Another Labor Day passes, heralding the end of the summer holiday season, and once again we've not gone on a vacation anywhere. Every year for the past three or four, we swear that we are not going to let summer get away from us without taking a trip, and every year, work/projects/life intrudes and we keep putting it off, and now here we are. Sigh. Still, I suppose it's best that we didn't spend any money on a week at the beach this year, since we're having to pay a good bit for the renovations at The Hellhole. Of course, Matt is saving us tons of money but there's a lot that needs replacing/repairing even so.

On that note, I have been extremely irked trying to buy bathroom hardware/fixtures. You would think that big companies like Price Pfister, Moen, Delta, etc. would make matching sink, bathtub and shower fixtures, but if you thought that (like I did) you'd be WRONG. Every time I found, say, shower/tub handles that I liked, I looked for the corresponding model/line in a sink faucet but it either didn't exist, or didn't exist in the size I needed. This happened going the other way, too, finding a nice sink faucet assembly and trying in vain to match the shower stuff to it. I mean, I realize that matching is a very big thing for me, but wouldn't that be logical for most people? If you wanted this design/finish for one area, wouldn't you want the other to match? In the end, it doesn't really. The items are the same color (oil rubbed bronze in one bathroom, brushed nickel in the other) and similar in design, but not exactly the same. That's just weird to me - wouldn't a contractor, especially, just want to buy 25 bathroom's worth of XYZ, and not spend hours on the internet trying to match it to something that's kinda/sorta like it for the other area? Grrr.

It wasn't like I was making my job more difficult by only looking at sale/closeout items. I was just looking wherever, for something I liked. I mean, I wasn't going to get ridiculous about it and spend nearly two thousand dollars for a bathtub faucet (I'm so not kidding - did you know that was even POSSIBLE? I didn't a week ago...) but honestly I was more concerned with looks, quality and functionality more than price. I wanted something I liked, since I'm going to have to live with it for quite some time, though like I wrote I wasn't going to be stupid about it either.

If you're interested, this is the faucet for the front bathroom and this one is going in the master. If you hate them, don't tell me; I'm already disgruntled enough about everything not matching perfectly. We've replaced a lot of accessories and stuff in the master: towel bar, shower curtain rod, tp holder, hand towel rack, soap dish, trash can, switchplates and sanitizer dispensers, and it doesn't exactly all match each other, though it is all brushed nickel and similar in design. I'm going to try to do that up front as well.

We also continued the brushed nickel theme into the master bedroom, replacing the curtain rods and hanging hardware. I ordered some new curtains from JC Penney last weekend and they're supposed to be here Friday - I got the scarf valance and two panels per window in "seagrass". (Link is weird because it's Flash and not a jpg, but what I'm going to do is the 4th little picture across the bottom, two straight panels and the draped valance.) I've had the same draperies in the bedroom since I moved in more years ago than I care to think about; I suppose it was about time. This sort of continues the theme for the bathroom where I've had brushed nickel curtain holders for some time, and swagged a sheer valance across the top like I'll do with the scarf panel. I am very fond of those curtain holders; they are topped by small globes of pink depression glass. Real pink depression glass, so let's not talk about how expensive certain faucets/hardware are, or it might occur to Alan to ask about those curtain holders, even though they were purchased way back in the pre-Alan days. Hmm...I'm pretty sure I paid my mom back for those.