Making Our First House A Home: Bedroom Theme + Progress on the Office

I decided the central theme of our master bedroom is the ocean and natural sea life that doesn't look gross like preserved parrot fish or pufferfish. The ones on eBay have those ridiculous stick on eyes, and some of them have little beach hats on, which makes them even more disturbing. It'd probably give me nightmares to have them staring at me while I slept.

So far, it's been shells and starfish that I've been able to find that look nice. I'm particularly fond of my giant starfish that the cats like to smell and lick. It's now out of their reach.

I plan to do 2 canvases that are 16x20 and fit well in the area surrounding the window and then a larger canvas, maybe 24x36, for the wall we're not putting our media center against. I still have to find some shells I like that are flatter for that. If that fails, I'm not quite sure what we'll put there. My hunt for art at Goodwill and Salvation Army could be going better. I found some art of boats, but I'm not very interested in those.

There are quite a few area Goodwills and other thrift shops so I'm hopeful we will find something in the near future – at least to cover the hole in the guest bathroom, if nothing else. The recessed hole size is pretty uncommon and surrounded by 2x4s so we can't expand it. The cheapest medicine cabinet that would fit into the hole costs well over $100 and wasn't even all that attractive. It didn't look much different from the $15 one at Lowe's. No matter how I think about it, I can't quite justify that cost for a bathroom we aren't even going to be using that often. The only way I'd consider it is if we got a roommate, since I'd want a medicine cabinet in the bathroom I use.

We've moved on to the office in terms of preparing the walls. My husband finished sanding, which was much messier than I expected.

Now that we've got the dust mostly cleaned up (the carpet repair and cleaning service will get the rest) and painters tape ready, I've started to paint. I hope we have enough paint, since it looks like I'm going to have to do at least 2 coats to fully cover it. It took over a gallon to do 2 coats in the master bedroom, but it is larger so I'm hopeful we can knock this out with just 1. I'd hate to get some more paint and then have the color not quite match the rest of the walls.