would walk into the bathroom for the first time, and I could hear them gasp even through the closed door. I figured it was time for a change!
Green!
I picked out a soothing sage green color. It's the one on the middle of that card in the pic above. I would have LOVED a more of an olive green, like the one on the right side of the card, but again, the darkest room in the house needed to be lighted up a bit. The end product was pretty sweet. (I think so, anyway!)...
Finished!
To give some perspective on just how tiny this bathroom is, I was standing in the doorway and that toilet is centered on the wall... yup. THAT small.

And this might shed some light on both the personalities of myself and my lovely fiance... a couple of days before I painted this special little wall, I told him what I was thinking about doing. I actually started the conversation by saying, "If you came home from work one day and I painted a wall in the house, would you be mad?" And he said, "No, that's the kind of thing I would expect from you. You get a wild hair up your butt and then you just do whatever it is that you want to do."

At first I was a teensy-weensy bit offended, but then Brian assured me that that was a good thing. He says I'm not boring and he likes that I'll keep him guessing. Hooray for being spontaneous!

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