Are You Pooping? Bathroom Makeover & Spread The Kindness Link Up On the Edge #809

I haven’t done much painting or home improvement projects since the fall because I really need the longer hours of daylight and warmer weather before I embark on large renovation projects. When working on indoor projects, it gets very difficult to paint when the sun starts setting as it casts all sorts of shadows onto the walls and indoor lights are never quite sufficient. It’s also important to have warm weather so you can open the windows to prevent choking on paint fumes or sanding dust.

I finished Archie’s bedroom makeover in the fall and put my painting projects away for the season. But I started growing impatient to begin painting again once spring arrived on the calendar. Unfortunately, it took actual spring weather two more months to show up where I live and so I kept waiting for ideal painting weather before embarking on the next big project.

In early May, Jeff and I decided to host a Memorial Day gathering at our house. We haven’t had a large party at our house in a long while so we decided it was the perfect excuse to get working on our downstairs bathroom.

Before I get to the bathroom, here are some yummy food photos from our party!

I also created this cute patriotic floral arrangement with some thrift store vases and grocery store flowers.

And this little raggy vase with rainbow flowers was a gift for Ralph’s classmate who celebrated her 13th birthday the day before our party.

Now to the bathroom.

This bathroom/laundry room is situated right off the kitchen and has needed a makeover since we moved in 9 years ago. I have slowly made my way through the whole house, painting every room, leaving the bathrooms, the kitchen, and my closet room for last.

We recently had to replace our washer and dryer which required us to pull the entire vanity out in order to get the machines through the door. During that process, the lid to the toilet tank ended up with a huge chunk of porcelain broken off the corner. It was still functional but looked pretty shabby. Plus that toilet has been a nuisance since we moved here so we decided a new toilet was in order. We ended up getting a tall toilet and added a bidet much to everyone’s pleasure. However, the tall toilet might be a little too tall for me because my feet barely touch the floor. At least I’m the shortest one in the house now so no one else is having issues with the toilet height. My mother-in-law might not like it though when she comes to visit because she’s much shorter than me. Sorry, Gramma! I didn’t know how tall it was until it was installed. They didn’t have any floor models for us to try before purchasing.

We set a deadline for ourselves to have the bathroom renovation completed by Monday, May 25, the date of our party. We started the project in the beginning of the month and finished it on May 24, just in time to do a bathroom reveal when our guests arrived.

I didn’t think I would get it finished in time because this project took a few unexpected twists and turns. My first idea was to decoupage small squares of fabric in black, white, and gray to the walls to create a funky textured checkerboard/patchwork effect. Then I was going to decoupage old book pages to the floor. I had AI generate an image for me and while it doesn’t look exactly as I had pictured, it did give me an idea of how my plan would come together.

However, after applying just two squares to the wall, I realized the fabric wasn’t going to hold its shape and they looked more little knit amoebas glued to the wall. It was ridiculous so I peeled them off before the glue had any time to dry. Then I decided to try the book pages on the walls instead of the floor. And that, my friends, was another fail. After gluing about 10 pages to the wall, I absolutely hated it. It just looked stupid.

I used wallpaper glue for this and it had sufficiently dried when I decided to take it down. I had no patience for the process of removing wallpaper glue, so I aggressively sanded the pages as well as I could and painted right over them. You can’t really tell unless you know the pages are there and then you have to look quite closely to see the seams through the paint. I doubt anyone is inspecting the lower portion of bathroom wall so it’s okay the way it is!

Since we had already removed everything from the walls and the bathroom was barely functional, I needed to come up with another idea quickly. My initial idea with a book page floor and black, white, and gray patchwork walls included red trim and accents. When my first two designs attempts failed, I decided to keep the color palette, but go with paint instead.

So I headed off to the paint store. I chose a beautiful bright true red color for my paint. However, before the paint was mixed, I spotted a similar red on the shelf of mistinted paints. I always check the mistints because they sell them for $15 a gallon or $7 a quart. Since I’m not that picky about exact colors, I generally buy all the mistinted paints available to use in future projects. With paint prices averaging between $35-80 per gallon, it is very easy for me to compromise on the color when it’s only $15.

Not only did I find a gallon of red paint for $15, but I also found gray and black in the mistints as well. Despite my first vision failing, I was having much luck with the clearance paint so that made me happy. I had run out of white paint, so I ended up buying a full price gallon but I use it to customize paint colors for various projects. In fact, I used it with the gray mistinted paint to create a lighter shade of gray to incorporate into the bathroom.

Now let me tell you about this process. It was much more detailed than I expected but it was so much fun designing this bathroom and making my new vision a reality.

First, I painted all the trim and both sides of the door red. I am going to continue the same red, black, and white color palette into my kitchen, which is my next renovation project. My bathroom vanity is really old and ugly and too short. I had intended on replacing it with an upcycled piece of furniture turned into a vanity and sink. But I haven’t yet found the right piece of secondhand furniture so I covered the whole beat up vanity in red paint as well. Now I kind of love it and will probably not replace it so I can move onto other projects.

After the red paint was finished, I applied the dark gray to the walls. At first, I was concerned that the darker colors would make the tiny bathroom feel even smaller but then I got the idea to add big polka dots which actually make the room feel a bit larger. Once I decided on big dots, I went searching online for some inspiration ideas when I stumbled upon these adorable stick on dots and rings. I considered buying the stick ons but the amount I would need was going to cost a small fortune. I already had the paint and I also have lots of patience so I decided to just paint the dots and rings by hand. It was time consuming but didn’t cost me any more money and I like to do these room renovations as frugally as possible.

This is where my amazing husband stepped in. He made 6 stencils for me out of sheet metal: 4 circles that measured 2.5 inches, 5 inches, 7.5 inches, and 10 inches and 2 rings that measured 8 inches and 12 inches. Then he sketched out three of the walls for me on draft paper and converted the sizes of my dots and rings to scale for the paper. He loaned me a tiny circle measuring thing from work so I could accurately plot my design on the draft paper before applying anything to my walls.

Once I had the layout plotted on paper, I began tracing the stencils on the wall using white pencil. Next, I used paint pens in the colors that I wanted for the dots (black, light gray, white, and red) and retraced the stencils over the white pencil. After all the shapes were traced and color coded, I started carefully filling in the outlines with very small brushes. It was kind of like coloring a giant coloring book page and I really enjoyed doing it.

Once the painting was totally completed, I replaced the switch plates with pretty silver ones that matched the mirror we already had. Then my husband made custom shelves that I painted in the same gray as the walls. I wanted all of the teeth brushing stuff to be off of the vanity top so we hung a cute little shelf made from wood scraps to hold all the things. I also wanted a cell phone shelf next to the toilet. The toilet paper holder is placed in a strange location because our cat Penny will attack it if she can reach it. She has completely destroyed so many rolls of toilet paper that I was forced to make this compromise. Toilet paper, like everything else these days, is expensive and my cat has no income to contribute to the toilet paper fund!

Finally, the shower stall has never had doors or a curtain for as long as we have lived in this house. We have the water to the shower turned off and use that area for storage. We keep the vacuum cleaner, the cat food, the cleaning supplies, and other random stuff in the shower and frankly I was tired of looking at it. So we ordered a curtain rod and an adorable highland cow curtain and installed those as well. It was really difficult to photograph the shower area so below is a photo of my shower next to the Amazon image of the curtain.

I also got this checkerboard shower curtain because it looks sort of like how I wanted the walls to look. This curtain seemed like the perfect compromise. I’ll change them out occasionally because variety is the spice of life!

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the horrible floor since my decoupage idea clearly won’t work. I think I might paint the tiles for a temporary fix until we can replace the flooring entirely. In the meantime, I added a coordinating throw rug.

Although the completed bathroom is nothing like what I had originally envisioned, I am totally in love with the end result. The shower curtain makes me giggle and the walls ignite joy. It might be my new favorite room in the house!

Featured Favorites

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee