NJ Blowout: Tales from a Born-Again Guidette: Weekend Activities

Ah, Ikea. The unanimous relationship-tester. Tons of screaming kids, confused tiny people with giant carts, and aggressive New Jersey natives vying for the attention of the overworked, overmeatballed Ikea employee.

Ours was no exception, and we very nearly murdered each other after spending hours wandering Ikea and Home Depot. Rest assured that I would have written here about murdering Tim or being dead.

Can't start my day without a wholesome box of Dryck Flader, which I believe is Swedish for "gross flower juice." I blame this juice for our bad day.

I had a carefully-planned list for each store and each item I needed for our projects. The problem is, Ikea and Home Depot are roughly the size of airports, meaning that accompanying parts are thousands of miles apart. Tim, who already didn't want to be there, gets cranky when we have to wander around in search of help. I get frazzled in stores very easily, so my body kind of does me a favor and lapses me into this zombie-like trance. My friend tailed behind me in Target for ten minutes before I noticed. I think I was somewhere between dishwasher liquid and lightbulbs.

Yesterday, I painted the bathroom. I figured half-walls would be a good way to start. I took all of the hardware down, spackled all of the gaping holes in the crumbling drywall, and peeled away a bunch of paint before wondering whether or not I should be doing that.

Before

After

The pictures aren't that great, but basically I installed 3 shallow glass shelves, and replaced the rattly, coming-out-of-the-wall plastic towel rack with 2 brushed nickel hooks to save space. The new wall color is a nice desaturated ocean-y blue that matches the tiles and looks better in more light (I'll post a better picture later). I re-installed the big wall mirror that was here when we moved, and took down that ridiculous desk lamp. The mirror weighs more than 10 pounds and it was fun to see that the nailed-in hanger hook fell right out of the wall when I took down the mirror.

We are in talks with our landlady about replacing the overhead light fixture for something that lets in bright white light. I have yet to install our big circle mirror behind the door (so we can see the backs of our heads for hair trims, very important...) and a couple pictures on the walls above the toilet.

I've spent a lot of time online looking at moms' DIY blogs to see where they got their inexpensive shelving/lights, because if you just search "storage solutions for small bathrooms," you're going to get some unrealistic bullshit. Why? Because first of all, the articles are written by HouseBeautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, or Martha Stewart's Commode or something, and their "problematic bathrooms" are always bigger than my entire house. These assholes looking for a spot to store their monogrammed washcloths could probably just buy another bathroom and solve their problem.