Our New Loo: Nothing Like We Planned

Posted June 20, 2011 // Half Bath, La Casa

Way back when, in the dark ages of our blogging days, we posted this mood board to visually describe what I was envisioning for our half bathroom update.

We mentioned in one of the weekend’s posts that we didn’t come close to matching all of these items in our new bathroom.  Here’s how we crossed them all off our list:

  1. The fantastic Lotus wallpaper from Farrow & Ball was too large of a pattern to look fantastic on our crooked bathroom walls. In fact our walls are a whole inch shorter at the top of the wall than at the point in the wall where we would begin papering. We were too afraid to drop almost $100 on paper that was going to look forever wonky and cause me to either rip it down immediately or forever boycott what is now my favorite bathroom. That’s not fair to me or to the new toilet which I love so much. So instead we used the leftover paint from our kitchen update, costing zero dollars to finish the room.
  2. Ah the Sofia Pottery Barn towel. My sister hated it. I liked it and had every intention of purchasing it until we found some much more bold, graphic and modern hand towels from Furbish Studio in Raleigh. Days later they were monogrammed, unreturnable and Sofia was still living at the Barn.
  3. We decided to repair our old rusty sink so no new faucet was required.
  4. Instead of adding a large potted plant in a room with no windows, we opted for a small indoor cactus beside the sink (which will get trips outside from time to time for a little dose of sun) and some small, and free, branches from our yard inside the lantern which now hangs from the ceiling.
  5. Again, saving some beans, we just repaired our wall sink and added a skirt (see the how-to details here) for a whole new look, keeping the vintage charm of the original.
  6. I love garden stools, and am still checking out Craigslist to find one on the cheap for elsewhere in the casa. But for this half bathroom project I settled on at $8 stool from TROSA, and painted it Million Dollar Red from Benjamin Moore instead of purchasing a $100 garden stool online.
  7. The Home Goods lantern, well you guys know we already had one of those and just hung it from the ceiling for some interest. Read more about that here.

By our own actions, the room looks completely different than planned. It’s bolder, brighter and a little more worldly we’ll say, with framed post cards hanging on the walls and even some travel books – you know in case anyone every accidentally locks themselves in there.

Just for fun here’s the before shot. Light grey walls, a small and old mirror, rusty unworking sink and runny toilet. The towel bar was also annoyingly too big for a small hand towel.

The only piece I hated to lose was the vintage glass shelf above the sink. It may find a home elsewhere in the casa soon. Not a bad powder room but, just like our kitchen, not very reflective of our bright and colorful style.

Here are the after shots, the many-months-after shots. We think the room looks brighter because of the larger mirror to reflect light and the bright whte paint job on more than half of the walls. Like any powder room, it was pretty difficult to photograph with crazy angles, but you all get the idea.

Here is a quick run down of all the projects included in the room. Every one of which was DIY – I have the dried caulk and paint on my jeans to prove it.

  1. Install of a new toilet, for free by the way!
  2. Repaired our leaky sink and made a skirt to hide the ugliness underneath.
  3. Hung lots of DIY trimwork and crown molding
  4. Painted that trimwork a gloss white and the top half of the wall Gentle Tide by Glidden.
  5. Hung a lantern from the ceiling.
  6. Replaced the mirror with a Home Goods find.
  7. Painted a thrift store stool bright red.
  8. Added fun accessories like our shell from Heather Garrett Home here in Durham as well as our framed postcards on the wall.

It’s a tiny room that has come a long way. We left all the bright colors for the accessories like the stool, towels and books, so they are easily interchanged in case we decide to go for a more muted look down the road.

What do you guys think? Of course we also posted it all on HGTV’s Rate My Space too, we love hearing ideas from the DIY crowd.

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