Has This Ever Happened to You?

Have you ever had something in your house that you've been dying to change since the day you bought it? Something that bugged you on the walk through, but that you could change later? Well, it has been exactly three years since we moved into our house and we have been checking off a lot of things that we've wanted to change in these last few years. A little here and there. This week we decided to finally tackle one that has bugged me for a long time. Namely, all the gaudy gold faucets in our master bath with the silly "crystal" looking knobs. Blah. We also had a very ugly and very cheap looking light over our bathtub and a 'so-not-my-style' light fixture over our sinks. We've also needed to paint our bathroom ceiling and walls.

This week we decided to take one of Bill's* four days off and paint our bathroom and the girls' bathroom. And we decided to finally change out all those ugly faucets and sink light fixture. (We recently replaced the cheap light and added a nice chandelier over the master bath.) As you will notice below, we it ended up taking us more than one day - it's been two and we don't see an end in sight just yet. We haven't even gotten around to painting the girls' bathroom except for the ceiling.

These first three pictures are our LOVELY gold faucets and trim in the bathroom.

The "befores".

This is our "before paint" picture. The "after" is a little bit below.

This is our old light fixture that will be going up on Craig's List for $15 or $20. Any takers?

Now see where our quest for new faucets for the shower and tub has taken us . . . Ahhh the adventures in home improvements . . .

When we went to change our faucet to the tub with our lovely brushed nickel faucet and handles, we discovered that they would not fit right. After looking at 4 home improvement/plumbing supply stores, we discovered that we will have to replace some of the hardware below the tile and do some "custom" plumbing. The type of faucets we have just can't be found/aren't made anymore. So this is our lovely mess and it is only the beginning. The dollar signs are going up and up on this "little" project.

We ran into the same problem with our shower knob and faucet. So we had to cut into the wall of our closet so we can change the hardware behind the shower. The girls keep asking why daddy is making holes everywhere!

The good news is that our sink faucets don't need any special attention. They went in without a hitch and they look sooooo much better! I love them! Also notice the runner at the bottom of the mirror. It used to be gold too. Now it is nice and silver. We also found out the mirror was just screwed right into sheetrock - no anchors or anything! Yikes! The mirror was so heavy when we took it down, we could not believe it was held up with three screws in sheetrock. It is now mounted to studs on a lovely silver runner. Ahhh, much better!

This shows our freshly painted ceiling, recently installed chandelier and new paint on the walls. "Toast" - just a very light tan color. It looks so nice covering up the old yucky flat paint. Nice and clean. The blue spots are tape marking where I need to touch up the paint.

This is our new light fixture above the sinks. It matches the chandelier light and looks much more sleek than the 80's style light from before. And no gold!! (o: I'll include more updates when we finish the shower and tub. We're still not sure just how we're going to change the gold trim on the shower. After talking to several people at home improvement stores, we discovered that we may have to get something custom made or change out the whole shower! Geesh. Maybe I'll just have to live with that gold, but I hope not.