Project Before: the Bathroom

We have lived in our house for four years. During those four years, we (read: I) have painted two rooms: the kids' rooms. The Boy's room was done by me while I was 8 months pregnant. I live to procrastinate. I really like my house and I would really like to paint more rooms but there are two obstacles:

1) I have no design sense whatsoever. I don't know what looks good! Seriously, I buy outfits off the mannequins so I can make sure they actually go together.

2) The Man fears change. Seriously. It took me breaking up with him to get him to propose marriage - but that's another long and involved story with lots of overly-dramatic sighs and such. At one point, I wanted to paint the kitchen a cool sage green. I had five different paint samples taped to the wall. Periodically, I'd ask him to tell me which one he liked best. He never could decide, always had a reason for not choosing one. Those samples were up over a year before I finally took them down, in defeat. Similar story with samples in our bedroom. Turns out he really didn't like my design idea. Fine. I just painted the Boy's room that way, instead. Bawahahah!

Early on in our marriage, I went to a Super Saturday and painted giant USA letters in aged colors. I loved them! I set them on the entertainment center in our condo. Once we moved to the new house, the entertainment center was now filled with family pictures so the letters were stuffed in a cabinet. I've always wanted to bring them back out, maybe with other objects along the same theme or color scheme. Alas, all my walls were "New House White" and the letters just didn't seem to go anywhere. Then I hit upon an idea: why not paint the downstairs bathroom to match the letters? Then I could call it my "Americana" bathroom! I would even try a really cool faux finish technique that I admired/obsessed over.

That was two years ago.

This morning, I taped off the moulding and the counter, removed the light fixtures and reviewed the faux finish cd I bought oh-so-long ago. Here are the before shots:

Small bathroom (5x6) next to the kitchen. The Man has Memorial Day off and is taking off tomorrow. He's already edged in the base coat. He is rolling the rest of it tonight. Tomorrow, we frottage! Should be exciting. Oh, and da Boo "helped" with some of the tape. Can you guess where?