From brasstastic to fantastic!

This house had five major things I hated when we moved in:

1.  Wavy, stretched out carpet

2.  A powder room with a green countertop, sink, and toilet

3.  Brass EVERYWHERE (lighting fixtures, bathroom trim, faucets, cabinet knobs)

4.  Wallpaper, wallpaper, and more wallpaper

Yes, I know those are all things that can be fixed (unlike a bad house layout, a cruddy neighborhood, too few bedrooms, etc.).  We got the carpet stretched everywhere except for on the staircases (the carpet dude refused to even attempt it), and tore down the wallpaper in the powder room with the help of my amazing dad, but to replace the 160+ (no joke) brass cabinet knobs and drawer pulls in the house might require us taking out a second mortgage.

We don't have the means for a new countertop, sink, and toilet in the powder room right now, so we are just going to paint it tan (hopefully sometime in the next few weeks) and hope it helps tone down the room.  The vertically striped wallpaper and border (around the top of the walls AND the ceiling) were just crazy pants.  Thanks to my parents, we now have a great brushed nickel fixture up and some pretty brushed nickel drawer pulls, cabinet knobs, and towel holders.  They redid the Jack & Jill bathroom in their house and gave us their old stuff.  SCORE!!  Unfortunately, the faucet they had didn't fit the configuration of our sink, so we did have to buy that.  I spray painted the brass-framed mirror, so no trace of brass remains in there (except for the doorknobs, which we won't be tackling just yet).  We also had to replace the switch plate and outlet cover because they were both expertly wallpapered as well -- seriously, it had to be a professional job because the covers were matched perfectly with the paper behind such that they completely blended in and made it kind of difficult to find the switches if you didn't look closely!

I wish I had a good "before" photo, but here is one I took the day we put an offer on the house.  Thank you to Barb for being my model.

I know the walls are still unfinished, but it already looks 100 times better with that awful brass and wallpaper gone.  It's pretty hard to take a photo of a powder room, but here's the best I could manage:

Next stop: the paint department at the hardware store!