The one with the... Nice Rack!

No, not that kind of rack! A towel rack!  A good friend of ours and my former DC roommate Anne is coming later this week and staying with us for a visit!  In preparation of her visit, we've been working on finishing up the guest room and getting the guest bath ready.  One of the things I've been wanting to do in the guest bathroom is replacing these ugly blue kiddie towel dowels from Ikea:

While some people might think these are "cute," in my humble opinion, they really are not very functional.  Towels in the bathroom, especially bath towels, should be hung to optimize drying.  With a dowel the bath towel drapes down sideways, wrapping itself around the dowel and as a result it doesn't always dry properly.   The front of the dowels are also so fat that a small towel doesn't fit properly on it.  Most of the time I just draped one bath towel over all three.   I usually like Ikea for their accessories, but I have to say these are a fail.  

While the seems like a quick easy fix, I hadn't switched these out earlier because whoever painted this bathroom didn't bother taking off the towel dowels when they painted (surprise, surprise), and I couldn't find the same bathroom paint color!  We're not quite yet ready to repaint the whole bathroom yet, so I just left these dowels where they were and dealt with it.  We inherited about 20 gallons of leftover paint from all the different painting jobs from the previous owners and tenants, and when we first moved in, I thought I had already gone through them all to look for the bathroom paint color without any success.  Then in another recent look through all the paint cans for another project, I found it!  

With the paint can in hand, I started by removing the blue dowels.  This is what I saw: 

So that's what that can of bright red paint was for in the basement!  During my paint search, I found lots of colors that were no where to be found in the house.  (I'm kind of scared to know which room they painted bright purple at one point.)  I used joint compound to cover up these awful red strips and the holes.  After sanding, priming, and 2 coats of paint, the wall was transformed! 

Now for a new towel rack! We had purchased normal towel racks from Home Goods about a year and a half ago for all the bathrooms so I had one laying around just waiting for the day when I figured out what to do with those towel dowels.  Dave installed the new towel rack for me tonight using these awesome drywall anchors. We learned very quickly (the hard way) that the dry wall anchors that come with the towel racks are too dinky to hold up on the dry wall.  But since Dave found these babies, he's become a pro!      

TADA!!! Isn't it a nice rack?? 

The framed art above the towel rack is a print that I picked up in Antigua, during my girl's cruise last year.  And here's the rack with with towels hanging!  It's SO much better than those dumb blue Ikea things!!!  

And now a bonus mini post since we're already in the bathroom... I was inspired by apothecary jars that I saw on Pinterest here and here and had been keeping an eye out for something like that to hold cotton balls and q-tips in the guest bathroom.  This is a set of 3 apothecary jars on Amazon.com for $23.99. 

    

A few weeks ago while Dave was getting a massage, I passed the time by perusing TJMaxx and Ross in the same shopping plaza.  While at Ross, I just happened to stumble upon these awesome apothecary jars.  A set of 3 for only $12!  

Now that I look at my picture of the jars right next to the Amazon.com ones... I think it's exactly the same set!?  What do you think?  Just another reason I love stores like Ross, Home Goods, TJMaxx, Marshalls, etc.