The little things.

Our bathroom reno has been a good kick in the pants to take care of a few of the nagging details around our house. Our house was built in 1958 but was remodeled in the 1990s for both the good and bad. Some of the bad stuff includes cheap shiny brass doorhandles and cabinet hardware all over the house, beige light switches and outlets, and cheap golden oak trim.

Other bad stuff includes our poorly built "master" bath, soffits everywhere, orange peel ceilings, CARPET in the downstairs BATHROOM (naaaaaaasty), the ugliest kitchen floor tile ever and a shoddy conversion of a bedroom into a den.

But mostly it's little cosmetic stuff. OK, for example, this is what our kids' bedroom looked like before we moved in:

Yikes, right? But also pretty manageable. Once we painted the walls and replaced the window treatments, things looked a lot better. This is a shot of the same corner from a different angle a month after we moved in:

We've since painted the trim, but we haven't pared down that stuffed animal collection. :)

Anyway, back to the present. While we had the electrician out for the bathroom last month (naturally all the wiring in the old bathroom was suspect, shoddy and dangerous, requiring an extra day of substantial rewiring), he hung our new Schoolhouse Electric light in the hallway. I love it! It looks like this:

It replaced this fixture from the previous homeowners, which made me crazy.

And last summer, my father-in-law sweetly changed out all of the interior doorknobs on the main floor for us, going from shiny cheap brass levers to simple satin chrome Orbit doorknobs. A small but incredibly satisfying change.

The door hinges are still brass, though, so I've been picking up a few packs of hinges every time I'm at Home Depot so we can gradually update all the doors. This week, my husband replaced the hinges in the main floor bathroom. I'm pretty sure nobody but us will ever notice the change, but it makes me so happy!

We also had the plumber switch out the old, corroded faucet in that bathroom with this cheap but fun one from Home Depot.

Hurray for the little things! They make me happy.