Pretty Potty Storage and Picking Paint

As we were tearing things up in the mirror department this weekend, we took the chance, while we had all the tools out and up there already, to make a change in our less than happy looking above-potty storage situation, and the weird orange-y brown wall paint color.

Cheap cabinets, updated with nicer pulls, are still cheap

Sad cabinet door that never closed right

I had this shelf lazing around in the garage, and decided to put it to work.

 First, I needed to clean it up, and get it ready for paint.

But, I didn't sand because I am lazy.

 I love these little painter's pyramids, because you can paint both sides of something without waiting for it to dry completely.

 

I covered it in 2 coats of primer, then I painted the shelf the same color as the rest of the trim in the house.

Color Continuity or Laziness?

Then, we had to make some paint decisions.  I've painted this bathroom 3 times.  There is NO natural light in there, which makes the lighting weird, and makes colors look VERY different from the swatch in the store.

One piece of advice - if you don't like the color at the first swipe, you are not going to like it any better when it's the whole room.

If you look closely, you can see the lavender that was supposed to be light gray at the edge of the orangey-brown.

We started by grabbing every color we even remotely liked at the Lowe's paint section, and narrowed it down to 3 options.

Then we realized how tomb-like that room would be in the deep brown, and narrowed it down to 2.

Given the weird lighting, and our history of multiple attempts at painting this bathroom, we chose the lightest swatch and got rolling.  This time, I painted the ceiling the same color (because my roller slipped, to be totally honest), and it made the ceiling look a million miles high.  I really don't like the work of painting a ceiling, but it really is worth it.

Thankfully, the 4th time was a charm, and the paint actually came out lovely and soothing.  And it picks up the gray in the floor tiles so well, you can barely see where the Kiddo stepped in paint while he was helping!

Also changed out the old robe hook for a cuter one.

After the paint was all dry, I mounted the shelf, first making the Mr. sit down to ensure head clearance.

 I moved the art into the big empty space above the shelf, and added some cute basket storage.

Crisp, clean, not-broken, and still functional.  Win.