It’s September. Bathroom reveal day has arrived.

First, cue the music.

03 The Day Is Coming

Okay.  Now let’s take a look back shall we?

I don’t have before before pictures of the bathroom’s state when we first bought the house but even our first stab at the bathroom was a little lackluster to say the least.

Kinda boring.

Not very functional.

Small.

Small we couldn’t change (well unless we blew out the wall and took over one of our two bedrooms but that hardly seems worth it.)  Instead we upped the ante on function and storage.

Here’s some “after” views from the hall.  Remember this is Phase One — Phase Two and Three will include a new floor, new toilet, vanity top, faucets and shower retiling.  Phase One was more the lipstick on the pig if you will.

The dark color on the walls and ceiling has made the space much more dramatic.   I also raised the shower curtain up to just below the soffit.  The curtain I snagged at Target for $10 and then added a dark, grounding band to the bottom.

Want some more?

The clunker shelf was removed and in its place we put in not one, not two but three acrylic shelves from The Container Store (aka organizational heaven).  They store so much but hardly take up any visual weight like the old clunker.  And while they look decorative and pretty, they also hold a lot of our daily use items like cotton balls, extra toilet paper and even the hairspray.  Don’t see hairspray?

It’s hiding in the vase I faux mercury-glassed at the last Stitch ‘N Bitch.  This was an item we had a hard time storing before the renovation.  We kept it in the giant medicine cabinet before but it just barely fit and sometimes if you pushed on the mirror or shut the cabinet door too hard, you would hear the hairspray hiss out and spray all over the cabinet.

Now for the one “wah wah” moment of this light renovation.

No mirror yet.  The new light fixture is still waiting patiently to go in.  However one good thing we did to increase the function of this bathroom was to add a hand towel ring (picked up for $7.99 on my last Ikea run) by the door.  Previously the hand towel hung from the bar under the clunker shelf.  When you washed your hands, you had to drip your way over the stainless steel trash can, and dry off next to the GFCI outlet.  Now you just turn towards the door, hands still dripping only on the sink top, dry off and you’re on your way.  Much better.

The one downside of giving myself a one month deadline on an unplanned project was I didn’t have the funds set aside to do everything right away (hence the delay on the mirror.)  We did a lot of “unseen” work — changing out all the wood trim, recaulking the bathtub, texturing the walls, changing out both light switches and the GFCI outlet for new white ones — the money kind of burned out fast.  JT and I have been trying to clear up some credit card debt and so I wasn’t willing to charge anything to get this one done.  The mirror should be in place soon though!

But on to more good stuff.  Really good stuff.  My favorite part.

Hello boys.

Of course Keith was the hardest to hang.  A few of these frames we already had on hand.  The rest I snagged for under $3 each (even the big on with Bowie in it — that one was actually $1.51) and then I hit them all with Krylon Satin Nickel spray paint.  One sheet of 32X40 mat board from Hobby Lobby and a bunch of images printed from the Internet on nice paper and a bathroom themed haircut/makeup/toothbrushing “art wall” it was.

What’s going on below the art wall?  Hooky goodness that’s what.  And Turkish towels.

(Don’t forget a new floor is coming.  Picture a 2″ hexagonal Carrera marble floor there.

So all in all, Phase One is wrapped up. For now.  Back to a long, lazy holiday weekend . . . I’ll be pondering the next project to tackle as we hide out from Isaac’s rain.  Cheers – CT