Saturday, March 5, 2011

Guest Bath Mini Makeover

When we bought our house a year and a half ago all of the rooms except the two smaller bedrooms were painted white.  I'm pretty sure it was the same white that was originally painted on the house 9 years ago.  What is now my sons room was chocolate brown and when a 11' x 11' room is chocolate brown it seems like it's 6' x 6'.  My daughters room was Pepto-Bismol pink with a Disney Princess border.  We repainted my sons room a pretty grayish blue that reminds me of a stormy day.  When we found out baby girl was on her way we painted the pink room a light green color.  So every other room in the house was still white.  The main living areas and kitchen are all open to each other with 12 foot ceilings so if one is to be painted they all need to be painted.  For that reason I have been putting it off.  And I still am. 

The guest bathroom is small and I was so needing a change to something I decided to tackle that room since there isn't much wall space and the ceiling is a normal 10' height.
It had the 'builders basics'- plate glass mirror, linoleum, shower/bath combo unit and recessed medicine cabinet.  I'm not ready to take on a full renovation just yet.  Baby girl is so young and I get about 3 hours at a time before she needs her mommy.  Not to mention that doing anything over the weekend leaves the regular weekend chores (laundry, grocery shopping, general cleaning of the house) undone.  So I was thinking my small project would be easy peasy.  I went to Lowe's looking for a faucet.  Here is a good time to question the cost of bathroom hardware.  Might I just say holy moly!  I wasn't expecting a decent faucet to cost so much!  Then if you want the matching tissue and towel holders the expense is double.  I happened to come upon a great deal.  Lowe's was promoting a certain brand and they offered the tissue and towel holder free with the purchase of the faucet.  And it happened to be the finish I was looking for so win-win.
Buh-bye to the $10 faucet!




(please excuse the mess in the pics - I remembered to take the before pic after I had brought in my tools.)

Do you notice the towel bar on the left?  That's going to be taken out completely.  I had a wonderful vision of a huge piece of beautiful art on that wall.  When the project was completed, I went to Target and Home Goods to find something (I'm thinking an abstract floral on canvas) but I couldn't find something that I absolutely loved.  So still looking for that special piece.  I'll know it when I see it.  Another quick note, the horrible strip lighting above the mirror is not shown in the photos because it would blind you.  It's one of those lights that has 5 huge bulbs on it reminiscent of an old Hollywood dressing room.  It just was not working for me.  The first thing I did was install the faucet then I taped off:
 


Next I removed the plate mirror and although the mirror itself wasn't glued on - thank you Lord- the metal strip attached to the bottom of it that held it onto the wall was:


So out came the sandpaper and spackle.  At this point I found myself so happy that ever since I could remember my grandpa was always "working on the house" and taught me a thing or two about repairing walls, hanging wallpaper, installing crown, refinishing wood floors, installing doors where there were none before, etc. There's a glimpse of my prettiful faucet too =)

Next up I took down the shower curtain and painting commenced.  Now I want to mention that I did not remove the medicine cabinet.  In good design an obvious medicine cabinet (like mine) is abhorrent, but ours is too practical and the bathroom is so small that I left it.  Once the kids go to college I will remove it.  I would also have loved to install tile floors and replace the bland oak cabinet but it wasn't in our budget this time around.  Sooo, after the walls were painted I removed the tape and found this:

 
Ack!  It was completely ruined.  The pic is of the wall where it meets the ceiling and the whole room looked like this.  I wanted to cry.  I tried to straighten the line but the textured walls weren't letting me.  I was so upset.  I thought of giving up but decided against it.  Maybe no one would notice.  Maybe it wouldn't completely bug me every time I walked in there.  Maybe I would get used to it.  Yeah right.  I left it for a few hours and that's when I went to Home Goods to look for the art.  My hubby called me when I was there.  He saw the paint job and it looked really bad.  That got me right there.  I came home and was absolutely determined to make it look right.  After everyone went to bed I got some of baby girls safety swabs and started going around the ceiling with them.  It took two hours.  Two hours on the ceiling.  But it was worth it.  It looks so much better.  Not perfect but a lot cleaner.  I really really want to install moulding.  My husband doesn't think I can do it.  I've done it before I met him (well, helping my grandpa but that counts, right?) so I figure if I do a small room like the bathroom for practice that will show him how capable I am.  He still says I can't do it.  Just wait.  He'll see =)




The next day I put on the finishing touches- a new light fixture from Ace Hardware, mirror from Target and installed the hand towel ring and tissue holder that I purchased with the faucet from Lowe's.   I am very happy with the results.  The room is now warm has its own personality.    Also, my camera fell off the counter and is b-r-o-k-e-n.  Ugh.  I still haven't found time to research the current models so I used the camera on my phone for these pics, sorry for the poor quality.  Let me know what you think!


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