Bathrooms

Lately I am interested in all things bathroom. I have been reading home improvement blogs, pretending to look around for ideas for our bathroom. It makes me a little jealous to see things like Kim's bathroom on Newlywoodwards. Check out the progress they've made here. And I really start to turn green when I see bathrooms like this one.

http://www.houseofturquoise.com/

I want this in my house. Exactly like it is.... with a few modifications, because I don't think my bathroom is quite that big.
Our main bath is one of the last rooms we haven't done much with. It's the one that the girls use, and our guests as well. It's a really big project. MJ says we will do it when all three girls are potty trained. That seems forever away right now. We also don't have the time or the money to jump in, so it's a little ghetto for now.

This is what it looked like they day we purchased our house back in 2005. It still looks pretty much the same.

Shortly after we bought the house, we noticed a leak in the toilet. MJ fixed the leak by replacing the wax ring but the floor was rotten under the toilet. Since we were in the middle of a few other major projects (ie. kitchen and master bath), with no extra time or money to gut the bathroom, he put down some plywood to help distribute the weight of the toilet so it doesn't end up on top of our washing machine. I tried to make it blend in by painting the plywood white, but it didn't really work. It still looks ghetto but at least it is usable.

The bath tub had a sliding shower door, which had a large frosted swan on it. (I can't make this up.) Unfortunately it was so moldy that it had to go. Darn. We replaced it with a shower curtain which has worked fine. The toilet got a new plain white seat. The wallpaper had upside down seashells on it. I got sick of it, and painted it on a whim, a few months ago. (I know that you aren't supposed to paint wallpaper but I don't care)

Everything I do has to be cheap, as in almost no investment at all, because eventually I want to redo everything. Here are the last two things I want to do on the cheap, just to pretty it up, while we wait for complete renovation.

I want to paint the outside of the vanity white and get rid of the gold trim. I started on this last fall and then I forgot about it. (yeah, I know... another half finished project) I also painted the pulls turquoise. I love it. So that stays.

I really want to paint the inside of the cabinet too. I was thinking white, but after I saw the inside of Kim's vanity, it has me thinking maybe turquoise too!

Last but not least... I am bleaching the grout. I can't remember blog I saw this on (more blog reading creating more work for me), but the person used a bleach pen to clean the grout on their kitchen countertops. The flooring in the bathroom is clean, I have scrubbed them and scrubbed them, but the grout still looks nasty. I picked up some bleach pens at Walmart, because they had $1 off coupons attached (can you tell I'm dutch?). I came home and tried it out. I bet you can tell which half I did. It is very time consuming, but soo worth it! So that needs to be finished as well.