Knate observed that I have put more time per square foot into the downstairs powder room (pictured below) than any other part of the house. It’s true; it was a really elaborate project. It’s a small room, and nobody is going to spend more than a few minutes at a time in it, so I figured it was a great place to go for a really intense effect.

My initial concept was much more over-the-top: inspired by the Unicorn, I wanted to paint it in yellow and hot pink stripes, and I had imagined that the picture frames would be full of super close up pictures of eyeballs. It would have been really intense and unsettling.

After thinking about it a while I realized that I would actually also like the room to look good, and not just to freak people out; I do live here, after all. So this is the toned down version, which has a lot of the same elements without being actively irritating: dark grey over light grey stripes, empty picture frames, and a pale mint green ceiling.

After I got it all done I realized that much of the light in the room was bouncing off the previously-white ceiling, and with the green it all turned kind of sickly. I bought a cheap Moroccan-style candle lantern, turned it into a lamp, screwed in a funky old-style incandescent filament bulb, and wired it into the existing switch. Yee haw, warm yellow light to complement the cold white LEDs over the sink.

I tore out the old exhaust fan while I was at it – during the last renovation someone had sprayed it full of texturing goop, and it made a horrible vibrating grinding noise which echoed upstairs into my bedroom. Not cool. I thought this would be a half-hour project, but it took a lot of fussing and fitting and adapting, and it was three days before I had the new fan working. Oh, well, it’s much much quieter now.