Powder Room Makeover

I thought I would post a few pictures of the first room of our home makeover projects I took on just recently. In July of 2009 our son got married and moved away.  With both of the kids gone (leaving a big hole in my heart and free time on my hands), I decided it was time to attack the house and get some remodeling done.  Sadly, as usual, I don't have any "before" pictures. I HAVE to learn to start doing that!!! Let's just say it was BADLY in need of an update. The walls (in this very small powder room) were DARK forest green. Need I say more? The floors were the original linoleum from when we built the house in 1988, contractor grade cabinet, and a soffit (which I ALWAYS hated) over the florescent lights. Get the picture?

Let me go back just a little bit. You see, I did NOT start out making over this bathroom. My original project was to make over the master bedroom and bathroom. HUH??? Stick with me a minute here... Well, I knew that we were going to rip up the carpet (mauve – I’m hanging my head on that one – can’t believe I ever did that) in the bedroom and bathroom (yes, the bathroom had carpet in it), and lay new flooring down. I REALLY wanted tile in my bathroom, but didn't think we could afford it – especially to have someone come in and lay it. Everyone kept telling me how "easy" (riiiiiight) it was to put down tile, so I came up with an sneaky excellent plan! I told hubs that we should “practice” laying tile in the powder room. After all, it was just a square room, no weird angles – easy peasy – right??? Of course, if we were going to lay a new floor we may as well replace the cabinet, sink, and toilet – don’t you agree??? Sooooooo, off we went to buy all of the supplies we needed to lay this new floor. Ok, OK – it WASN’T quite as easy as I was lead to believe. First of all, hubs was left in charge of removing the toilet (no problem), AND the faucet and cabinet. This (turns out) to be a MAJOR problem. We turned off the water to the house (because there was NO turn off valve at the sink), he does his little “plumbing bit”, turns back on the water to the house, and the spraying FLOODING of water begins. (Wonderful husband he is – “plumber” he is NOT!!!). Water shut off – REAL plumber called in (next day of course). Turns out that the plumber we called is a “Jack of all trades”. He tells us that he would be “more than happy" to lay the tile for us. Oh no… we wanted to do that ourselves. Fast forward (after our somewhat feeble attempt at laying the floor) – that “Jack of all trades” not only repairs plumbing, but laid the floor, installed the toilet, installed the new cabinet, as well as doing all the renovating in the master bathroom. (He is now our “go to” guy!!!) Cost a lot more than we originally planned, but hey, it sure does look pretty (not to mention a LOT easier)!!!!

ANYWAY, on with the pictures… This is the closest I can come to a “before” picture. The wallpaper had already been stripped, but some of the forest green paint was still evident. (I seriously don’t even remember ever having a baby blue bathroom… what was I thinking??) Tile was in the process of being laid and grouted.

 

 

Don’t you just love painting pictures!!!!??? This picture gives you a glimpse of the paint on the walls. Very soft yellow, then I did a glazing technique over it. I wanted to put wainscot on the bottom half and was going to leave it white, but it wasn’t the look I was going for. So, I ended up painting it the same soft yellow as the rest of the room.

Here is hubby installing helping to install (trust me, it was a JOINT effort) the wainscot. It was so much fun to see everything start coming together.

(It looks like there are stripes on the wainscot, but that’s just the lighting.) I was already falling in love with this room, and it wasn’t even finished!!

See my posting about the covering I made for the round window.

Remember how I told you that there was a soffit with florescent lights? Well, this was my own idea of how to fix that. I didn’t want to rip out the soffit and deal with all that mess, plus I thought it would be kind of nice to have the light shining above, so I decided to take out the open plastic grate that was below the light. I took pieces of the same wainscot that I used on the lower half of the room, and cut pieces to fit within the same area that had previously held the grate. I painted them and snapped them together giving me a solid ceiling BELOW the light, but still allowed the light to shine ABOVE the soffit.I was then able to install decorative lighting BELOW the soffit – which I put on a different switch with a dimmer. Now I can have as much OR as little light as I want.

Here are the after photos once everything was complete and decorated. I’m still wondering if I should put something above the towel rack, but I don’t know what it would be or if it would be too much. If you have any suggestions please pass them on!

Need to install the towel ring above the light switch.

Check out my posting about labels for the toilet paper rolls.

It's so hard to get good pictures of such a small bathroom, but I hope you get a general feel for it.  I am in LOVE with the new lighter/brighter color (who wouldn't be after living with forest green for umpteen years!!).

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