$9.00 granite countertop

This picture is equally as ugly as it is bad quality. This is a "before" shot of one of 2 motor home sized bathrooms in my house. Notice the toilet is missing (like the bathroom didn't have enough problems as it was-we had to throw tree roots into the equation). Actually, I just noticed that it's right there, in the bathtub, creating the need for about 5 gal. of bleach! Anyway, this is what our hideous bathrooms looked like when we bought the house, that's right, they were identical. Because in the 80's this looked so cool that you would've wanted two of them.

This is what it looks like now, only about part way through our lipstick on the pig job. I refinished the cabinet with the same "poor man's wood grain" as I did on my garage door. Painted the walls with some leftover paint my Dad's girlfriend had (except for that one patch behind the toilet where the drywall got jacked up). And after a toilet mishap- aka my boyfriend cracked our old one somewhere during the tree root in pipes saga-we bought a new Jacuzzi toilet with the gift card my friend got me for my birthday (thanks Josh G!). Probably the only Jacuzzi I will ever own! The old faucet was replaced with an oil rubbed bronze one I got for $15 - sink included!-on Craigslist. And topped off with a new Better Homes and Gardens mirror from Wal-Mart. BUT ON TO THE GRANITE-I found these 9 granite tiles at my local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store Luckily for me my boyfriend is pretty talented too, I knew he could slap these tiles on in an afternoon & change the whole look of our guest bathroom! He did the smallest grout joint he could then filled in the gaps with a black epoxy grout. Because he and his brother do the occasional tile side job, everything else he used was left over from other jobs. He sealed it with a spray & wipe stone sealer & used a clear caulking around the edge of the sink. It's not what I would've chose if we were paying full price (which by the way is $9.00/sq. ft. at Lowe's!) but it looks a heck of a lot better than that truck stop motel bathroom knockoff!!

Color Dilemma - Help me Decide!

First of all, I want to say sorry for my recent blog neglect. September was an extremely busy month for me! A friend & co-worker of mine had her 2yr old son in the hospital for most of the month-obviously, she was there with him every day. While she was gone I was able to fill in her position at work for her, so she wasn't so behind in things when she came back. For those of you that don't know I'm a stay at home mom so taking over her full time position was a big change for me. Although it resulted in me getting a make my own hours position & kept the whole department from falling behind, things pretty much came to a standstill home.

In the meantime, we've been making some pretty big changes in our front yard. For anyone whose seen my house, you'll remember that there was nothing but weeds & a dried up crappy lawn when we bought the place. So far we've taken the lawn out (the dirt was so compacted that our friend had a hard time tearing it up with his tractor!), put in a large Mediterranean/drought tolerant flowerbed, added a "dry creek bed" with river rock, hacked back our overgrown mulberry tree, & added a couple herb gardens.

So what I need help with is deciding what color I should refinish the two huge urns I got at Lowe's (these were originally $160 ea. I got two of them on clearance for $60 total!) Part of the reason I got them so cheap was that one of them had some damage to it. The finish was flaking off around the top (these are made of lightweight fiberglass/plastic material). So I plan on scrubbing off any loose flakes & using the spray primer made for plastic then putting a regular spray paint over the top of that. If any of you have done a similar project for something that is an outdoor item I'd appreciate your input.

Here's a picture of the vase/urn with the damaged top. You can see how the shiny finish is flaking off & the dull color underneath is showing through.

This is a bad shot but it shows the fountain in my herb garden that matches it almost exactly. The reason I want to change the color is that I don't think the burgundy looks good against the terra-cotta color of our house. There's too much brown going on in our front yard & we need to break it up with some color. What I need you to take into consideration is, whichever color I paint the new urns has to look ok with the fountain (I think both do, I'm just not sure if it's going to start to to look too cluttered with the different finishes).

These are the two colors I'm trying to decide between, I think either one of these will go okay with the house color.

I would add a brown glaze over the top of whichever color I went with so it would age the look of the finish a little more, like this one below.

Here's an example of the green on an actual urn, I have spray paints very close to both of these colors (the yellow is just a tiny bit lighter).

So what do you think? I need all the input I can get on this! Keep in mind that my house is a terra cotta color with a walnut stain on my garage & front doors as seen in my faux wood doors posting here. These two huge vases will sit on either side of my garage door & will soon have some nice big Mediterranean style lanterns installed above them to top them off. I think we're finally getting a break from this little rainstorm we just had so let me hear your ideas asap so I can paint these while we still have decent weather!

One last thing to consider is that I do plan on eventually planting something in these, probably something that will hang down over the top of the urn ( I'm thinking Ivy Geranium or something like that to stick with the Mediterranean look). They're so tall that I can't plant anything upright because it would hit the lights we're installing above. With the plants draping over the sides it will maybe downplay some of the color of the urn.

I'll be waiting for your comments!