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It's been over a week since my last post and I'm wondering, where does the time go? I've been wanting to post a trip report on the NY Tarot festival, but I'm waiting for a photo of me from our Friday night outing. When I get the photo, I'll write up the trip!

Here's a quick update on the housing situation: The bathroom is finished except for the sink, because the vanity had to be special ordered. We've been living in the house since the 1st, the workmen left on the 3rd, and we've spent much of the intervening time cleaning up the mess, putting all our furniture back, etc.

The paint color turned out really nice. It's a light grey on the walls, with the trim one shade lighter, almost white. It's subtle and cool, and I like it a lot. On the downside, the guy who painted didn't do a great job of finishing up. First of all, he didn't clean the blobs of spackle off the tile like he said he would. He couldn't hang the towel bars because the paint was still wet, which was fine. But what wasn't fine was that he didn't put up all the brackets, and the ones he did put up were backwards. So I had to take them all down, drill the holes for the ones he hadn't done, and put them all back up.

Most annoying, he drilled extra holes for the toilet paper holder, and then just left them there! There are two extra holes in the wall right next to the toilet paper holder. I've heard that this kind of thing is to be expected. But really, it seems to me that if you're going to go to all this work and effort (not to mention money) to have a nice new room, you should count on them not to leave extra holes in the wall. I talked to the contractor about it and he said they'd patch the holes when they come back to put in the vanity.

Over the weekend we went to Restoration Hardware to look for a vent cover (which I have since found out is called a floor register. Who knew). I had never been in there before, but it turns out that it's full of nice things for the bathroom! It's probably a good thing I didn't know about that store until this stage of the project. Otherwise I would have bought everything there and would have ended up spending about four times as much. It would have been a totally beautiful bathroom with a pedestal sink, white tower cabinet, gorgeous fixtures, etc. But this is a totally beautiful bathroom and at a more reasonable cost.

We did get a couple of things at Restoration Hardware: the aforementioned floor register, a cool retro lamp, and a shelf for under the mirror. We can't find a medicine cabinet that's not either 1. painted white (and thus won't match the maple vanity) or 2. hideous. So we're going to hang a plain mirror with a shelf under it, and a cabinet over the toilet. Also I bought a little thing to hang keys on that's shaped like a row of cats (you hang the keys from the cats' tails) and gave it to Pete and Judith to thank them for putting us up for two weeks.

I took pictures of the floor register and the lamp, but haven't uploaded them yet. Now that this is almost done, I can't believe I forgot to take "before" pictures of the old nasty bathroom. You would have been amazed by the difference. I should have at least photographed the big mushy spot on the wall.

Here's something funny about Restoration Hardware. They have several different styles of bathroom fixtures, all really cool and retro. Amazingly enough one of them, called "Lido," looks a lot like the towel bars we had bought at Lowe's. What luck for us! Lowe's just had your basic towel bars and toilet paper holders, but Restoration Hardware had lots of additional fixtures like a glass shelf, soap dish, toothbrush holder, and even a wacky shaving mirror that extends on a telescoping arm.

We didn't want to clutter up the wall with all that stuff so we just got the shelf. They couldn't find one in stock (one of the weird things about that store is that the entire floor is display. All the stock is in the back so if you want to buy almost anything, you have to have an employee get it for you) so they had the Cary store ship it to me. Which was very convenient and they didn't charge for the shipping.

It arrived in a couple of days and when we pulled it out of the box, lo and behold, it doesn't just look similar, it's actually the exact same thing that they are selling at Lowe's. The box was the same and everything. They had changed the name at Restoration Hardware, but the box said "Franciscan" like the ones at Lowe's.

I guess we could have special ordered the shelf from Lowe's, but without having seen it we probably wouldn't have chosen it. Still, I'm very glad we got most of the towel bars from Lowe's. They were a lot cheaper, as you might expect. I didn't write down all the prices but I do remember that the double towel bar was $80 at Restoration Hardware. I know I didn't pay that much at Lowe's.

I wonder if the other styles of bathroom fixtures at Restoration Hardware are also available at Lowe's? One of them had "Restoration Hardware" printed on the porcelain so I'm guessing that one isn't available anywhere else. Still, if I needed to buy more bathroom fixtures (which I hope I don't for a long, long time) it would be worth checking into.

It just goes to show how much of a product's appeal is in the presentation. Here I was, sighing over the cool retro fixtures at Restoration Hardware, wishing I'd seen them first, and feeling like the ones at Lowe's were plain jane by comparison. When it turns out that the ones we bought at Lowe's were exactly the same as the ones in the store! They just look cooler amidst all that blonde wood and faux-antique furniture.