Bathroom Facelift

Hey, y’all. Sorry I’ve been a bit absent of late, but after seeing how wonderfully my friend Tara’s kitchen remodel went, I got all inspired to do a little house fixing-up of my own. Of course, the timing couldn’t be worse, with so much gardening needing to get done… but sometimes you just have to go with the inspiration when it hits I suppose.

The bathroom hadn’t really changed in the 13ish years we’ve lived here. Same boring beige and builder-grade insides – including the pencil lines that have stubbornly surrounded the mirror and driven me crazy for years. The only thing I had really done was to swap out the chrome fixtures for wooden ones, and install a new light fixture – but I had installed it so that it collected the absolute most amount of dust possible. =P

So. Much. Clutter!

(I am holding up the towel here as I had forgotten to take some “before” photos before I started taking it all apart… tee hee hee.)

Inspired by this image I yanked off of Pinterest a while back, I picked up some teal and white paint, a new towel bar and toilet paper holder, and a spiffy new faucet, and I set to work.

Now, originally I wasn’t planning on doing anything beyond painting (Martha Stewart’s “Agean Blue” and Behr Glossy “Bright White”) and then adding the new items, but…

… somewhere along the way, I decided to install some wainscoting along the bottom of the walls. Perhaps it was the giant patched holes I was dubious about painting over nicely (NONE of the fixtures had originally been installed in a stud, and over time the drywall anchors had given way and left some large holes that I had patched and sanded, but… there were many of them, and they looked kinda BAD.) Not to mention the gaping hole around the drain behind the pedestal sink…

Or, maybe it was because the faucet had wainscoting pictured on the box, and it looked nice… Either way, I decided to install some. And it wasn’t too tricky – I even jigged the wood around the sink/drain without much hassle. BUT. I had no idea what a pain that stuff would be to paint!!! All those little gaps between pieces required some time-consuming painting techniques that had I have known, I may not have added wainscoting after all.

Except that it does look really pretty, doesn’t it? Especially cute for our ranch house styled home. Plus, I made sure to attach everything to a stud this go ’round!!! AND, I turned the light fixture over, so that the light is more direct, and I can easily dust it!

Because I am a lover of the sea, I also added some Hawaii-themed images to the ocean-coloured walls – a couple of old travel posters that we picked up in a calendar…

… an art print that we picked up at the Aquarium in Maui this winter…

… and this family portrait we had snapped in the Iao Valley. All together, it looks something like this:

(As you can see, I also picked up some nicer shelves to put things on, instead of just painting the ones that were in there originally white…) And this:

Not too shabby, huh? I still have to install the new faucet, but I’m waiting for a day that my husband is home, just in case I run into some trouble that might need a good, strong arm to help me out with. I’m also mid-way through getting the laundry room (which you have to walk through to get to the bathroom) done, but that’s another story (which involves flooding and electrical issues) for another day.

Whew. SOOOO much better than it all was, but still so far to go. AND now I have somewhere really pretty to go and hide when I want to get away from the boys for a little while 😉 …