Bathroom Unveiling

Friends, I honestly thought this day may never come. It has been nearly 7 months in the making, and this is by far the smallest room in our house. I guess what I'm trying to say is, the house should be finished by roughly 2013.

When we moved in, not quite 2 years ago, the upstairs bathroom looked something like this:

Sponge paint! Peach and mint green! (Did anyone out there use those colors for their wedding? I remember that being all the rage around 1990.)

Puffy toilet seat alert! They really creep me out.

This past Christmas, the room took a real turn for the worse.
Once everything was torn out, the real fun began.

I've always wanted to try installing horizontal paneling and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. We installed it backwards, so it had more of a rough-hewn finish, and we did not sand it smooth. It has a rustic presence, in person. And it was very cheap.

Sidenote: For the first time ever, I painted a room, hated it immediately, and painted it again. We are kind of cheap-skatish around here and I thought I could get by with using the bright turquoise paint from the toy room, but it just didn't fly in this tiny space. It was jarring. It screamed "Clown Bathroom", which wasn't the look I was going for.

This bathroom was challenging because it is small and has a very odd shape. It will mostly be used by the kids and guests, but I didn't want it to have a "little kid" feel. I wanted it to be something that would grow with our family and flow with the rest of the house.

Look closely and you'll see that the "wall" behind the vanity is super short. I have to duck down to look in the mirror and I have hit my head on the "ceiling" more times than I can count. Old farmhouses have character, right?!

The vanity cabinet is very tiny. We looked at Lowes and Home Depot and found a couple of stock cabinets that were made of particle board and cost around $200. We almost went with a "scratch & dent" model that was marked down, then my brain kicked into gear. We called a local cabinet maker and they were able to custom build a solid wood cabinet with a perfect, glossy finish for under $150. Score! The faucets were found inexpensively on Ebay.

From the start, my inspiration for the room has been vintage maps. Specifically, I was inspired by the bathroom designed by Heather Chadduck (my FAVE!) for Cottage Living magazine (R.I.P.).

We quickly discoverd that decoupaging maps to the wall would be a very permanent fix, and I was a little concerned that they would be too busy in such a small room with only one tiny window and not much space for other items to break up landscape.

Instead, I decided to decoupage old maps into old, white frames. For a personal touch, we used maps of Korea (for Calvin), Africa (Ruby is half Malawan), Indiana and the USA.



No clue what that round thing is, but I love it! The blue shelf hung over Calvin's changing table in a previous life.

The white shelf brackets came from Ikea for $3 each and Cory cut the actual shelf to fit, then painted it all. Galvanized bucket? Anthro!


The numbered tags are enamelware and came to me from Germany, by way of Ebay.

I bought a bag of random, black letters several years ago. They were dusty and cruddy and I nearly forgot about them until exactly 2 weeks ago. I dug them out of the garage and hoped I would find the right combination for a bathroom-worthy word. I was hoping for "SCRUB", but I think I'm even happier with "CLEAN"! Maybe it will inspire me to keep it in tip-top condition?

The lack of vanity space and the general lack of storage space required some creativity. I found the wooden crate to hold towels at HomeGoods a couple months back. The metal rack is actually from Bed Bath & Beyond ($4) and was designed to hold flatware on a drying rack. Cory cut the hooks off the back and screwed it into the wall. It will soon hold tooth brushes, toothpaste and maybe even a bottle of liquid soap, if I can find a soap holder in the right size.

Last but not least, the trash can! I've had it for years and planted flowers in it last Summer. Nothing excites me more than discovering that I already own what I am looking for!

Ahhh...it feels so good to have this finished! Now, on to the real bathroom.......