When we bought our house in March 1999, one of the primary reasons we chose it over others we had seen was that we didn't need to "do" anything to it.  No screamingly offensive decorating, most things worked, etc.

It didn't, however, take long until the gold, brown, and gray color palette from 1982 started to really annoy me.

The first room I tackled in November 1999 was the 1/2 bath (or powder room) on the first floor that is just to the right of the front door.  It's walls were upholstered (come on, it was REALLY chic in the early 80s!) in a gold fabric with a tiny white diamond shaped pattern.  The cabinets (like every other cabinet in our home) had turned yellow from the original pickled whatever because of the shellac aging.

 What I found when beginning to remove the fabric from the walls was that it had been done extremely well, i.e., there were about a million staples (that had 1/8" heads and were about 3/4" long) in the piping around the window, door, in the corners, at the baseboards and ceiling.  I resorted to using an ice pick to remove them.  And the fabric had been on the walls for 17+ years and was loaded with dust, and probably other stuff I don't even now what to think of.  Under the fabric was batting that was secured to the walls with, you guessed it, even more staples.  But at least these were normal size.  The "virgin" sheet rock was under that.  But it was not smooth and wonderful.  There were holes from the stapling and the staple removing and bits of blown on texture from the ceiling.

So I decided to wallpaper the powder room.  Since I still had hope that I could someday take the cabinets back to natural wood and stain them, I didn't want to paint the cabinets, so I found a wallpaper that coordinated with their yellowish color.  I've searched my computer and can't find photos of this wallpaper, but it was a sand color with color "blops" and then a red border by the ceiling.  Not my normal color scheme, but it was okay and worked with the cabinets.

Then about a year and a half ago, my friend Kay and I started talking about what I could do in there.  I had a vision of the cabinets painted white, the sink-to-ceiling mirror gone and the walls painted a sapphire blue.  I don't know if you've ever painted, papered or removed paper in a small bathroom, but it's really difficult.  Add a wall cabinet over the toilet -- well, I kept putting it off.

In May, bbd and his bride came to our home for a small dinner party.  He brought me one of his Marfa Prada prints as a gift.    The next day I carried the print around the house trying to figure out the very best place to showcase this work of art.  Nothing was clicking.

So, with the inspiration of bbd's Prada Marfa, I started a long delayed project.  Here are some photos of the progress: