Day One Of The Big Bathroom Makeover For Granny

There are nearly consistently three main steps to the room makeovers that we tackle, and depending on the scope/depth of them, they can take a few days or a few months (ok, and sometimes we jump around so much that things take years). Either way, the order seems to go like so:

• prep/planning (brainstorming, picking a color palette, going shopping, priming, sanding, spackling)
• bigger upgrades (painting walls, refinishing or painting cabinets, laying new flooring, etc)
• finishing touches (curtains, new hardware, art, accessories – all the things that add “you” to the space)

So when John’s mom mentioned his grandma’s half bathroom could use a little makeover we got to put those three steps into action. It resulted in a three day bathroom blitz that involved two seven hour drives and some obligatory midnight painting (thank goodness John’s parents traveled with us to keep Clara busy and glad). First you should meet Granny. She lives in Huntington, West Virginia, and is one of the happiest, kindest women you will ever meet. Here she is holding baby Clara for the first time:

And you know we enjoy to share the day-by-day play-by-play, so with further ado, here is what our To-Do list looked like for our turbo-charged three-day project (along with guesses about when we’d in fact tackle things in parenthesis after each line item):

• Brainstorm colors & go shopping for accessories (Day 1)
• Spackle/sand/caulk everything to prep the room for paint (Day 1)
• Rebuild the cabinets a bit so they look more balanced (Day 1)
• Prime and paint the cabinets for a more updated and open look (Day 1 & 2)
• Paint the whole room, including the ceiling (Day 2)
• Fix a few issues, like a rusted duct and an old dingy corner below the sink (Day 2)
• Redo the floors, which were that old sheet laminate stuff (Day 2)
• Revive some hardware/accessories with a fresh finish (Day 2)
• Make & hang curtains to add some charm (Day 3)
• Bring in some meaningful art (Day 3)
• Add some functional/personal accessories to finish things off (Day 3)
• Reveal the whole shebang for Granny, who promised not to peek beforehand (Day 3)

Here is her charming 1920’s house, which they’ve in since the 1940’s so John’s mom and her siblings all grew up here. John’s late grandfather (“Papa”) in fact did a lot of the handiwork himself over the years so there are plenty of stories and memories tied to this place.

In fact, it was Papa who converted an old kitchen pantry into this little half bathroom! So everything from adding the plumbing to the electrical was all him. But that was decades ago, and the room was looking ready for an update, especially thanks to some wallpaper that Granny was “ready to tear off the walls” herself (at 90 years old, she still has that Hands-on spirit running through her veins, by the way). So here is what the room looked like before the wallpaper was took out:

Thanks to Granny, our Aunt Ellen, and our Uncle Dean, the wallpaper was all miraculously took out before we arrived around dinnertime – simply in time to work the night away prepping the rest of the room. But not knowing our store options in Huntington, we did some shopping before we left, including a mad dash into HomeGoods for some items we thought could work (we over-picked up, knowing we could return whatever she did not need). We also knew Granny might have some of the items that we grabbed, so ideally we would get to use some of the new stuff, and some of her existing stuff, for a pleasant mix (and some pleasant savings).

We also stopped at our go-to fabric outlet (U-fab) and grabbed a yard of fairly floral-printed fabric that felt a lot like Granny (it is made by Braemore, for anyone looking for it) to make sweet little cafe curtains for the one small window in the bathroom. Here is that fabric with some of the accessories we picked up, simply so you can see where we were “going” in our brains:

We also stopped into Home Depot and grabbed some new flooring (which you will see more of during Day Two) and we used our seven hour drive to brainstormed a few other ideas for the space while we took in the road trip scenery (slash kept a pooch and a toddler occupied).

Here is what the room looked like when we arrived. It was already looking worlds better with simply the wallpaper being gone.

Apparently the paper came down with simply a little tugging, so that was the good news. But without the wallpaper, some areas of the room in fact looked even more worse for wear… like the bottom corner of the sink, the burned outlet, and the rusted vent on the other side of the pedestal sink.

Yup, there were certainly some areas that needed attending to…

So we got right down to business. My job was cutting all of the old caulk out. It is a step that does not look much better immediately (sometimes it looks worse)…

… but once we get some fresh caulk and painting done, it looks as good as new.

Speaking of cutting out caulk in general, it is remarkable how much of it there can be. Simply look at my pile after tackling the sink, the baseboards, and other random corners that also had bits of leftover wallpaper and cracked flooring:

I in fact ended up using an whole tube of caulk in this compact space! Everything from the baseboards to that area around the sink and the doorway/window trim got some fresh caulk. It is certainly a tedious job, but so worth it for a polished look.

Then it was on to spackling and sanding. We simply used regular old Dap spackle (with the blue lid) and a spackle knife, and pressed it into every crack and crevice, working our way around the room. Sometimes I will sand something before I spackle it, simply if there is something hanging off (ex: a flake of plaster) so I get a better wrapped up look and a less crumbly foundation under my spackle job.

Meanwhile, John was off doing some wood cutting in the middle of the kitchen. I guess this is what happens when you do not have your usual workspace and tools with you?

He was cutting a small plank of wood to cover a gap in the top of Granny’s cabinets since they are in fact two cabinets pushed together and topped with an old hollow-core door. So we filled the gap for a seamless look by nailing the plank into the 2 x 4 pieces that were already there to support the counter.

It would of course look more seamless once it was painted, which meant it was time to remove the hardware and prime those cabinets.

Here is John rolling on some primer (this post has a much more thorough rundown of how we prime and paint cabinets).

And here are the drawer fronts all drying in Granny’s back-room-turned-cabinet-painting-studio:

It took us a good four or five hours to prep the room as well as prime the cabinets and the countertop, so our to do list now looked like this (with little notes next to each remaining task about when we hoped to tackle them):

• Brainstorm colors & go shopping for accessories (Day 1)
• Spackle/sand/caulk everything to prep the room for paint (Day 1)
• Rebuild the cabinets a bit so they look more balanced (Day 1)
• Prime and paint the cabinets for a more updated and open look (Day 1 & 2)
• Paint the whole room, including the ceiling (Day 2)
• Fix a few issues, like a rusted duct and an old dingy corner below the sink (Day 2)
• Redo the floors, which were that old sheet laminate stuff (Day 2)
• Revive some hardware/accessories with a fresh finish (Day 2)
• Make & hang curtains to add some charm (Day 3)
• Bring in some meaningful art (Day 3)
• Add some functional/personal accessories to finish things off (Day 3)
• Reveal the whole shebang for Granny (Day 3)

We had high hopes that we could bang everything out in our three day blitz, and we were truly glad with our end-of-Day-1 result. A pleasant fresh clean slate to start gussying up in the morning. So it was off to bed exactly at midnight, after a quite full day of shopping, driving, prepping, and priming.

We will be back with the full Day 2 rundown tomorrow, we simply have to edit some photos (um yeah, we might have taken 1,294 in simply three days…). Are there any other bathroom updates going on? Or shopping/prepping/brainstorming? Have you ever done a little room makeover for someone you enjoy? It sounds weird, but it was even more lively than doing something like this for ourselves because the excitement of the big reveal for Granny got us so dorked up and giddy.