Bathroom Reveal

Here we go....the very first room reveal of the new house.  And it's a bathroom! That's a little funny to me, but whatever....let's relish in the fact that one room is completely done, ok?

Let's rewind about 2 months.  Here's how the main upstairs bathroom looked before we moved in.

And here is how it looks now:

This might just take the cake as one of the favourite rooms I've ever done. It's happy and cheery, and so much fun (if I do say so myself!).  It's the perfect room to get ready in when it's 5:30 am and you can't imagine how you are going to get functioning for the day.

The plan down the road someday is to gut this bathroom and start fresh, but for now we needed to make it functional and pretty on a tiny budget. 

The first thing we did was rip out the old toilet. It was bad and needed to go - 'nuf said. The new toilet is from Rona and is a low water dual flush toilet that's all one piece.  I have a strange love for one piece toilets. 

The next thing to go was the ugly and gross plastic accordian shower curtain thing.  The thought of having a shower with that thing completley grossed me out. 

The new shower curtain is from Urban Outfitters and I managed to snag it during one of their big sales.  I fell in love with it instantly and planned the rest of the room around it.

The next couple of big changes were the wall paint, the vinyl tiles and the vanity. 

The paint colour isn't drastically different than the old colour, but the walls were really bad and needed a fresh coat of paint.  The colour is Baby Fawn by Benjamin Moore - the same colour as is in the majority of our house.

The vinyl peel and stick tiles were purchased from Rona on clearance for $18 (and we only used 1/2 of the box).  I washed down the linoleum that was there (which was gross and stained) and then just laid the new tile right on top of the old vinyl.  My mom and I did the whole project in a couple of hours and so far they have held up great.

I painted the vanity using Painter's Touch high gloss black.  I took the doors off and sprayed them and then used a brush on the rest of the frame.  It was a really easy project that only took a couple of hours (over a few days).  The old hardware was really unique so I decided to keep it (big money saver).

And you can catch a glimpse of the new snake skin toe kick in the picture above.  Still one of my favourite parts of the room.  I love that it's sort of hiding down there and then I catch a glimpse sometimes and it just makes me happy.

I couldn't for the life of me, figure out a good place to put hand towels.  Logically they'd go on the wall beside the vanity, but the other side of the vanity has a plug on it.  Putting wet hands and a plug together just seemed like a bad idea, so I decided to hang them above the toilet.  It's a bit odd, but it's still pretty close to the sink and doesn't result in electrocution. A win, win.

I hung the hand towels on my cute little hooks from Baba Souk.  Alfred (the white guy) was up in Fin's room in the old house, but I am so happy that I found a space in the new house for both Alfred & Jimmy to make an appearance.  (They came named...I didn't make those names up :)

Above the hooks I hung a picture of the Beacon of Hope statue in Belfast.  I picked the photo up about 5 years ago when I was in Belfast and it's still one of my favourites.   I had the frame in my frame stash already.

On the other side of the vanity I hung a little bit of DIY art - also in a frame I already had.

Last month my friend Stacey over at Likes to Smile wrote a really great post about a NY taxi driver who's motto in life was Relax Your Heart.  We were going through some rough times when I read that post and it stuck a chord with me.  It's such a simple saying, but it means a lot to me.  Just relax your heart and embrace.  I highly recommend that you pop on over and read all about it in Stacey's words.

The art was super simple.  I typed it up on the computer in a script font and then found some clip art of a heart.  Our printer still isn't hooked up, so I just held a piece of paper up to the computer monitor and lightly traced (#lazy).  Then I used a Sharpie Paint Pen to just follow my tracing.   See, I told you it was easy.  My plan is to rotate the quotes in the frame every few months.

Above the mirror is my duct tape light fixture.

Yup, it's snake skin duct tape.  Since posting this light, it's created a bit of a polarizing effect.  People either seem to love it or hate it, but either way, I still love it to death.  However you feel, you can't deny the fact that it changed an ugly light fixture for $5. 

I desperately wanted to change the mirror, but it just doesn't make sense right now since when we overhaul the bathroom we will probably end up changing it again.

The counter stayed the same (lovely almond coloured counter!!).  Amazingly enough, it looks less ugly now that there's more to look at in the bathroom than a plastic accordion shower curtain. 

I've been carrying that Noxzema jar around with me for more years than I'd like to admit.  I picked it up in an antique store when I was a teenager and it's been in every apartment and house with me since.  It holds Q-tips.  I used to have the little quote up in our old kitchen, but I think it's fitting here. It's a free download available here.

The wall opposite the vanity holds our bath towels.

The towel bar is from Ikea.  I love how it has one bar in front of the other so that the towels can dry and don't have to be squished on to one small rod. 

Above the towel bar I hung the cuckoo clock I used to have in the kitchen.  It was a thrift shop find that I spray painted. 

The black stripe on the ceiling was a lot of fun to paint (or not...) and I love how it adds a bit of interest to the ceiling.  The stripe is the same as the vanity - Painter's touch high gloss black.

The stripe goes from the shower all the way across the ceiling to the top of the doorway.

Which brings us to another stripe - the edge of the door.  We've been tackling painting each door upstairs, and although it's taking WAY longer than we anticipated, I love how they look.  I'll do a whole post on the doors, but for now, you can see that we painted the side of the door that faces out grey (Benjamin Moore Baby Seal Black).  The interior side is still white.  I painted the edge yellow using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in English Yellow, which I had left over from the laundry room cabinets. I have plans for the edges of every door in the house....

Here's another view of the door.  I had to actually stand in the bathtub for this shot, but it gives you the best idea of how the door looks. (Notice that baseboard and trim is up in the whole hallway.....HURRAY!!!).

And just because I can, here's another shot from the bathtub!

And lastly, since I spent the whole time dodging the mirror while taking these photos, here's one of me :)

Phew...I thought this would be a short post...I was wrong.  So, to save you from scrolling up, here's the before and after again.

And the full breakdown & sources:

Toilet: $249 (a bit of splurge for a toilet)  Rona

Vinyl Tile: $18 Rona (on clearance so I can't find a link)

Shower curtain: $20.99 (no longer available, but here's a similar one)

Shower rod: $19 Target

Bath mat: $12.99 Ikea

Towel bar: $19.99 Ikea

Vanity paint: Painter's Touch high gloss black $12 Home Depot

Wall paint: Benjamin Moore Baby Fawn ($0 as I already had it)

Hooks: Baba Souk ($0 as I already had them, but you can still find them here)

So, grand total that I spent on this makeover was $351, which includes the toilet. To be fair, I didn't include the cost of the wall paint or the door paint as we had already purchased those for the whole house and I already had a lot of the accessories (hoarder).

Have a fantastic weekend! I'll be back with The Week's End on Sunday and show you all sort of pics from Halloween.