So fresh and so clean

When I looked back through my files, it appears that I neglected to take good "before" pictures of several rooms in the house.  Unfortunately, the bathroom fell into this category.  So, all I have to show for the ugly old white room with dripping red paint on the woodwork is a few close up photos:

These don't really do it justice in terms of showing just how yucky it was.  I happen to be of the decorating opinion that all woodwork should be a nice crisp white, so the red paint was a little hard for me to handle.  And, really, if you're going to have dripping paint, isn't red the worst color??  I mean, it looked like the walls were bleeding.  Yuck.

But no worries.  The bathroom looks much more crisp and clean after this weekend's activities (and, yes, as a follow-up,  I still have paint stuck on my arms, although it's mostly off my hands and hair).  I'm much better at taking "after" pictures than "before."  (Perhaps because now I can stand to look at the walls for more than 30 seconds).

The color is a silvery-grey-blue that was selected to match a piece of fabric I bought on clearance last May.  In fact, that piece of fabric (which will be our future shower curtain) was the first thing I bought for our house!  The following images are my attempts at showing you my vision for the bathroom:

The left-most image is a picture of the aforementioned shower curtain fabric.  It's iridescent blue with silver, grey, and blue detail stitching.  When I saw it, I thought it was reminiscent of water, and therefore perfect for bathroom decor!  I'm pretty set on this vanity from Lowes, as well as a matching medicine cabinet.  We already own these towels from Bed Bath and Beyond thanks to our generous family and friends who chose them from our Wedding Registry.  This faucet is a little pricier than I'd like, but it shows you the general style I'll go for - we're replacing both the sink and tub/shower fixtures.  Also, I'm definitely looking for a curved shower rod such as this one for a big, luxurious feel in an otherwise average bathtub.

The blue vase pictured above was found online to represent a similar (but far prettier) planter/urn we received as a wedding gift (thanks, Jillian & Travis!). The window you see in the picture above gets lots of afternoon sun, so we figure that sunny window in a semi-humid location (the bathroom) will be perfect for growing some plants!


After looking at the picture of the newly painted bathroom, I realized that there's lots of wall space.  Besides the necessary addition of a towel rack, I'll also need some art.  I started looking online for ideas.  Since I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to go, I just started clicking around on http://www.allposters.com/.  As I looked at the various images, I started to narrow down my interests.  I found myself drawn to the black and white photography, particularly of the nature scenes.  I ended up most interested in waterfall pictures such as this one (shown above).  I probably won't actually buy that, though.  Why would we display generic waterfalls when we could take pictures of our own?  For example, both of these pictures were taken at two of the many beautiful locations in Ithaca - each only 10 minutes from our house.

 Are those pictures enough to entice visitors this summer?  The bathroom will be finished by then, too, so you can see all of our design choices in action (although I promise to share them online, too!)