If you are not one of the seven to twelve people who follow this blog regularly, you should know that I am currently sharing my attempt to revive a little thirty year old cottage by the bay near Grayton Beach, Florida…..

….without killing myself or my husband along the way! 

*******UPDATE*******

Recent events, including but not limited to Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma and Tropical Storm Nate have put me a bit behind schedule on sharing the progress of my little project on the bay. I’ve been getting plenty of things done– but with all the driving back and forth and moving patio furniture inside and outside and inside again; I just haven’t had the time to sit and write about it. Exactly one month ago today, I finally sat down to get things going again and not long after I finished the post below; I received a call from my son informing me that The Linger Long-er Cottage was fully a-blaze and the fire trucks were rolling in full speed ahead. (If you subscribe to Good Grit Magazine–and you really should subscribe–you can read all about it in the 2018 January/February AWAKEN issue.) Thankfully, nobody got hurt, but the renovation reporting will come to a full stop with this post. I’ll pick things up again once we have a plan in place and I hope you’ll tune in to find out:

1. Will we rebuild?

2. Will I kill my husband for burning the house down?

Only time will tell.

In the meantime, please enjoy this hopefully humorous story about the previously updated bathroom that is now charred and black.

Good times.

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I am a student of beautiful interior design and decor. Not an actual student, and certainly not an actual interior designer or decorator, but rather a student of books and magazines  who covets anything written by Dorothy Draper and Bunny Williams and Phoebe Howard as well as every copy of House Beautiful and Traditional Home and Veranda and House and Garden UK–you name it–that I have ever seen. I even have a stack of neatly organized back issues of Southern Accents which went out of business years ago because …….good taste never goes out of style.

Sometimes when I catch a home show on television and see the “before” scenes I am amazed at the choices some people make when it comes to furnishing and decorating their homes. My amazement is often accompanied by one of my most uttered phrases:

“Baskin Robins has thirty one flavors for a reason.”

For those of you who may not know; Baskin Robins is an ice cream parlor famous for having thirty one flavors available to choose from on any given day. It’s where Ferris Beuller passed out, no doubt due to the overwhelming number of choices before him. My use of this phrase has nothing to do with ice cream but rather is a polite way to describe people who make choices that I most certainly would not.

For instance, when I see the decorating choices made by the previous tenants of this cottage I feel like they were definitely black walnut people. A perfectly respectable flavor–and my grandfather’s favorite–chosen by perfectly respectable people, but number thirty one on my list for sure. Possibly even thirty two.

Within 15 minutes of closing on this house, I ripped down the dated glass shower doors and quickly replaced them with a shower curtain I inherited from my best friend’s mother during her last move. She was changing EVERYTHING out in her new house and very graciously offered to let me have first dibs.

I love all things blue and white and all things chinoiserie so when she announced that the Lee Jofa, Willow drapes, bedskirt, shams and shower curtain were up for grabs– I grabbed fast. The pattern is perfect in this bathroom and will also be used in our son’s room across the hall. It is such happy fabric and it makes me think of of my sweet friend and her mother every time I see it.

Truth be told–she also had the blue and red color way in her guest room so I bought that from her too.  What? You never know what you might need…. and it is actually providing a great fill in for our guest room until I get that all figured out a bit later down the menu.

Both of the bathrooms here are much smaller than one would hope and right now there’s no way I can change that. Storage is quite limited and you can’t blame anyone for having their belongings all along the vanity as there was really nowhere else to put them. (However, on behalf of real estate agents everywhere, I must point out that those things could have easily been placed aside by the listing agent for the photographs!)

I decided to be as thrifty as possible with the changes I made and chose not to replace the vanity but rather to have it painted. It was easy to find a great, inexpensive countertop replacement at Lowe’s and I found the faucets, cabinet hardware and lighting there as well.

The small, thin cabinets above the sink were very well made but unfortunately didn’t allow for much storage; so we opted to remove them along with the slimline mirror and switch to a mirrored cabinet. The downstairs bath is the one Mr. gets to use (You do know the secret to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms don’t you?) and so far, he has managed to keep it neat and tidy. Only time will tell if he ends up getting in trouble for slipping into a rocky road way of life.

For now, I am very happy with the results of this small space, second hand, bargain basement bathroom re-do. It works great for what we need at the moment and I’m now off to another project across the hall.