News from the bathroom front

The good news is that we have just finished painting the downstairs bathroom, and it looks fabulous. The sponging-off technique came out just as I envisioned it: a subtle, opulent, warm, sort of Tuscan-stucco effect. The bad news is that we did the entire bathroom with just one quart of glaze, leaving us with an extra quart that, because it's a custom color, can't be returned. A bit of a setback for ecofrugality. But I guess, when you look at the project as a whole, not too large a setback. Perhaps we can donate the other quart to the Habitat ReStore.

And talking of the Habitat ReStore, the other good news is that we made a trip up there on Saturday and picked up four boxes of that gorgeous Italian ceramic tile that we were able to get only a sample of on our last visit. The fact that it's Italian gave me a bit of pause (hmm, that's a lot of miles to market), but the fact that it came from the Habitat store seemed to give it automatic ecofrugal cred, since it wouldn't be there if it weren't some sort of leftover material that could otherwise have gone to waste. And while I know we could probably have found some sort of tile that we would consider acceptable for less than $2.67 a square foot, this stuff looks like slate, costs way less, and will require less maintenance. Score another point for ecofrugality. The other bad news, though, is that these 14-by-14-inch tiles are too big to fit into our yard-sale tile cutter, so we'll have to do them by hand. A bit more work. But hey, fewer grout lines.

Tune in for our next exciting episode, when you may hear Amy say, "Can't we get any grout that's closer to the color of the tile?"