Gratuitous product endorsement: The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. If you haven't tried them yet, do. I've been using them for a while on fingerprints on the doorjambs and the like and I was already impressed, but today that thing really was magic. I started my cleaning binge in my bathroom, because now that I am taking long, leisurely bubble baths in there with my glasses on so I can read in the tub, I could see how grubby it really was. (I'm very nearsighted, so I could overlook a lot of minor bathroom grunge simply by showering without glasses or contacts.) I finally got a good look at the baseboards, the walls, etc., and grossed myself out, so that was my first priority today. My bathroom is REALLY clean now, I put up a new shower curtain, fresh towels, new toilet seat, even a new switchplate to replace the tacky putty-beige plastic - the bathrooms are the only rooms that still have cheap plastic switchplates, my husband had put in nice brass ones as we repainted and decorated each room. For the bathroom I picked a nice blue ceramic that picks up one of the colors in the shower curtain. So it's like a new room (but still without whirlpool tub) but I digress again....

The bathroom walls looked really terrible, it hasn't been painted in 8 years, and I had tried cleaning various smudges and spots off them for years with every cleaning product under the sun, but had given up and decided the only thing to do was paint. The Magic Eraser washed all the crud off the walls and they look freshly painted - including a rusty-water-splash stain on the wall behind the toilet tank that had been there since the last time my husband had fixed the toilet - at least three years, maybe longer. I'd scrubbed those spots with everything under the sun and nothing took them off. I assumed they were deep in the paint and only repainting would do. The spots are gone now. The Magic Eraser took them right off, when nothing else would. Okay, I'm totally convinced it IS magic. End of product plug.

The bathroom and bedroom cleaning took half the day and wore me out (but it did include tasks like caulking the tub and scrubbing the walls). Then I hit Target and Lowe's - I walked around looking at kitchen cabinets in a daze, and realized I have to sit down with some brochures and home decorating magazines to plan this right. I thought I knew what I wanted, but the choices are overwhelming - fifty kinds of wood in 20 different styles, let's not even talk about picking hardware and we haven't gotten to the countertop yet, and that's ONE manufacturer. I was too tired to focus by then, so I grabbed brochures from the major manufacturers to peruse with morning coffee for at least a week, while the choices soak in. Oh, I did price a whirlpool tub - $668. I'm thinking the hall bath will be the first one remodeled next year, and it will get the whirlpool. The master will get a nice big shower instead of the tub-shower; there simply isn't room to do much with that space.

End of the Home Improvement Blog segment. Bardot is wrapped in a damp towel, I'm totally wiped out and ready for an evening of Lo-Tech Sweat knitting and a long soak in my immaculate redecorated bathroom. It was a productive day.