Let’s talk about our downstairs bathroom. Better yet, let’s take a look:

Up until a few days ago, the bathroom had looked pretty much like this (sometimes with less junk on the counters) since we moved in six years ago. Ugly rusty orange-ish reddish walls, dated light fixtures, a too small mirror….

And for six years I ignored it and dealt with other rooms for one big reason: the walls have a weird faux texture thing on them that I hate and that will be a lot of work to get off of there. So I kept putting it off until we had the time or money to fix the walls.

No more!

Weirdly textured walls in a pretty color are way better than weirdly textured walls in an ugly color AND they’re easy to get.

My other big issue is that this bathroom is ridiculously long for no apparent reason, with just….walls all over the place, and I wasn’t sure what to DO with it. And I’m still not. But I’m not letting that stop me anymore.

Last weekend I decided I didn’t want to look at rust colored walls for another second and made an impulsive Benjamin Moore trip and painted that very day. Well, Dave did most of the actual painting. And now….BEHOLD! Non-rusty walls!

This is an absolutely terrible reveal, I realize, because 1. the rest of the bathroom still looks like crap and 2. it’s really hard to get a good picture of a long, skinny, windowless bathroom. I’m going to have to work on both of those problems concurrently so that the REAL reveal will feature better photography.

But it’s a start! The color is Benjamin Moore’s Jack Pine. I’m usually not shy about bold color choices, but I had the hardest time pulling the trigger on this one for whatever reason. I’m doing the cabinets navy, and I always wanted green on the walls, but I was nervous about how dark this one would be and very nearly went with a much more neutral/BORING kind of green. But you only live once, right? Or, at any rate, I’m only going to paint the weirdly textured bathroom walls once before I finally get around to smoothing them out, so might as well do something exciting.

So what else? Here’s the plan:

*Navy cabinets: we have a good bit of the Hale Navy paint that we used on the trim in the den (we used Hale Navy on the walls, too, but the trim pains is in satin instead of matte), so I’m going to use some heavy duty primer and then slap that on the cabinets and see how it holds up. The cabinets also will be leaving someday in the real bathroom reno down here, so I’m not too worried about it.

*new light fixtures: this is where we get into the relatively part of relatively cheap. We have these here already, all ready to get installed. They’re not particularly expensive light fixtures, but they’re more expensive than paint.

*new faucet: current faucet is shiny chrome and brass. Very 80’s (you know, like rust-colored paint over a faux finish fall). We’ll probably just go with a really simple oil rubbed bronze deal in here.

*appropriately sized mirror: I have this already! you can see it leaning against the wall in the pictures up there! it’s from the thrift store and has been sitting in my basement for forever!

*art of some sort: this is the part that has always tripped me up. Like I said, walls for days in here, so I am, as always, tempted to do a crazy gallery wall with approximately 3 million pictures. But there’s already one of those next door in the den. So I’m going to go the minimalist route instead, I’m thinking. I might even DIY something. fun! we’ll see!

*rug: on the hunt for a small, not too expensive vintage or vintage look rug for in front of the sink there.

And then we’ll call it done and I’ll wonder why we didn’t do it as soon as we moved in.