"Let's touch up the paint in the bathroom" - the sentence that started it all.
Our bathroom was needing some paint touchups so we pulled out the leftover paint that the previous owner left us. The color is a shade of baby blue. I hate it.
When it was time to paint, I couldn't bring myself to use the old stuff...
We had another gallon of grayish blue paint that I love. The idea was that I would use the new paint on the one wall that needing touching up - and it would become an accent wall for the time being.
The new paint is much darker than the old:

It's a huge improvement and it made me realize how much I couldn't stand the old color. So, I decided that I was just going to go ahead and paint the whole bathroom. Roman helped me and we put on the first coat that evening.
The next day, since we were going through all the trouble of painting the whole bathroom, the next logical step was to buy new white outlets and switches to replace the off white ones that looked dingy.
While at Home Depot, I checked out the knobs and found some polished nickel ones that only cost $1.97 each. Roman almost didn't let me get them, but I begged. Then on the end of an aisle, I saw some clearance bath hardware. I decided to look, not expecting to find anything. But then I found this:

I really liked the style, but this was the best part:

Roman reluctantly let me get the new faucet. Not only would this one look so much better, but our old one didn't work very well. The old faucet was really short so the water flowed really close to the back of the sink - if that makes any sense. Also, the hot water pressure was just a weak trickle and we never knew why.
When we got home, I continued painting while Roman installed the new faucet and outlets.

I didn't take any true before pictures, but here are some that I took toward the beginning along with the similar after shots. The painting ended up taking 3 days.




The vanity desperately needs to be repainted, I'll do that one of these days.


New white switches:


What started out as a few hour project turned into a three day project, but in the end it was well worth it. We spent $74.45 for the following: short handled paint brush for cutting in, outlet, 3 switches, 4 knobs, and a faucet.
We still have a bunch of things still to do in there like:
- replace the door knobs
- replace the tub/shower faucet
- replace the mirror
- replace the sconces
- replace the cheap clock on the back of the door
- repaint the vanity
- in the far far future, we'd replace the vanity completely. it's really oversized for the space and I can't stand the pinkish granite top
- also in the far future, we would probably add some board and batten or beadboard to make the space more interesting
Hopefully we'll find a way to do these on the cheap inexpensively as well.