Roseyland

I bought my condo in lovely Brentwood, Missouri four and a half years ago. About a year later, I started to look around and freak out about everything that wasn’t perfect. I became convinced that no one in their right mind would ever buy my condo with it’s outdated bathroom and kitchen. So I decided to do a cosmetic remodel of my bathroom. I had absolutely no remodeling experience. I once painted a wall, but that’s it. This would have been a great experience to blog about, but I didn’t have a blog back then. But I do now, so let’s just pretend that it’s the 4th of July weekend 2006.

Here is a picture of my original bathroom. You have to love the movie star lights. You can’t see it in the picture, but the room had been painted with regular flat paint, and I had the worst time keeping mildew off the walls. Also notice that I have an astringent and facial lotion. Queer Eye for the Straight guy was popular back then, and the queers said that all guys should be using an astringent and facial lotion daily. I listen to them for awhile, but it quickly became too much of a hassle.

Here is a picture of my old medicine cabinet.

This is half of the junk that filled up my spare bedroom while I was working on the bathroom.

First I tore everything out that I wasn’t going to keep. I would have liked to replace the vanity, but that would have required replacing the floor, which was beyond my skill set and the floor looked to be fairly new. So I opted to just replace the top of the vanity, and hope that it would look new. Here is the bathroom with the mirror, light fixture, and old vanity top removed.

This was the scariest part of the remodel. I found a medicine cabinet at Lowe’s that was the same width as my old medicine cabinet, but one and a half inches longer. This meant I had to cut out 1.5 inches of drywall, which was scary, because if I screwed up, I had no idea how to fix it. It took me about half a day to remove the 1.5 inch strip of drywall, but I got it done.

Here is a picture of the bathroom after painting. Painting might have been the worst part of the job. We (I had an assistant) put on one coat of primer (because of the mildew issues), and then two coats of paint. Painting the ceiling was the worst part. It’s a small room, but it’s hard to reach everywhere you need to reach. While painting, Earl was locked in my bedroom, and he meowed as if he was being brutally murdered. Painting a cramped room for hours with a cat howling in the background, awesome.

Speaking of Earl, here he is checking out the new vanity top and paint job.

Here is Earl playing plumber.

Oh what the hell, this is the internet, you can never have too many cat pictures.

Drum roll please. No seriously, I need you to actually do a drumroll… The finished bathroom.

Another picture of the new bathroom. That mirror was the most expensive single item, but I love it. It’s from Pottery Barn, in case you wanted to know. I was a little frightened to hang it, because in order for it to be centered over the sink, I couldn’t attach it to a stud. It came with some pretty heavy duty drywall anchors though, and it has held firm for the past 3 and a half years. Yes, those are pictures of kittens in my bathroom. They are in black and white though, so that makes it cool.

One more picture, with the new medicine cabinet. Also, notice the new brushed nickel towel racks, and the new vent cover, and you can’t see it, but I also put a new cover on the ceiling fan so that it would look new. Go me!

That’s it, my bathroom remodel is complete. I also had my kitchen remodeled a little over a year ago. You can read about that here, here, and here. I think my next home improvement project is going to be new flooring. I want to get laminate wood flooring throughout my condo, including the steps. I don’t want to know how much that is going to cost though, or how it can be done with all my furniture and a cat in the way. Hmm…