Has it really been a week?

I am so busy reading everyone else's blogs, I have been remiss with my own. Well this week I have made over the main bathroom. I say made over because what I have done falls short of renovation, but was desperately necessary as we have our regular visitors from the UK arriving next week. We have lived in this house for nearly three years now and they have visited each year. The first year we were here the valve on the tub became faulty and needed replacing and of course that entailed making a large hole in the wall through the tiles! Now this bathroom was due for renovation and we did not want to just try and replace the ugly old tiles, so as a stopgap I taped a very attractive plastic bag over the hole in order that the bathroom be back in action, especially as our visitors were due within the week. That was year one. During the successive year we were busy doing other things to the house (painting the outside, having a pool installed, re-carpeting, etc. etc.) and the bathroom when down the list, I mean the bag solution was working fine......

However when the friends were due over again, I came up with another amazing stopgap, progress from the plastic bag to a couple of stick on floor tiles across the hole, as you can imagine this looked a whole lot better.

Well a few weeks ago the friends booked their next visit and I decided that as we obviously were not going to be doing the $8k renovation anytime soon (I mean we have a house in France to spend money on now), a makeover was in order. So I have retiled the tub surround (and I do mean me personally) in plain white 6" tiles, looks so much better, eventually I plan to have the tub refinished from cream to white. Flipped the vanity doors (dated panelling on other side) and painted them Otter and gave them updated handles. Painted the room a smart looking Rawhide and relaid some floor tiles (these I was very impressed with, they are a bit more up market stick on floor tiles that when laid look like ceramic -- without all that fuss). New mirror and accessories and I am pretty pleased with the result. The whole room probably did not cost me more than $500. GWE returns today from 5 weeks away and hopefully he will be pleasantly surprised. See that drunken looking laundry basket, that is one of our two remaining wedding gifts when we got married nearly 31 years ago. It is falling apart and I keep re-weaving together bits of it. Hopefully the visitors will be suitable impressed too.

We used to have a cream floor, we have a black labrador and are a family of (shedding) brunettes (OK some of us bottle brunettes) but I was sick to death of hairs that accumulated in all the corners, at least now I wont be able to see them!