How to Add Stress to the Holidays

The subtitle to this post should be "Why We Decided the Week Before Christmas was a Good Time to Renovate Our Bathroom." The answer would be pure insanity. Well, not completely. The bathroom was finished before family started arriving and in the grand scheme of renovation, this one was fairly minor. Did I mention this was our guest bathroom? Or that it's the only bathroom aside from the master bath? It did add a small amount of mayhem to our pre-Christmas planning and I was definitely in the final stage of frantic cleaning while my parents were driving up from the airport. But I'm still happy we did it.

Our guest bathroom is decent sized with a full tub/shower and a large vanity. The layout is fine but the features were... lacking. Though we had repainted right before Baby was born, the removal of painters tape had revealed not only the limey green layer below but the bright pink under that. There was also paint peeling off the door frame, which we had ingeniously covered with masking tape to prevent any little hands from helping themselves to a delicious paint-peel snack. The vanity was a typical builder-basic cabinet with a faux-marble countertop. The sink was chipped and the mirror was your standard wall-to-wall unframed masterpiece. Lovely. I didn't get to take a before but the Hubs did manage to get a few shots during the process.

The pink was such a precious shade of pepto that we kept joking with the contractors that we might just keep it. Don't be jealous. In the second picture you can see the unpainted section of the wall that was covered by the fabulous mirror.

The contractor is a friend and did such an amazing job. He installed a new vanity that we picked from Home Depot but feels like Pottery Barn. He got us a steal of a deal on a new granite countertop. He put in a new toilet, sink, medicine cabinet, mirror AND repainted in the same color as the shower area in our master bath. Here is the after!!

I am in love with the new vanity! The bottom drawer pulls out for extra storage. All six drawers are also functional. The center cabinet is mostly filled with the pipes and undermount sink but I don't care because of the awesome bottom drawer. In the first picture you can sort of see the shower curtain, which is hanging off its new hotel-style curved rod. It was so wonderful to show our family this bathroom update. The difference was dramatic and everyone was pleasantly surprised. It was great to have it done for the holidays but I think next time I'll allow a little more leeway before guests are expected!