The Bathroom--An After Story

I have a confession. It may be a horrible confession. It's certainly a confession that limits my decorating severely.

I. Hate. Yellow.

This is not an age-old vendetta by any means, and I'm sure in 5 or 10 years I may swoon over a pale canary for a guest room or something. However, our old house had a screaming sunflower theme that I never changed. It was vivid yellow, with sunflower trim, and came complete with a lot of sunflower decor, towels, and pot holders.

Then we found this house. This house, my dear friends, had a slightly paler version of this yellow in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the laundry room (hopefully within the next week you'll get to see the before and after of the laundry room, but I think it's going to lose a lot of its shock value if you see the before first). I almost died. But then I remembered that this house is huge, has an awesome yard, and TWO bathrooms (one of my requirements when we moved). So I moved on.

I'm going to go ahead and admit to you right this second that I don't have a before shot. This is because I didn't realize that nobody would care about my shiny new bathroom because they didn't see the before. Unfortunately we don't even have before shots of that particular room from its sale because it was never photographed by the real estate company. It had some horrendous blue carpeting that was in the process of being torn out the entire time it was on the market.

And so, without further ado, here is my after:

As you can see, it's purdy! One of the things I really love about this (giant) bathroom is that it's one of the brightest rooms in the house. Apparently light in our little boxed-in ranch is a precious commodity. Another thing I've ended up loving is the blue-ness of it. This is MUCH bluer than the paint chip and it was pretty overwhelming initially, but now I think it looks very clean with the white trim.

Here's the cost breakdown so far:

$27.00 -- 1 can of Valspar in "Sigh" blue

$2.50 -- Clearanced basket from Michael's

$6.00 -- White Towels from the Dollar Tree

$9.00 -- Marked down picture from Kohl's

$30.00 -- Shower Curtain (Bed, Bath, & Beyond)
$31.99 -- Hamper (Bed, Bath & Beyond) w/ 20% Coupon

Total: $106.49

This was before my $100.00 resolution, but I don't think that's too bad for not having anything for this bathroom. It's just that now that I've done a bit more reading (is there a Blogaholic's Anon?), I think I could have done the shower curtain for about $7.00 and probably been a bit more creative with the hamper space for less than it cost. I think this just makes me more determined to stick to my per-room budget and see what amazing things I can do for less than a hundred bucks.

In the next post I'll detail a few of the plans I have for finishing up this room (in the long term), as well as my Super Secret Attack Plan to get it done for less.