Hate The Bird, Love the Color

This past weekend I did something I have not done in a long time. I painted. Which is a shame because I am one of those rare birds that loves to paint. There's something so soothing to me about taking an afternoon and erasing the old with something new, bright and colorful.

I lived in rentals for far too many years. Those all had boring white walls, but I was never invested enough in them to do anything about that. The last time I painted was when I was living in my spacious one bedroom in small town Michigan. Yes, that too was a rental, but it was a rental that was plastered in floral wallpaper and pink walls. Some of it had to go.

It wasn't until I moved into Mike's place that I felt some permanence. And it was shortly after I moved into Mike's place that I noticed I hated the paint colors. The bedroom color isn't too bad, but rest of this place is an offensive neutral. Yeah, I know, I didn't think neutrals could be offensive either but they are. We have offensive neutrals and I want them gone. So I started small. Small being our bathroom.

Oh lordy people, our bathroom is small (as you will see). And it is the only one we have, so really I wanted to try to make the best of out of it, because honestly, I really truly did hate it. But no more. It is now easily my favorite room in our house.

Here is what made me have such a drastic change of heart.

Ok, here we are facing west, toward my shower. From this angle things don't look too different (aside from the tile, but I can assure I did not change the tile color. That's just natural versus artificial light.) They don't look all that different because they really can't. It's not like I was going to move the tub. But I did buy a new shower curtain - a white one that definitely lightens up the space.

Here you can begin to see some of the bigger changes, namely the paint. I don't know what the previous color was called, but I can only describe it as a dingy, pale green. The new color is Seagull. I hate the bird, but I love the color. It's a light blue with a tinge of gray.

This photo also demonstrates Mike's main contributions to this remodel. I painted but he rehung the mirror as well as completed some minor electrical work. When I decided to paint, Mike did something he wanted to do for quite some time. When his place was built, the mirror was hung to a standard height, but Mike is not of standard height. He couldn't see his entire face in the mirror. He decided to raise the mirror along with the lights above it. That simple change I think made this remodel completely worth it for him. He also hung the shelf above the toilet, but I'll discuss that story after the next photos.

That white shelving unit was the bane of my existence in this condo. And it's my own stupid fault. Last year on a trip to Home Depot I convinced Mike we needed it for bathroom storage. I didn't have anywhere to put my things as he was already quite settled into his own place. Well it was bigger than I thought, so when it went into the bathroom I instantly knew it was a bad idea. It was like having another person in there at all times. Well when I took it out to paint the walls I realized it was not going back in. The room immediately felt twice as big.

I had to convince Mike to add the shelf above the toilet. That was a serious negotiation which included demonstrations prior to its purchase to convince Mike that he wouldn't hit is head on it all day everyday. It also took some serious paring down on my part. I had a ton of crap just sitting in the storage unit which is now in the dumpster out back. The cats like the change as well. They've rotated turns taken up residence on the bottom shelf of the cabinet which is now sitting in a nook in our living room.

The only problem with the shelving unit being gone is we now need a new permanent home for our towels. They took up the top two shelves in the cabinet (when they weren't hanging on the back of the door). Mike hates the back door hook as well. He deems it ghetto. So at some point we'll add some towel racks in that space between the door and the frame on the wall. The frame on the wall by the way has four of my favorite coastal photos from our California trip. because they are coast line, they all already had blue in them so it goes with the remodel.

There are a few other odds and ends I still need to take care of. I need to do some paint touch ups, we need to purchase and hang a toilet paper holder and we purchased a towel rack for above the toilet that is too large. That needs to be returned and a new smaller one hung. I bought new bathmats and a new soap dispenser tonight but didn't feel the need to photograph the bathroom again because of those small changes. The changes that we already did made me so happy that really the rest is just icing on the cake - a giant seagull-colored cake.