My Updated Tranquil Master Bathrom

Well if you didn't know by the Facebook posts, I started working on my master bathroom a few months back.  Slowly but surely she's 99.9% finished.  Really the only things left to do are caulking the sink and around the baseboards and finishing off one piece of tile.  But lets start at the beginning.

Just kidding.  I'm not going to go THAT far back.  But this was just to give you reference to what the vanity looked like when I first bought the house.  Plain oak.  Zzzzzzzzzz.  Snoozefest.  

The walls immediately went tan and then a coat of paint went onto the vanity.  

Then I painted the walls a dark, slate blue, added picture molding around the mirror and changed out the light fixture.

Even with some small decorations and artwork on the walls, I just wasn't happy with it.  Or calm, for that matter.

I hated the tile.  I hated the floor.  I hated the faucets.  I hated the vanity.  I hated the big mirror.  Literally, the entire room I hated.  Since day one.  None of the changes I had made changed that fact.  So I finally decided to do something about it.

  

First was to change the paint color.  Shortly after I painted my master bedroom that deep charcoal gray, I knew that I wanted my bathroom to be the next color down on the color swatch.  I mean, why not go with an almost black in your small, no window bathroom?  Everyone was looking at me like I was crazy.  But the thing is, there is a TON of white in the room as well to lighten it up.  The tub and tile surround, the shower, the marble vanity top.  Plus I was painting the vanity so that dark brown would no longer be there.  

First thing was to spackle and sand all of the blemishes on the walls. 

Then came the first coat.  

So after spending about 4 hours putting two coats on the walls, I hated it.  I loved the color but hated the look.  I know it takes roughly 25 minutes to dry.  It shouldn't look like this HOURS after it's on the walls.  The twit at the paint store argued with me when she couldn't get me the paint I wanted.  Told me THIS paint would be EXACTLY like the paint that I wanted.  But guess what?  It wasn't.  THIS paint was SHINY.  There is nothing worse the SHINY FUCKING WALLS.  Well, I mean, that's a very First World Problem thing for me to say.  But man, was I pissed.  Definitely not how I wanted to waste hours of my day.  So back to the paint store I went.  To get the damn paint that I wanted to begin with.  Luckily, the gentleman that helped me was super nice about it and gave me a new gallon of paint in the sheen that I wanted without me having to go all Kristi on him. 

I mean, look at this comparison. Same color, no shine.  MUCH BETTER.  

Then came time to decide on the new mirrors.  Since this bathroom is so small, I didn't have a lot of choices but what I really wanted was two separate mirrors.  Not the big one that I had.  So I searched and searched and SEARCHED.  I went to every store in the vicinity and scoured too many websites to count.  I finally had two options.  TWO.  Only two.  

I was a little torn with my decision.  Do I go with the scrolly girly one or stick with my normal clean lines?  At the end it really wasn't a choice because one of them wasn't glass for the mirror, it was plastic and for the same price as the glass one.  Ummm no thanks.  Girly for the win!

Now that the mirror decision was made, I had to change the faucets.  Those god awful cheap things have irritated me since I built the house.  I've known which faucets I was going to get to replace them but they were $84 each.  I have 4 faucets in the house.  I wasn't trying to spend $340 on friggin faucets.  So I waited until they went on-sale.  And waited.  And waited.  I have waited for 6 damn years for those faucets to go on-sale and THEY NEVER HAVE!  Ugh.  Seriously though- why?  

Well one of the home stores here does an 11% off your entire order in the form of a rebate.  They do it quite a few times a year and believe me, I always take advantage of it.  But the faucets aren't available in this specific store.  They are at Lowe's.  Well looks like Lowe's was either losing money to the 11% rebates always happening at the other store or they finally made a marketing decision to compete with it.  Because one day I went in and they were offering the same 11% off your purchase, but not as a rebate.  It was as your next purchase.  So I bought something cheap and got the receipt for 11% off my next purchase.  Score!  I then went back, got the mirrors and got my faucets for 11% off.  Boom, bitches!  

So I went from this:

To this.    

Aren't they gorgeous?  They are simple.  Chrome.   And they don't look like swans.  (You'll never look at bath faucets the same again.  Sorry.  SWANS I tell you.)

Next came taking off the brown paint from the vanity.  I thought about just getting a new vanity but at roughly $800-1,000 for a new one, removing the brown paint was clearly the winner.  I don't make the kind of money that allows me to just buy new vanities whenever I don't like the one I have.  

So I bought the citrus smelling orange stripper and got to it.  

  

It actually came off the vanity quite easily.  I ended up removing the side of the vanity since the bead board really wasn't my thing and it was going to be a bitch to get into the grooves.  The end of the vanity is actually a vinyl sheet that looked like oak.  So when I painted the vanity the first time I had to add something wood to the side so I could paint it.  I was given a bunch of bead board so that's what I used.  But this go-around, I was going with something different- a flat wood panel.  Oh and sneak peek at the flooring.  I was checking to see if I was going to like the new vanity color with the floors.  Turns out I LOVED it. 

Way back when I purchased the flooring for my master bedroom closets, I accounted for this bathroom and the hall bathroom floors as well.  It's been sitting in one of the spare room closets for quite a while now.  Well finally FINALLY it's on to the floor!  But before I could do that, I needed to move the toilet to the tub.  

Then came time to get the flooring down.  I decided to not remove the ugly roll of linoleum that was already on the floor and to just go over the top of it with the new floor.  It goes down pretty easily.  Pretty soon, I had most of it down.  Side note- see the broken toilet paper holder?  Umm yeah my ass did that.  Pretty sure I had a bruise from it too.  Oopsie.  

Since the floor was now butting up to the shower and tub instead of being under it like the linoleum was, I put some quarter round trim there to cover it up and give it a more finished look.

Are you ready for some FINISHED pictures???

Here is the quarter round that I was talking about.

Oh and the tile piece that is missing in the above photo on the left is one of the last things I need to finish.  The asshats that built the house ran the tile all the way to the floor on the left side but ran the baseboard all the way to the shower on the right side.  It bothered me every time I got into the shower.  I figured if I was re-doing everything, I might as well fix this and do it right.  So I just need to either cut the tile that was there to fit in the smaller space ABOVE the baseboard or I just need to get a piece of tile that size the next time I'm in Lowe's.  Either one shouldn't be that difficult.

One thing I completely botched in this reno is the quarter round going around the vanity.  I intended to paint it the vanity color when this started.  But completely forgot, installed it white and then stood back and slapped my forehead.

It kind of looks ridiculous.  I'll be taking that off this weekend, painting it the correct color and re-installing it.  But other than that, the caulking, and the small piece of tile- this puppy is done!  It looks so much better!  I swear, this bathroom won't be touched for a long time!

One of the new things I added that makes a world of difference....

A hook on the wall between the tub and shower.  Now I can hang my towel there so that when I get out of the shower, it's right there.  Instead of having to step outside and reach across the room to the back of the door, getting water all over the floor.  Best $20 I spent in awhile.  It's the same line from Moen as the faucets- Boardwalk.  They have towel bars (which I already had but actually didn't put back into the bathroom after I painted), toilet paper holders (which I now have thanks to my ginormous ass), towel rings, mirrors, faucets, etc. in the same line.  Now my bathroom is all matchy matchy.