who'da thought?

When Jack and I bought this garden place, it needed some work. A lot of work. Like anything that could be crooked, leaky, broken, or worn, was crooked, leaky, broken, or worn. We had the place inspected before we bought it, so we were aware of the seven pages of items the inspector said would need to be fixed. And he didn't include anything about remodeling. But as you may have noticed, Jack and I love projects. So we bought the place and moved our stuff in. The first thing we did was to tear out the kitchen pantry and replace it. Then, we remodeled the hallway bathroom, eliminating the chocolate brown toilet and tub, replacing the rusted plumbing, installing new lights and faucets, and painting.

When we first looked at the place, I thought that after replacing the pantry and remodeling the brown bathroom, the next thing on the list had to be remodeling the master bathroom. The house was built in the 70's and all of the appliances and bathroom fixtures were original to the house. That explains the brown bathroom, the peach bathroom, and the odd little brown bathroom downstairs.

The master bath was in the ever-popular 70's powder blue. Not the dusty blue of the 80's or the dark blue of the 90's, but that sky blue of the 70's. That blue is not in the decorating color palette in this century. I was certain that we should tear out that walk-in shower with the powder blue tile and the occasional shiny star tile. I couldn't wait to get rid of the bright gold shower door and the ceiling of light. And after using a rag to wipe out the medicine cabinet the first night we slept here and finding somebody's molars in my rag, I knew those medicine cabinets had to go.

But, we needed other things done in the place before we could get to the blue bathroom. We needed a work shop to work on our projects in, we needed to redo our bedroom, the kids all needed bedroom remodels, the kitchen and dining room need to be remodeled, and the livingroom and entry way needed major help. And lest we forget, we also needed to redo the front and back yard and build a shed and a deck. The house needed some serious help.

A couple of summers ago, we were working on the front yard and installing the hot tub and the deck in the back yard, when we decided to work on the master bath. We had already taken down the ceiling of light, so we discarded the gold shower door and replaced it with a door with a brushed nickel finish. We bought lights, towel racks, and faucets in that same finish. Somewhere along the way, I got this great idea to buy sage colored towels, which, amazingly enough, looked pretty good with the blue speckled tile and the brushed metal surfaces.

But it didn't seem quite finished. One day I found a couple of pictures at Kohl's that had the same blue and green as my bathroom. I also found a couple of towels at Costco that are that crazy powder blue. This week, I realized that the thing the room needs is a third color. And the third color is in the pictures from Kohl's. And that is the color of the rugs. And I also realized I have a picture that was my BaumBaum gramma's when I was a kid. I really like how the room turned out. Five years ago, I was ready to tear out that blue speckled tile to replace it with something more current. I am so glad we didn't do that. Even though the tile is old and has some issues, it has really started to grow on me, and it feels like a real part of the house's character. All of the remodels we've completed feel so right in this house.


I'm thinking that if we ever redo this bathroom, we're gonna have to look for some more of that retro blue speckled tile. Like so many things in this house that I wanted to get rid of at first, I've come to appreciate it. I love this place.