Excuses, excuses

I have been away from my blog for a while, but for good reason.  No really, I promise.  I have been keeping very busy this summer and have not had the free time I had during the school year when Brandon was teaching and Noah was napping.  For one, we have been keeping busy with home improvement projects.
When we purchased our new house, we knew we were going to have to do a few updates.  Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of spare income right now, so we have been doing a lot of research online to see which jobs we feel confident in tackling ourselves.  As anyone who has visited our home (and your all invited by the way, so give me a call some time if you want to join us for dinner sometime) knows that our bathroom is wee bit tiny and a whoa bit dated.  Fifties plastic green tile with an avocado green accent-colored sink, toilet, and tub are not exactly "in" right now and I would be shocked if they ever made a come back.  Here is what our bathroom used to look like:

This picture is actually much pretty than what it looks like in person.

Now, we don't have the extra money to fix everything at once, so we have been patiently fixing in stages.  The toilet was the first thing to go as the 55 year-old toilet wasn't cutting it for #2 situations.  We got a new water-efficient toilet and had plumbers do the installation within a month of moving in.  It is the best toilet I've ever used. 

Then Brandon pulled down the wall paper, just to find that underneath this hideous paper was the same paint color to match the sink and toilet.  We were planning on repainting anyhow, but it is just a little disheartening when you pull paper down just to find something uglier. 

AHHHH!!!

Then, much to Brandon's chagrin, I had the lovely idea of taking down the plastic tile.  Much of it was coming off anyway, so I thought I would just speed up the process.  This was the most time intensive part.  The tile came up very easily, however, the adhesive behind the tile was a pain in the #2-making place to remove.  Then once all the adhesive was taken off, we had to smooth with two coats of joint compound and then sand.  Good grief, what did we get ourselves into?

When we removed the disgusting sink to removed the tile behind it, we found that indeed the sink was disgusting (50+ years of water damage), so we went out to Home Depot and purchased a new little sink for our little bathroom.  We looked at pedestal sinks, but found this one to be quite petite, which suited our needs, but with the bonus of more storage space.

 
So, after we salvaged the walls from their ugly green tile identity, we primed (and by we I mean Brandon), and painted the walls the same color we picked for the majority of our home "wool skein" from Sherwin Williams in a satin finish.  We prefer satin because as renters for most of our married life, we came to despise the easily-ruined flat paint and the overly-fluorescent glosses.  Satin-type paints are like Goldy locks, "just right."
We chose not to take the tile down in the tub as we want to replace the tile, but feel we will need to hire someone to do so and wish not to spend that money this year.  The floor will also remain as-is right now, but it is also something we would like to swap out in the next year or two.  But for now, I would say we have made huge strides in making our bathroom a thing of beauty.  Well, at least I don't feel an overwhelming urge to puke every time I walk in.

At times Brandon and I felt overwhelmed at finishing this project (we actually had some help from the Sellman's with the sink).  Have you ever tackled any home improvement jobs that you thought you weren't capable of finishing?  Did you ever screw up and ruin something before you actually fixed it?