Contentment in the Home - the Bathroom Edition

When I bought my house, the family who lived here before had it decorated in a country style, lots of knick-knacks, wallpaper borders, that sort of thing. They had updated the kitchen cabinets and the living room carpet looked fairly new. They had also put on an addition with a dining room and master bedroom. It looked like the only room they hadn't done anything at all to was the bath. It had a pastel pink tub and an old, not-well-sealed 5-piece surround. I'm not even sure how to describe the green color on the walls. Lime green maybe? Definitely not a color choice I would make, but it was something I would need to live with for a while. Painting the bathroom would definitely be a quick change, but eventually I would like to take out the drop ceiling, repair the plaster, put in an exhaust fan and then paint. Anyhow, a year or so after we moved in, we were at Meijer's. Before I had just been using the $1 shower curtains that you find at Big Lots or the Dollar Store, but we walked through the bath section at Meijers, and they had a sale. I found a shower curtain that, believe it or not, had the exact shade of green on it along with bright pink, blue, orange and yellow flowers. And it actually looked pretty good! I also picked up two small rugs in the same bright pink. Total cost: $19. At the Dollar Store, I found a soap dispenser, again in the same bright pink color, cost: $1. I went home, changed out the curtain, put down the rugs and filled the soap dispenser, and the change was amazing. The little room actually looked pulled together and coordinated! And with the shower curtain pulled across the tub, you don't see the ugly surround.

Since then, I've had some plumbing issues and needed to replace not only the toilet but also the floor and subflooring due to water damage along with all the plumbing in the house. The plan this summer is to sand the walls where they had to cut to get to the pipes and then patched, and then go ahead and paint. Eventually the ceiling work will wait, and I may even be able to change out the surround sometime in the future. But until then, $20 invested a few years ago and a little patch, sand and paint this summer, and we have a pretty good looking bathroom that I am content with.