Making Mistakes Work

I'm often asked how I did my bathroom.

It is a question I usually fumble when answering, because the answer is I did it by a series of mistakes.  And by mistakes, I don't mean accidents, they were flat out mistakes.

Here is the room when I started.

I am going to take the time to apologize here for the pictures.  It is teeny-tiny, small, like 4ft x 4 ft small room, so taking decent pictures is difficult with out the correct lens, which I don't have.

Well, here is the bathroom when we got the house.  Very neutral in color, and sporting a lovely border, and angel theme. Not really my cup of tea.

I was dying to get the border down and get a fresh coat of paint on the walls.  I did not have a specific color in mind when I was shopping for paint, I just wanted something light and sort of sandy in color.  I thought I hit the oops paint jack pot, I bought what I thought was a light sand color, what I got was this....

Yes, you are seeing that right, no need to adjust your monitors, it is the same color.  The only reason I know this picture was taken after I painted, is the border is gone.  I really did not like this paint color, like I really really did not like it.  They had used this same color in the Master bedroom and it made me depressed and angry.  So I needed to do something to make it work.

I remembered the decals I got from Ikea ($2 for 2 packs) and thought I could use them in the bathroom to distract from the color...

I liked it.  I went ahead and put up 2 more trees.  Patted myself on the back and called it a day.  I could work with this....

That is until they all started to peel off the wall.  The combination of humidity and the texture of the wall was a deadly combination to the adhesive on the back of these decals.  So, my solution now needed a solution.

Silhouettes, I like the look of silhouettes.  I could just pick a color, paint over the decals, remove the decals and be left with a lovely silhouette of the trees.  Off to Sherwin Williams, to get one of their Colors to Go.  I selected a pretty green.

I have to apologize, that I don't actually have a picture to show you of the results.  I was so dissapointed I didn't even take a picture.  In a nutshell, it worked out, but the detested, hated color looked like crap under the pretty green.

So, I was put back into thinking mode.  I decided to just paint in the image.  I went to Home Depot got a Glidden paint tester and ran back home.  I started to paint.  It was a slow and tedious project. 

But it was the final step.  I was finally happy with the results.

 I am glad I stuck with it and rolled with the punches.  What I ended up with is not something I would have started out to create, but I like that it is different and fun, for a very small guest bath. The best part is it only cost me $13*.

The moral of the story, don't get discouraged.  Just flip the script and think of a solution.  It can work itself out in the end.

-Laurie

*not including the mirror, which I had a gift card for, so net result it was free to me.