WHOA NELLY - A LADY NEEDS A LOVELY PLACE TO BATHE

Okay, so I had a long chat with myself (Is that better than chatting with my dog? I'm not sure.) and I decided to give myself some tough love by laying down the law and saying that I can't change a thing in my bedroom until I've updated the master bathroom.

I did this for two reasons:

1) I know this will motivate me to finally work on the bathroom.

2) I really want a pretty, serene, relaxing bathroom....like this:

(I think this photo is from Cottage Living)

Or this:

Domino Magazine

Or even this:

(A friend sent this to me a while ago. I'm not sure where she found it.)

Oh...and:

Reason 3) For heaven's sake a girl's gotta have a little restraint!

Here's how the bathroom looks right now (well, this is a picture with the seller's stuff...I don't have burgundy candlesticks or green towels...but you get the idea).

It's not a horrible bathroom by any means. It's large with a separate shower, spa tub and double sinks. But the elephant in the room is that burgundy countertop. If I liked burgundy I could probably make it work....but I really don't care for that color. It reminds me of the turtleneck sweaters my dad wore in the 80's....blahhhh.

It also has a GINORMOUS mirror (people in 1992 really wanted a good view I guess), and a wierd unused space in the corner between the vanity and tub.

I can't spend much money on this room so I'm going to pull some Houdini magic to try to make it look like a million bucks...for like $200...less if I possibly can, but considering I need (want) to replace the faucets it will be at least that much.

Here's my preliminary plan:

1) Somehow change the countertop to something neutral (this is where the smoke and mirrors will come in).

2) Replace the mirror with 2 smaller oval mirrors.

3) Install shelving of some sort on the wierd, useless, tile platform.

So it will look kind of like this....but much better....hopefully:

4) Maybe rip out the perfectly good white square tile in tub surround and replace it with perfectly good but hard work requiring white subway tile....maybe. Don't you love subway tile?! I've always wanted it.



So I hope you'll hang in there with me during this project. It will be time consuming but I'll keep you posted, and hopefully you'll find some inspiration for yourselves along the way.