Sunday, September 17, 2006

Real Home Renos: Home Stretch...or is it?

So it looks like we're in the home stretch of our reno: the hardwood is completely installed, and all that's left in the principal rooms is to touch up the paint and baseboards. I should be back in my bedroom by this coming weekend. (Knock on wood.)

Our centre hall/foyer is still a work-in-progress though (as is the staircase and kitchen, but one thing at a time...) If we had stuck to our original plan of replacing the hardwood there, we'd be done. But since my mother changed her mind and decided to go with tile, we're behind schedule. Our contractor literally just finished putting in the grout for the tiles in the foyer/centre hall, but because the tiles are a glossy white/grey, the present paint colour on the walls makes the room look rather cold and institutional so the walls need to be re-painted to warm it up.

We had also planned to leave the powder room on the main floor untouched, but the last few days my mother has been making noises about replacing the tile there. To date, my mother's made changes there in a piecemeal fashion: the tiles were replaced about 15 years ago, the toilet and sink more recently, yet, no thought was given to how the pieces relate to each other. The result? A mismatched powder room that is now an eyesore given the improvements on the rest of the main floor.

Our powder room now: pink tiled floor, beige toilet, peach sink and cream cabinets original to the house...what here belongs together?

She seemed fine with leaving the powder room as is, but seeing the new tile on the floor, she's decided that she wants to re-tile after all, and she had to wake me up at 9 o' clock this morning to tell me so. Me, being grumpy from sleep, told her that if she was going to do anything in there, there was no point going about it half-assed.

After spending the day thinking about it, she's come around to my way of thinking and told me this afternoon that she's decided to go ahead with a complete renovation of the powder room(!) Normally, I'd be bothered by this flip-flop on my mother's part, but because this doesn't affect our daily living, I'm all for it. And, it seems I have carte-blanche design-wise. I ran the idea of putting a dark colour on the walls and she seemed OK with it, so now I'm really excited!

I started leafing through the clippings of bathroom ideas in my design folder and I'm torn between deep drama on the one hand and refined elegance on the other. The former because I love the new Ralph Lauren Regent Metallics line of paints and the latter because the colours in the rest of the house are more refined and subdued. Whatever the mood, I quite like the idea of having a bath console that looks like a piece of furniture, similar to this one to the left from the Pottery Barn.

I have a few weeks to bring my design ideas into focus though as the contractor we have in mind for the job won't be available until mid-October. It looks like there's more Depot in my future...

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