Stuck in Cary: Volume 4 ... THE BATHROOM IS FINISHED!

This may be hard to believe for anyone who has not had their downstairs bathroom under construction for 2+ months, but Friday was one of the happiest days of my life. My amazing husband and amazing father-in-law finally finished! Sweet sweet Ben made a promise (possibly against his will, but that's irrelevant) that it would be finished by the time my friends arrived and, although it was truly down to the wire, he didn't disappoint.

To be fair, we flip-flopped on how we wanted to handle the updates a number of times. "Let's put in a stand-alone vanity" / "Oh we can't, because we're out of tile". "Let's buy a scrap piece of granite and cut it to fit our stupid custom-sized counter top" / "Just kidding, it's going to cost $200 to get the granite cut". A lot of flip-flopping. So when we finally came to an agreement that we would purchase pre-cut "granite" from Home Depot and my talented FIL would cut it to fit our stupid custom-sized counter top, it became a race to the finish.

Before:

Ugly Ugly brassy fixtures, horrible blue paint

Wallpaper that was a pain in the butt to take down (at least it appeared to be, ask Ben) 

More ugly brassy fixtures, I hate you mid-90's construction 

Poor painting job which resulted in blue all over the floor boards

Things "we" (read: they, with my supervision / sustenance by providing food and drink) accomplished:

• Tearing out fixtures (toilet paper holder, counter top, mirror hanger, towel rack)
• Ripping down poorly applied wallpaper ... to reveal horrid bright ugly blue & green paint
• Painting a beautiful gray/purple color

New flowers, New toilet handle and no-slam seat (sounds silly, but it's cool!)

Polished nickel fixtures - on places where there are actually studs!

And Beanie hand-scraped up all the paint off the floor boards

Fancy rectangle sink

Pretty, pretty new light fixture with beautiful marbled shades & mirror

Installing a great multi-colored granite-esque counter top and fancy new sink

Needless to say, I'm super excited. Once I recover from the 12 extra people who were staying at my house all weekend, you may all (read: the 4 of you that might occasionally read this blog) come over and use my beautiful new bathroom. Huge thanks to Ben & Beanie for rocking it out.