Bathroom: The Reveal

OH. EMMM. GEE.
You guys.
It's finally really, really REALLY done!

The past month I literally only left my house to go to work or home improvement stores.
I haven't seen or talked to friends or family since Halloween.
My mom called worried that I had fallen off the face of the earth.
I did kind of...or more like, down the sewage drain of our bathroom toilet (not really).

Anyways, I am FINALLY proud to say it's done and we are THRILLED.
Like, fill up the bath with champagne and slosh around thrilled.
Sit on the ground and stare at the sparky chandelier thrilled.
Walk past the room four hundred times a night and smile like a child on Christmas thrilled.
You get the idea.

Let's take a quick lil' walk down memory lane at the before, or, as I like to call it, the reason we almost didn't purchase the house because I cried like a baby and scared the realtor when we walked into this room:

DIS-GUS-TING

And this is the "look" we were headed in:

And THIS, my friends....is the final product....ENJOY!!

"You are my Favorite" framed art, ceramic giraffe and rhino, Christmas trees, & fragrance diffuser: Hobby Lobby
Acrylic tray, gold latte candle, glitter "love" art, "oh what fun!" box, & turqoise tray: T.J. Maxx
White drapery: Target

Here is our FINAL budget:

Labor + cement board/copper pipes:    $3,260
Floor + wall slate:    $2,053
Amazon.com (sink, lighting, shelves):    $706
Ace Hardware (paint, misc. parts):    $392
Menards (toilet):    $317
DC Liquidators (local furniture store):    $223
Home Depot (shower & misc. parts):    $211
Hobby Lobby:    $147
T.J. Maxx:    $118
Sherwin Williams:    $51
Target:    $30

Grand Total:    $7,508

With my original budget of $5K I think we did a decent job keeping everything in line.
I did not anticipate stopping by Ace Hardware 27 times between the two of us, but we got it done and under the standard 5% of the home-budget that you will read about on the internets. We did our reno at 2.5% and I think the return will be twice that.

We did have a few smaller snags in the design.
At first, I picked out a beautiful blue-ish gray wall paint from Sherwin Williams, along with a fuschia oil-based paint (to re-do a piece of furniture). Once the paint was on the walls I decided it didn't go with the room and went to Ace Hardware to buy new paint. I ended up with the one you see in the photos; a warmer gray called "Feathers of a Dove" from Valspar.
For some reason, choosing the paint color was completely agonizing. I knew the one that was already painted was wrong, but choosing the RIGHT shade of gray just seemed so daunting.
So I took home 3,000 paint samples and taped them up to every wall in the room, in different lighting, for hours, debating between three colors and then having my husband choose this one and that was it.  I love it!

Also, the furniture re-do was a total disaster. I bought this cute little cabinet that had a fun laundry drawer from DC Liquidators for $70. It was white so I had planned to paint it hot pink as a nice pop of color. Well, having never painted with oil-based paint, I didn't know what to expect. I originally wanted to just spray the furniture since I am used to taping and all that, but they didn't have the right color. So, my frustrating journey started with me painting on a gloppy coat of the pink paint, hating it, washing it ALL. OFF. with paint thinner. Then trying my hand at a turqoise/gold combo of spray paint. It came out BEAUTIFULLY. But, after the tile went in and the paint went up, I realized that a pop of color wasn't necessary and would probably compete with the space. So then I decided, well, I'll just spray it back to white and be done. I don't know what went wrong, but spraying one spray on another totally didn't work. So I tried sanding the first spray paint to get it something to grip to and it still didn't work.
It is now sitting in my basement where I threw a fit and left it.
I ended up re-purposing a mirrored cabinet from our bedroom in its place. But then had to buy ANOTHER side table for my bedroom, dropping another $60.

But we are over the moon ecstatic with how this looks!
Now to kick back and enjoy a Thanksgiving feast!