Mirror, Mirror, Off the Wall

Has anything about your house ever irritated the crap out of you?  So much so that ripping it out RIGHT NOW seemed like the thing to do?

Meet my bathroom mirror.

It's 4 feet, 5 inches wide, and 34 inches tall. It goes right down behind the faucet, and catches every splash, smear, and finger print.

Because it's so large, it's got a pretty wide angle, and there is no place safe to be undressed and middle aged in that bathroom. No where. My self-esteem has never been that sturdy.

Hate is not too strong of a word.

Now to be honest, I've been living with this monstrosity for two years. But suddenly, while I was up the step ladder last weekend painting the ceiling, I caught a glimpse of my scabby knees and a particularly unbecoming view of my own thighs I still cannot unsee,  and something snapped inside me. That thing was coming down.

To be on the safe side, I taped it up with lots of painters tape, so in case it broke coming down I didn't cut myself.

It turns out I'm grateful in more ways than one I got determined to take it down. The bottom was simply resting on the top of the backsplash in metal edge that wasn't actually fastened to anything. The top was held to the wall with two screws. I don't know what was really holding it up there except habit and a slight discontinuity in the laws of physics. I also had to remove the hand towel hoop just to get it out of there.

It weighs about 55 million pounds, too.

Now that it's gone,

I have the opposite problem. No way to know if there's still lunch in my teeth. I'm not minding so much, actually, though after measuring I've realized that I will need a custom-size mirror to fill this space. I'm just not going to fill up so much of the space. In the meantime, I need to find a temporary mirror.

Oh, and that other thing I mentioned.

The ladder barely fits in the bathroom, so to get out the door or even to the other side I'm stepping in the tub (the location from which I took this photo) or walking across the counter on the other side.

But after mirror and ladder wrangling for half a day, I had a painted bathroom ceiling:

None of these photos are particularly pretty, but that just means I'm at the stage where things have to get a little worse before they start getting better. And I've got motivation to get a move on, since my sister will be here in two weeks. I'd best bust a move.