Confessions of a Lazy DIYer.

Ha!  Well, first I'm proud of myself for "finishing" the bathroom I started a few weeks ago.  However, as I look carefully around this little bathroom, I realize how lazy I am!!

When we were looking for a new home, we honestly thought our "dream home" was way beyond our financial means.  We weren't looking for luxurious details or fancy sweeping staircases or huge decks or media rooms or libraries or walk-in-closets the size of our family room.  One thing we needed was more space... for kids, not necessarily for us.  We really wanted a house with a bedroom for each child.  (In the last house, one bedroom barely fit a twin bed, and two kids shared another.) Of course, that means a five-bedroom house.  Those are harder to find in our price range.  Then, to top it off, we also wanted a dedicated guest room.  We are fortunate enough to have grandparents visit us at least once a month for a weekend, so the thought of having to shift family members around often wasn't something we wanted.

So... now we were looking at a six-bedroom house.  Ugh.  Who makes those, except in McMansions or million dollar homes?  Our hopes of finding the right house was slim.  So we wanted space, but in the bedroom department... not so much in all of those fancy-schmancy rooms.  

We stumbled across a new developer buiding in one of our dream neighborhoods.

After looking at models online and talking to their sales rep, we found a way to configure one of the models of a normal size house to fit six bedrooms.  And the icing on the cake is that two of the four kids have their own bath, and the other two share a Jack-n-Jill bath.  Perfect.  We're approaching those dreaded teens-in-the-bathroom years, and now everyone would be happy.

So... that means a lot of bathrooms to decorate, to paint... and to clean!!!  Ugh.

But, I digress... back to that bathroom I finished.  This is my daughter's bath on the top floor.  It's fairly small, but works great for her.  I wanted to make it cute, but a tad grown-up so that I wasn't repainting in another 4-5 years.  She's eleven now.

Since her favorite colors are aqua and purple, I went with a subtle periwinkle color (Eeyore in the Disney collection of Behr.)

But rather than do the whole bath in periwinkle, I added a VERY simple (aka cheap) chair rail to the bath.  Plus since the room is so small, every piece ended at a mirror, a doorframe or the shower surround, so no mitered corners needed!

It took me awhile, but finally I got the builder's semigloss white paint matched and painted below the chair rail with that paint.  I didn't do beadboard or board-n-battan, I just left it plain.  There really is not a lot of space to mess around with.

I finally got around to caulking the rail to make it smooth on Friday.  I also painted the rail again to top it off.

It was time to go back and redo the top of the rail to make it straight after the caulking.  I did that today.

Pre-tape removal.  (Print bought at Hobby Lobby)  The writing is French for bathroom.

Post-tape removal.  Ahhh... straight sweet purple line.  See?  Not only is the bathroom small, but the one wall slopes too!

Do I know how to rock the Thirty-One or what?  Yes, that is the Black Parisian Pop pattern on the Mini Organizer.  It only seemed appropriate to hold all of my daughter's beauty supplies since there is no medicine cabinet or wall shelves in there.  The accessories I chose were Paris themed.

I bought a wine-bottle rack to hold the extra towels.  "Serviette de Bain" means bath towels.

Here is another Thirty-One product, the Little Carry-All in Black Parisian Pop again.  It's the PERFECT size to hold headbands!

Now... on to the "Confessions" part of the Blog Title.  

Look below... see the "oops"?  Yes, I tried and tried to get the nails to hit studs when I was putting up this one piece of chair rail, and yet, somehow couldn't do it.  So, I gave up and decided I'm going to use a wood screw.  I'll screw it in and cover well with paint.  

Ha!

See how much it protrudes!  It hit something in the wall (who knows what!) and got stuck... I couldn't get it out at all.  Then I stripped the top.  So, rather than find someone to fix my mistake, I grabbed the paint and covered it up, hoping to camouflage the goof.  Uh... what was I thinking?  Now it's the first thing I see when I walk in there.  Blech.

Oh... and my "inspiration for those clever little French Cricut words on the wall?

See?

I am horribly AWFUL at patching holes in walls... and ridiculously IMPATIENT to try again.  These were left over from a towel rack.  My hopes were to have those words cover the awful hole-patching.  Does it work?

Ha!