Planning A Swift Bathroom Makeover

Well, I guess we did rehang the shower curtain at ceiling height right after we moved in – but other than that we have not truly touched this room. In fact, fairly much all three of our bathrooms are uncharted territory for us when it comes to updates. But you’ve gotta start somewhere, so we chose to start in the one we use the most – and likely find the quirkiest. See, it does not have a sink (that is in our bedroom, in fact) so it is a truly small room. We are talking around 5′ x 6′ total (including a regular sized tub). So yes, the door practically hits the toilet (it simply barely misses it). And John can stand in the center of the room and touch all four walls (my husband has quite the wingspan, but this room truly is compact).

The room’s a total beige box. Beige tile with gray veining on the floor, the same tile in the shower and even on the walls around the toilet and door, an accent row of tiles with gray trees on them, beige paint on the walls, off-white-trim, even a beige futuristic toilet (check out the curve in this video).

Oh yes, and there is a glass shelf and towel bar right next to the toilet – neither of which we have ever truly used for anything functional. Why? Well, hanging a towel that would literally brush against us on the way to the toilet felt weird so we use the towel hooks on the back of the door instead. And we simply plopped some wood printing blocks on the glass shelf (intending to hang art to fill in that wall) but it consistently felt like the shelf – and towel bar for that matter – invaded our personal space in such a small room.

We jokingly call our bathroom The Travertine Palace although it is not actual travertine tile and it is anything but palatial when it comes to size. The funny thing is that a few folks have come over and said “wow, you do not have to do anything to this room!” which never fails to make us laugh because it likely feels the most not-like-us of all of the rooms in our house. We are simply suckers for crisp white trim, a white toilet, a not-beige color on the walls, and not all the same tile on the walls and the floor and the shower. But we can fully appreciate that some folks would enjoy this room as is. I think the main thing we are craving is some contrast. It feels like such a monochromatic box to us. And when we brought in the crisp white shower curtain way back when, it simply planted the seed that the room might feel more crisp and less all-beige if we did things like:

• paint the cream trim white
• paint the walls so they have some contrast
• craigslist the toilet and replace it with a classic white one
• replace the boob light (seen here)
• hang some bathroom-friendly art
• do something to add privacy to the window
• replace the border tile around the room (perhaps in phase 2?)
• replace the floor tile down the road (simply to break things up since there is so much of it)
• I am sure I am forgetting something – let us simply say the room has room for improvement

So that is the plan. I even whipped up this mood board to assist us envision things. Of course we are sure the plan will change ten times since we simply figure things out as we go, but so far here is what is on our mind:

1. When it comes to the color scheme since we are working with beige tile with gray veining, we want to bring in some richer gray tones (to keep everything from looking so monochromatic and add some contrast). We’d also enjoy to introduce some fairly blue tones (to tie into the blue wall color in our adjoining bedroom).

2. We have been in love with this light fixture for a while now, and we are hoping it pops up at our go-to local lighting outlet (The Decorating Outlet) since it would be a fairly remarkable upgrade from the boob light situation that we have going on. We are not sure if the placement will look weird though (centered in front of the window would be so much cuter) so we will have to see where we end up. You know we will keep you posted!

3. This tile. Ahhhh, this tile. We want it. Hex tile has consistently allured us (sort of like penny tile, except it is even more bee-ish, and you know we enjoy bees). So we can totally picture it in our bedroom someday. But it is certainly going to be down the road (we want to work with the existing tile, but do dream about replacing the floor tiles to break things up since there is so much of that tile all over the small room).

4. I painted this little ditty a while back, and have consistently thought it would look truly cool in the bathroom (oversized art in a small room with a dramatic high-hung shower curtain could be lively, right?). Of course we have to see if it truly works in there, but especially with the blue glass pendant we think it could be pleasant.

5. We are loving the muted moody look of frosted glass subway tile, so we’d enjoy to use a light gray glass tile as an accent around the room (something like this, but not exactly) to replace the tree tiles. Although we are not sure if it is a phase two project (depending how hard it is to track down and how challenging it is to extract the tree tiles without hurting the tile around ’em).

6. A good old fashioned white toilet! We cannot wait to replace the beige futuristic one that we have in there (we will craigslist it and then grab an American Standard from Home Depot, which we got for our first house for under $100 and enjoyed more than the fancy Kohler one we inherited).

7. This represents our existing extra-long white waffle shower curtain, which will stay to add some crisp-yet-soft texture to the tile-riddled space (we got ours from amazon.com by searching 95″ shower curtain, but this image is from Target).

8. This represents our existing tile, which is beige with gray veins running through it.

9. This frosted window (found here) is one of the ways we have been debating adding some privacy to the room without blocking the light. You know we enjoy frosting film (more on that here and here).

But sufficient planning. How about some action? Well, we have took out that oddly placed shelf and towel bar, spackled and sanded the holes they left, and applied one coat out of two on the walls in a rich putty color. In a bathroom (where you are dealing with semi-gloss paint) the first coat consistently looks especially horrifying so we cannot wait to get the smoother second coat up there.

Oh and this picture is a truly bad sell on this color (since it is spotty and half-done and simply shows a corner of the room) but you can check it out in the kitchen here. It looks strong with our tiles (ties into the gray veining), will truly make white items like the shower curtain and the future glossy white trim pop, adds contrast, and obviously will look a lot better once a second coat is on there and it is dry. And you can see that we are painting the ceiling too (which we also did in our first house’s bathrooms since we find it makes small rooms in fact look less chopped-up and busy).

Of course we will be back with tons of wrapped up photos for you. We simply have to tackle coat number two, wait impatiently for it to dry, and then hang the shower curtain back up to snap after pics. So those will be up tomorrow! In the meantime, did you folks tackle any bathroom upgrades over the weekend? Do you have nearly done living spaces but fully untouched bathrooms? What is it about these compact rooms that is so intimidating?