How Lowe's Can You Go?

It all started with a countertop. That ugly pink countertop. I've always hated our main bathroom. It is mostly used by the kids, but it is also the bathroom we direct guests to when the need arises. I decided that I just couldn't wait until we had the funds to replace the countertop, so came up with a temporary solution.

Spray Paint. I headed to Lowe's and purchased Rustoleum hammered finish spray paint. I think it's meant for stuff like mail-boxes, outside furniture, lamp-posts, etc.

Now that I've done it, I don't recommend this method. Indoor spray painting is killer on the lungs and I had to clean a film of paint particles off of every surface in the bathroom. Also, it scratches.

Still, it's an improvement and I don't regret it. A fresh-looking countertop, however, encouraged my desire for further updates, so I ended up painting the cabinets (which were old, drawn on with pen, and had not escaped the big nail polish debacle of 2010).

Then, at the suggestion of my sister in response to my frustration about the nail-polish-splattered and very dingy looking grout, I painted it. You can see the pink where the polish never came out of the grout, and the clean, updated look of the white paint.

By then I was committed. A new shower curtain, new towel rod and toilet paper dispenser and rug were all purchased. All that was left was to find a wall color that somehow tied it all together yet looked okay with the red tile accents in the shower. I think I did it. Here is my completely updated bathroom:

Oh, but that is not all. Anyone who has seen my basement - not many, admittedly - know that the bathroom was a scary place. The unfinished shower was dark, dirty-looking, and made that room uninviting for any privacy seekers, despite the fact that the toilet was perfectly functional. We hired some hands more skilled than ours and only a few headaches later have a pretty little shower in the basement:

I picked out all the tile by myself. (Well, technically I wasn't "by myself." I have decided I would rather tattoo my eyelids than ever take my children to Lowe's again.)

And just because we felt we hadn't given Lowe's enough of our money (and also because I was so sick of children ruining the flower beds between our driveway and the neighbor's property) we ripped out all the irises, which were over-mature anyway, and finally created a little rock design in that space. I say finally because I borrowed the mold from my BIL at the beginning of last summer, which was when I originally planned to complete this project. DH and I figure we loaded and mixed close to 1000 lbs of concrete for this project. I'm glad it's done. And I'm never doing it again.

We enjoy handing out money so much that we gave a bunch to a mold restoration company and, subsequently, a plumber, when it was discovered that we had mold in our basement from a leaky kitchen faucet. We are now the proud owners of a new kitchen faucet and a basement bedroom wall of mismatched color, which had to be completely ripped out and re-drywalled. That's okay. I see another trip to Lowe's in our future as this room, and its accompanying functional bathroom, is slated to become the residence for a certain eight year old who is tired of sharing with a toddler.