Guest Bathroom: Goodies So Far

Boy, water damage and drywall are pretty boring.  Why don't we talk about something more fun, like the goodies we've gotten so far for the bathrooms!

Our first purchase, even before we dove in headfirst and discovered *&%# water damage did anything to the bathroom, was a yard sale light fixture.  We love yard sales (I was so excited for yard sale weather that it was even on our spring to do list), and we especially love yard sales in nice neighborhoods.  We really lucked out with this particular yard sale; the newly-built home we happened upon belonged to a contractor who was trying to get rid of items from other home renovations.  (Let me just say that this house was gorgeous.  A little modern for my taste, but I have a feeling I'll be seeing this house in Better Homes & Gardens soon.)  There was tons of stuff we would have loved to take home, but ultimately this light fixture called our names.  Originally marked at $10, but the owner didn't blink an eye when I asked if she'd take $5 instead.  Score!!  Considering most of the full-price fixtures we were looking at were at least $40, we're considering this a steal.  I'm writing a separate post about cleaning it up and installing it (once we get that far...).  One shade looks a little wonky in this picture, but it just wasn't screwed on right when we bought it.

I really wanted to install shelving above the guest bathroom toilet, but my wine crate idea wasn't going to work out (I mentioned here that no one in our area gets wine shipped in crates anymore, plus we've already done it in the dining room).  So what to do?  We talked about using IKEA's floating Lack shelves, but $15 a pop was more than I was interested in spending, especially since I wanted multiple shelves.  A tight budget meant I was headed toward repurposing a thrifted/free item.  We tossed around a few possibilities, like using a dresser drawer.

Source: bhg.com via Mrs. Great Indoors on Pinterest

But none of those ideas really stuck.  Until we happened upon this friendly guy at Southeastern Salvage in Chattanooga while home for Easter this past weekend.

I loved the color and the size, and it was basically a compromise on the wine crate idea (we would hang it with the base against the wall).  But -- wop wop -- it was $16.  Another dead end, or so I thought until we went to Mr. GI's family furniture store and found this set of three Amish-made wooden crates for $11 with the family discount!  Besides the price, the nice thing about these crates is that they're made of real oak, not the thin composite stuff the other crate was made of.

I'm considering painting these the same color as the crate we found at Southeastern Salvage, which according to the awesome Sherwin Williams ColorSnap app on my phone, matches most closely to "Moody Blue."  That bit on the right is a picture of the crate I took in the store.  Neat, huh?  I think it would be a fun pop on the wall.

Another piece of good luck was this pedestal sink we found for the master bathroom.  Mr. GI is constantly trolling Craigslist for anything we could have a use for, and he was lucky enough to pounce on this $40 pedestal sink right after it was posted.  Considering a similar sink would cost upwards of $100, we're definitely considering this a Craigslist win.  It even came with a faucet (admittedly not the prettiest).  And, yeah, we're storing it in our master bedroom for the time being.  Don't judge.

We tested out two different vinyl tiles for the guest bathroom, so Mr. GI used the reject tile as protection for the master bedroom floor.  :-)

Mr. GI and I have been obsessively checking Lowe's "Oops" paint section for the last few months, and it really paid off in the last few weeks.  I'm considering one of these for the vanity, but I haven't had a chance to test them out yet, so we'll see.  I was already considering using Olympic One (paint and primer in one) for the walls and vanity, so it's nice to get a super cheap tester!

Our last two finds are small but awesome.  I knew we needed shower curtain hooks but figured I'd be able to find them cheaper than the $9 hooks at Lowe's.  TJ Maxx/HomeGoods for the win again!  And since we're painting the vanity some yet-to-be-decided shade of gray, our current silver cabinet knobs won't work.  These white Lindsdal knobs should be fun against a gray vanity!

Even though we've definitely hit road blocks on our bathroom project, it's nice to know that we've got some awesome stuff waiting to be installed.

What fun things have you found for your house lately?  Any other successful yard sale stories out there?  We're still looking for an affordable oval mirror for the guest bathroom (which turns out to be harder to come by than you'd think), so we're hoping for another yard sale miracle!

Obviously we paid cold hard cash for all these purchases, so we weren't perked in the slightest for any of these purchases.  Just celebrating our luck!!

Follow along with all of our guest bathroom happenings so far:  our dream, the before, mildew surprise!*, and drywalling, plus my Pinterest boards for the guest bathroom and master bathroom.

*Totally gross, but mildew surprise sounds like something you'd be served at a school cafeteria....  I definitely meant that we were surprised to find the mildew, not eat it.  Ewww.