Our Mini Bathroom

As much as I would like to do more, I just have to call this bathroom finished.  

Behold, our little bathroom...

This is the view to the left as you walk into our bedroom.
I thought of many solutions to the sink-in-the-bedroom problem:
build a wall, room divider or screen, a curtain?

I thought about ripping out the vanity and finding a pretty dresser that we would plop a sink into, so it just looks like a dresser in the corner, and less of a-sink-in-the-bedroom, kinda like this:

source

But when I finally found the dresser that would be perfect, I chickened out and decided I wanted to keep it as my dresser.  So I was looking for another solution and found this idea:

source

It kind of has a spa-feel and it seemed like the right mix of a doable project and 

pretty enough to sit in the room.  Obviously I didn't do exactly what she did here, it was just my inspiration. 

Here's the complete list of what happened in our bathroom reno: 

~Floating shelves above the toilet

~Sonya painted this bathroom like 5 years ago, but with all the changes it needed a new coat of paint, so I did that again.  I also painted the wood trim white in the bathroom. 

~Greg installed a new toilet

~Our interesting plumber installed a new shower valve.  The older one was super weird and ugly.  Now we have the same shower valves in both bathrooms, they look nice and work really well.

~Our friend who did the tile in the other bathroom did the tile floor in this little bathroom, too.

~Our tile-fitting friend also re-did the caulking all around the shower, I had been meaning to do it for YEARS!  The shower tile was new and nice enough to leave it as is. 

~I built drawers and drawer fronts into what would otherwise be unused space in the vanity.

~Built the slatted shelf in the vanity, it's surprising how much storage we gained with this whole transition.

~I used a mix of baskets from around the house, goodwill, and stores to get the right amount of storage.  The one I LOVE is the little wooden box that I built in high school wood-shop class.  I had totally forgotten about it, but the family that I gave it to 20 years ago decided that Mimi should have it.  She can have it, just not right now!

~I painted the vanity (inside and out) with chalk paint (I'm now a believer)

~The butcher block counter-top lends a bit of warmth to the room.  I sealed it with waterlox. I also tore out the backslash and repaired the wall around the sink.  My hope is that it feels less and less like a sink that way.  I wouldn't do this in the kid's bathroom or in a kitchen, but this bathroom gets very little use and it's mostly Greg and I, so I think the walls are safe.

~Greg's friend came over one night to help install the sink and butcher block--we have great friends! 

~I wanted a different mirror for the kid's bathroom, so I pulled this one from there and into our bathroom

~I painted the toe kick/molding under the sink brown to make it blend into the carpet (hopefully) and then added feet to the vanity.  (you guessed it, more of a furniture feel, less of a sink vanity feel)

~I'm pretty proud of my work, but one thing that isn't so easily noticeable is the door.  It used to swing INTO the tiny bathroom.  So one day I spent the whole day tearing out the door and frame and flipping it.  My hands were very sore and cut up.  I had no idea what I was doing.  But it makes a HUGE difference having the door swing into our big bedroom instead.

~I took the hooks from the kid's bathroom and put them in here.  Before we had, like, 1 hook!

~We kept the old faucet to save money, I wanted this bathroom to cost very little, and it did.  The one splurge was the sink.  I went with that pretty rectangle one.

~Oh! I almost forgot!  while we were taking everything apart, I found that there had been a very small leak and there was mold.  ugh.  So I ripped out the bottom of the vanity and rebuilt all that too.  (at that point I was wishing I had torn out the whole vanity and installed the dresser after all!)  I also repaired the leak in the faucet.  That made the whole process much longer.  But I learned a lot! 

Someday we will:

~tear out the carpet and install hardwood floor!

~get a prettier shower door!

~different light fixture?

~perhaps a different mirror?  

We are happy for now, because we've come pretty far:

 Fall 2014

  and this is Fall 2012

 silly shelves for sure! 

Now on to a new project!