A Very, Very, Very Fine House

Our house is 30 years old, which for Texas, where the sun wears you and your house down, giving you both wrinkles before your time, is old. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things to love about our house: the concrete floors my husband stained before I met him (man, love those floors), the patio out back that looks out into our rosemary, aloe, basil, strawberry, tomato and other sundry plants, my new flower garden in the front yard, the wall painting my husband did in our bedroom. But there are also things not so great. Like the 30-year-old mildew in the shower grout. It's not so bad, but it's not great. So we had a guy come out to give us an estimate in redoing our master shower only. Which turned into an estimate for re-tiling the floors, replacing vanities, new toilets, new onyx showers for two bathrooms. He gave us a price. We spewed our drinks. Needless to say, for a man working in full-time ministry and a woman who is a writer/speaker/flute and piano teacher (snap, snap, snap), it was about $16000 out of our price range. So we went back to our original: acryllic in one shower. That was still, oh, about $5000-$6000 out of our range. Yes, I'm the master of under-estimation, time, money, you name it. It won't ever take me long to do something or cost much. Uh-huh. (Erin, writing pre-coffee! Danger, Will Robinson!)
So I did something for which Barkat would diatribe, and, honestly, for which I myself hate. I bought bleach, sprayed it over the tile, and waited (with windows open). I hate using bleach, but it worked.
But what I really want to tell you about is my vanity counter top. I'm so glad we decided to not get them replaced because I discovered the other night that the gold glitter laced throughout the ivory marble is actually fairy dust waiting to take me to far, far away places.