Lisa: Downstairs bathroom mini-makeover!

I started getting excited for Sarah to come stay with us from New York in a few weeks, and decided to finally get around to painting the bathroom she'll use when she's here. It's been this sort of horrible, not-designed, leftover cheapo-fixtured builder-basic cave that we rarely use and therefore rarely clean. Lately it had been serving as a temperature-controlled storage area for paint supplies, and as a haven for a large infestation of spiders and the carcasses of their prey. Doesn't that sound welcoming to our guests? Here it is before:

After an industrious cleaning (and the removal of SO MANY spider parts), I rolled on some leftover primer and paint from our master bedroom. The paint has been kept inside and is still perfectly good, but our bedroom walls have faded a bit over time so that the color doesn't match exactly. Since we can't use the canned paint for touch-ups anymore, I figured we might as well use it up in another room. Blake bought a new hand-towel ring (for about $15, the only actual money we spent on this little spruce-up) to replace that weird second towel rack, and I hung some fresh white towels I'd been keeping as backups for our upstairs bathroom. I dug out some framed art from we used in one of our earlier apartments, and filled a little basket with travel-sized toiletries in case our guests forget something. The paint supplies will have to find a new home in the garage or a storage room, because the shelves of the cart are now filled with neatly-folded extra towels. Voila:

A lot better, right? It's amazing what a huge different a little cleaning and paint can make. At least it doesn't look completely neglected, and I'm not embarrassed to have guests even go in there. As I promised Sarah in our last videochat, it's not even gross at all!