"mirror in the bathroom/please talk free"

When David and I moved into this house six years ago, it had three bedrooms and two baths. Not for long. A few weeks later, the "master bath" (that belongs in quotes because if you lean over in there even slightly you smack your head against a wall) started smelling distinctly of mildew. And I mean distinctly. A few inspectors and a lot of head-shaking and tsk-tsking later, we learned we had serious water damage. Shortly after that, David took a sledge hammer to the place (not because of his anger issues--to uncover the moisture) and brought it down to the wood. And shortly after that, we closed the door and have hardly opened it since.

Not that our other bathroom is exactly capacious. And now that Jarrah has gotten old enough to jostle us at the mirror with her hot rollers and liquid eyeliner, we were really missing that second bathroom. For a while, that was just too bad. But David's company recently merged with GoPro, and let's just say a tiny 3-D Easter egg was uncovered.

And today was finally the day. We had met with a contractor a year ago, and really liked him and his work. We met with him again this week, and today we spent a blissful (who knew?) couple of hours at the tile and plumbing showrooms, and picking out cabinets.

It amuses me that I'm the first to tell you that a) I can't make a decision to save my life and b) I really have no strong opinions about aesthetic matters. Then you turn me loose in a tile store and this happens:

1. "I like warm, yellow-y tones. No grays."
2. "Clouds really appeal to me."
3. "Not too much pixelation. Nothing too busy."
4. "Can we get that shinier?"
5. "I'm crazy about bright color. Especially blues and greens."
6. "Can we do the whole thing in glass? Oooh, like that abalone glass?"
7. "I absolutely cannot have dark wood. Something cherry-ish. Warm. Orange-y."
8. "Brushed nickel, I think. No chrome."
9. "Nothing flat white. I prefer egg shell, or vanilla."
10. "Can the sink have a really big lip? So much easier to clean."

I learned about "crema marfil" (doesn't it sound like a dessert?) and what a backsplash is. Jarrah amused herself writing notes to our gorgeous consultant, Shonda, and our contractor, Ryan, would occasionally steer me gently away from stuff that costs a million dollars (funny how I seem to be an expert on that stuff--an expert on gravitating towards it, at any rate.)

In the photo, you can see the floor tile at the far left (looking more gray here--it's actually very golden), with the shiny shower tile at near left. Both of these have clouds, which I love. The little squares are the shower floor, and above that is the trim tile (for the backsplash and a shower wall stripe.) The stick represents the crema marfil for the vanity top. The other photo shows a close-up of the trim tile--a mixture of stone and glass tile, with a little green thrown in for me.

It's going to take a long time (nearly a month!) to effect this transformation, and since the bathroom is in our bedroom, and they have to move two walls, I'm guessing we will not be sleeping in there. That part is a bit worrisome, but we're hoping to be in Australia at the time.

When it's done, it should be so beautiful that I'm going to want to throw a party in there. But it might have to be a mosh pit party, because that's the only way we're going to fit more than two people simultaneously in that space.