Here's my living room, more often referred to as "That Beast Cave."

I can't stand the giant hulk of a fireplace with bricks that jut out from the sides like a strong-armed monster reaching to smack me upside the head.

I hate the institutional looking mottled gray and dirty white floor tiles, but the Beast loves how they define his cave as perfectly disembodied from the remainder of our open living spaces - the entry, dining room and sunroom, all of which have tannish colored tile flooring.

And the Beast is also quite pleased with all his confusing 'focal points'.  Guests get dizzy and faint as they try to find a place to rest their eyes:  the fireplace? the wall of windows? or perhaps the "it's the only thing left that I own from before I married you and I will never get rid of it even if you promise to *bleep* me every day" entertainment center?

Sometimes the Beast attempts to trip me with it's too large furniture, or pelt me with popcorn from the low ceiling, or beat my husband upside the head with it's fan blades.  And that little kid in my photos?  I've never seen him again - I think the Beast swallowed him!

Ignore the extra furniture - the wood table & low dresser - they're waiting to be stained & moved to other rooms.

I hate my bathroom, but I'm relieved not to have Thebarginqueen's lovely wall tiles.

My bath and the master bedroom were 1980's additions to our home.  They still are... 1980's.  The worst, the thing that gripes me the most, is that the bathroom is easily twice the size of my kitchen.

Here it is, with recently painted walls:

Note the lovely cave shower (no ventilation) and the wall to wall carpet meant to dry off your feet and soak up spills from the tub.  Speaking of the tub - it doesn't work, nor is there access to any of it's plumbing.  It won't drain and a thick crsusty sediment comes out of the jets.  I put up new blinds - previously they were a metal copper orange color.

Here's the other side of the bathroom.  There's never been any wall space for towel bars.  The surface of the tub, shower & counters looks like a fake marble with bright gold 80's veins.  The fixtures are all a brassy peeling gold.  No knobs on any of the drawers or cupboard doors (I do love all the storage!).  The cupboards were showing their age with wear spots and scratches, but I tackled those with some shoe polish and they don't look so bad now.  The worst is the gigantic 12' mirror.

Later I'll show you my living room because it's the room that I truly can't stand. 

This is my bathroom:

Fabulous, isn't it? (yes, that's sarcasm)

Its features include:

1. The very-70s brown tiles on the walls
2. The almost-livable brown tiles on the floor
3. A dividing wall so the loo takes up almost half the room (you can just see the door in the pic)
   
4. Said loo placed deep in the corner of its own room, so your side touches the wall when you use it
5. Exposed face bricks on the other side of the dividing wall, presumably to give you something to look at while you're on the loo
6. The broken cupboards you can see in the pic
7. Mirrored door from broken cabinet propped on the sink -- great for applying makeup to just one side of my face
8. Scratched up bath
9. Some funky-looking mould in the grout

On no! I'm sorry about that (adds a line to the a to-do list). Here's pic so others can see:

Wow. S.O.S. indeed.

Come on everyone, let's see you top that!

By the way, just a reminder, this isn't really a contest itself (we're not giving anything away), but we'll pick one room to use as inspiration for a future contest. 

Ack! I typed my entire sob/SOS story, complete with pictures, into a two-line tall edit box (is it my browser or just how things are?), and THEN found out that there's a 2000 character limit. Being too darn lazy to cut my post down to less than half of what I'd typed, I simply copied it all to my house blog, complete with pictures, and ask for you to review it there:

http://georgetownhouse.livejournal.com/8728.html

Thanks!

(I hope I win! I hope I win! I... uh... need to control myself.)