Powder Room: Before

Our house is old.  When we tell people that they often nod and agree that theirs is, too, but ours is really old.  Its construction dates from 1938, which may be younger than some, but the previous owners were clearly on a tight budget and the repairs they made ranged from humorous (lots of masking tape and string involved) to potentially dangerous.  That is when repairs were actually made.  Many were just skipped altogether.  When we bought the house we were given 44 days by our insurance company to update to a circuit breaker, which we did, and we needed to install a shower (the house had none), a furnace and, pretty quickly, a water heater.  We did install a fence in the backyard, which cured our neighbors of using our property as a shortcut, but other than that an a bit of tiling, we haven't done all that much.  Sure we've decorated, but in terms of real work, not really.

Well, that's about to change!  Tuesday we have electricians coming in to bring our powder room into the 20th century!  Not 21st - 20th.  The only power we currently have in there comes from a medicine cabinet that, fittingly, has two burnt out light bulbs.  All of our lighting is provided by an elaborate system of extension cords, which looks horrible.  Also, because of the "no power" situation, we don't have a fan, which means that there is a mold issue and the wood around our window has completely rotted.  Good times.  We just picked up a combination ceiling light and fan and switches, so we'll be able to turn on a light as we enter and run a fan as we shower like normal people.  I also want to get the lights in the vintage medicine cabinet working, since it's kind of fabulous, or will be when it's no longer a big old white elephant hanging on the wall.

Even Pinky the Cat can't stand looking at this cord spaghetti.

After that we really need to paint and tile.  Right now the floor is covered with astroturf, not because we were trying to be edgy (although the astroturf has served us admirably for years), but because tiling seemed like another headache.  There are currently asbestos tiles under that turf, but they're so dried out and broken that we've been told it's really not an issue anymore.  So we'll be painting (pink again, but with a much better primer) and tiling.  I think we're going to use this for the floor:

And I want to tile the outside of the tub while we're at it, since it's wood.  I know, but keep in mind there was no shower in there when they installed the wooden tub!  I'm thinking of white for that job as well, but with some fun accents.

Here's one more "before" shot.  I really want to have all of this done before Thanksgiving.  Wish us luck!