Bathroom Before and After, Seahorse-Style

This weekend, Mr. W and I went up to our new house and began what will likely become a years-long process of cleaning/fixing up/remodeling. We had a very ambitious to-do list and, of course, ran out of time when we were only about halfway through it.

But we trimmed up a lot of unwieldy rose bushes in the front yard (see my battle wounds below), made headway with the temporary sprinkler setup, and got a fair amount of cleaning done.

The room that felt closest to being temporarily "finished" at the end of the weekend was the main bathroom. Sure, the original linoleum flooring is still in it, its pink and blue flecks and sparkles sadly faded, but overall it feels very cute and kitschy and clean. Here are the before and afters:

Most of what we did was just scrub the crap out of the man mess. (Why are boys so dirty?) The tile is in great shape—even though we think its original to the house—and the room had been freshly painted, so it was just a matter of wiping down the walls a bit. And of course, hitting every surface with Ajax with bleach.

The one big sticking point was the toilet... Hard water had stained and corroded it pretty badly inside and, frankly, Mr. W and I wanted to be able to put our tooshies on something brand spanking new. So after a quick trip to Home Depot, we had a shiny new white porcelain champion. (There was literally a toilet model called The Champion. I totally wanted it.)

I'm feeling very affectionate towards the seahorse tiles right now. We'll see how long that lasts...

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to make it over to Solvang's "Danish Days" weekend festival. We did, however, see this gem when we were driving back to the house after Home Depot.

That is a parade float with a giant pan of aebleskivers in it. Classic.

We also met about half a dozen of our neighbors and everyone is SO nice. It was hard to come back to LA. We are so ready to begin our lives as house-rehabbing farmers. Sigh...