It took me a long time and not a little frustration to finally get this job done!  I have been working on the guest bathroom for months, in between other projects that is.

You will have to imagine the before picture because I can’t seem to find it.  So, imagine if you will… powder blue walls, hospital white cabinets and bead board, and all of it chipped.  The ceiling had been taped when the fan was installed, but the tape was lifting too.

But the most frustrating part, yet satisfying when it was finally done this morning was this!

(“Pay no attention to the [wo]man behind the curtain!”  The Great Oz, in The Wizard of Oz.)

I finally got the mirror installed, more or less, correctly!

Old Mr. Gains, the man who built this house in the early 1950s, was a cabinet-maker.  He built this Olympic-sized medicine cabinet into the wall and it is 42″ wide, by 37″ high, and 9 inches deep.  It’s huge and there was no way we were going to be able to replace it with anything new.  That said, I really kinda liked it and saw that it had possibilities.  So I made the one side into a shadow box!  I have far to many trinkets and this gives me a dust-free place to display some of the more interesting ones.

Steps taken to get here:

1. Fill, sand, and paint every surface (porcelain objects excepted) Bob helped me with the ceiling by painting in the Kilz and then cutting in the two coats of ceiling paint.  (He also gave me lots of ‘atta-girl,” and a few pep talks when the going got tough.  I love him for his support when I can’t do it myself.)  🙂
2. Have three different plumbers out to fix leaking toilet base five times, yes FiVe!   Seems the flange was broken and someone had screwed it down to the floor.  Oh, and while the last one was here, he removed the Yeti sized hair ball that was clogging the sink drain (it was hiding way down deep in the line).
3. Clean out four layers of old contact paper from the over-sized medicine cabinet.  Two of which were painted, and one of which someone had spilled Tigress perfume!  Trust me, it does not get any better with age…
4. Send out doors of over-sized medicine cabinet for professional stripping, and prepping for painting.
5. Paint said doors and install glass into one side.  Install mirror on the other side, now REPEAT.  (I broke the mirror, trying to install it, the day before my friends came to visit from California.)  😐
6. Get frustrated and bent all out of shape securing said second mirror into frame, finally give up, and use contact cement to just glue the lath onto the back for fear of having to repeat the frustration AGAIN.  (thankyouverymuch)

So now that it is all done we need to replace all of the porcelain, but do not have a budget for that.  So, maybe by the time we can finally afford it, we can pay someone else to do it?

A job well done, makes me smile even on a gloomy day.  I will smile all winter I think.

~*~