The New House that Adopted Me

I'm redecorating.  Have been for about three years now.  It's a slow transition.  This 3-for-the-price-of-1 family adopted me about seven years ago.  I was nearing parental retirement with my two nearly grown and ready to fly the coop, and I was pulled out of retirement for two new bonus little ones after meeting someone special who had started a family at a later stage in life.  Bye bye whole-bed-to-myself, hello house-I-didn't-pick!  You take the good with the bad.  I have trash pick-up and a neighborhood with swimming pools and tennis courts and such, but I also have a house that matched every other house in the neighborhood and a man who doesn't necessarily cherish my "artsy side" without considerable hesitation.

So.  The house that adopted me.  Being an artist, I do prefer to start with a blank canvas.  In some areas this house was close to being a blank canvas.  As in the saying "took everything that wasn't nailed down" is an understatement.  The previous tenant had gone to the trouble of unscrewing storage shelving, light switch plates, a toilet seat, and a number of items that had originally come with the house and taken it with her.  I can only be glad I missed the year leading up to their divorce and the first post-divorce year!  By then, my man-of-the-house still had a fully furnished personal office and he had completely refurnished the children's rooms, but other than that the décor was sparse and I had wiggle room.  With a few glitches along the way.  

I have this tiny little downstairs bathroom that somebody decided to paint red.  Really, really red.  This room is way too small to have been painted such a dark color, but in addition to the red color the painting technique that was used left raised lines from top to bottom on the walls, so a do-over would be more headache than I wanted.  I opted to stick with the red.  Red is the primary color in my master bedroom, though, and the few red décor pieces I had were already spoken for in other rooms.  

I burned a few brain cells on this bathroom, and then decided to pull out several Americana pieces I had nearly forgotten about and went with sort of an Americana theme, with some lighthouse and nautical stuff thrown in for good measure.  While hunting down anything Americana I could find in my attic stash, I came across two old mosaic pieces I'd done on cork board ... a lighthouse and a sailboat.  The lighthouse mosaic was in pristine condition, but the sailboat needed 3 tiles replaced and grout repair.  So minus the sailboat that still needs repairing, I've taken everything I could get my hands on in the attic that would fit my theme and loaded up the bathroom!  Photos below:

Lighthouse mosaic

made with tile, tesserae, vintage dishware, wood, river pebbles ...

picture frame on left painted to match ...

Declaration of Independence hand towel ...

rustic old wooden flag hanging décor and lighthouse soap dispenser ...

life preserver mirror and sailboat wall décor ...

horse painting for the horse-crazy-person in the family, lighthouse prints because we love to visit lighthouses when we go on beach vacations, and a vintage print for me ...

I can't even remember where I picked this mirror up, but the USA thingy came from waiting until 4th of July decorations went to 75% off (why not?) ...

... the second and final mosaic piece that I did that will go up as soon as minor repairs are done .... and I doubt I could fit more than maybe two or three more pieces in there, and it's a DONE DEAL!  Yay!