Upstairs Bathroom Reveal!

Once upon a time, deep within the upstairs portion of our house, there stood a really... really... incredibly...

UGLY BATHROOM.

Our master bedroom is on the first floor, so besides the loft, we don't often go upstairs. (Or we didn't-- now that this bathroom is complete, I go up there a lot more!) :)

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I gotta say, I originally thought our kitchen was the biggest before-and-after difference we had made to a single room in our home. It was definitely the most time consuming thanks to the never-ending-headache of a task that is sanding and painting kitchen cabinets (the RIGHT way...), but this bathroom is definitely the biggest transformation in terms of looks alone. It's a completely different room! And we LOVE it. :)

First off, as you'll see, one of the walls was painted brown. And not even a pretty brown-- it was straight up poop-brown. I don't know about you, but while I'm in the bathroom, I don't really want any extra reminders of just why I'm in the bathroom, if you will. If I had to pick one thing in the house that I was most excited to change, it was definitely the poo-poo wall. Goodbye!

There was a super outdated light fixture (missing bulbs including!... Or not included?...), a vanity that was oddly short, seashell sinks (I don't love my nautical themes quite that much), and some pretty gross, beat-up tile. Not to mention the usual holes in the walls, paint all over the ceiling (tape, people, please use tape!), and dirt dirt dirt dirt everywhere.

Le Before Pictoors:

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 We had a few plumbing problems we needed to resolve... But we did! (Thanks, hubby!)

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 How NARSTY is this tub?? I felt a little like Monica on Friends when it came time to clean it. I was a little ecstatic about it. 

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 Gee, I can't think of where to put my towel while I shower... How about IN the shower with me! (Whose idea was this?) #fail

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 Honestly, the light came like this.

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 Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you:  POOP WALL! One of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

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 And just to solidify my point that this bathroom was so disgusting it had to be inhabited by demons, please observe this picture I took of a major hole in the wall and tell me it does not look like a scary face creeping back at you.

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Yeesh. Okay. Enough of that hot mess. Onto the deliciousness.

Sometimes I feel like Chip and Joanna Gaines from HGTV's Fixer Upper. I say this because a part of me wishes we were them (except Dan is so much more handsome, hee) and because for every room that we've done, I've been the design guru while he's been the engineer. I tell him what I envision; he finds a way to do it. And in this room, he came through marvelously. Dan, you are so incredibly talented and you work so incredibly hard at turning our blank-canvas (okay, super dirty canvas) house into our home. Thank you for everything you've done. I'm so grateful that you enjoy it because I love seeing your finished products! And thanks for letting me help you and teaching me along the way. :) Sorry I broke some of your drill bits...

We started by completely GUTTING the shower! Hello studs. :) And I don't just mean my husband.

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 To take down the freakishly large mirror, we taped it up first in case it shattered.

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Once again, I must give a shout out to our good friends, John and Baird. You both have helped us SO MUCH on our house and we would not have been able to complete half of the projects in our house if it weren't for the two of you. Thank you so much. (And I'm so excited that you just bought your first house! Now we can finally repay the favors. Look out, water heater!)

Here's my favorite Dan and John bro-mance shot. :)
(No, they're not related!)

I'll give you five dollars if you can tell them apart.
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After the cement board was in, we began tiling. We found the tile on a clearance sale at Lowe's. It was less than $1 a square foot! It was also the very first thing we bought for the bathroom. That's a little trick I've learned from the house. If you wait to find the "focal point" of a room at a good deal, you save so much money in the long run.

Tiling's almost done!
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While Dan worked on tiling, I sanded and stained the vanity. I used a Gelstain which have become ever-so-popular on Pinterest and decorating blogs, but I've gotta say, it didn't work quite as easy as I had expected. (Does anything on Pinterest?) To do a stain correctly, you are supposed to brush it on and rub it off, or brush it on with an old sock or something so you don't get much on the wood. When I tried that, it just looked streaky. And not in a pretty faux-wood-grain way. I feel like I sanded enough before staining and I'm confident in my actual method of applying it-- so if you feel like you know what I missed, please tell me! I'd love to know for the future.

Streaky cabinet door. It looked much worse in person.
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To solve this problem, I ended up just using the stain as a paint and did two (three counting the first, streaky layer) coats. Then I finished it with a high-gloss poly. I LOVE IT. The color is just gorgeous and although there's no color difference in the wood grain, you can still see the lines. I'm obsessed.

My husband also added legs to the cabinet both for aesthetics and to raise it up from its original height. He screwed blocks of wood into the corners and then screwed the legs into those.

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The floor tile was our token "splurge" in the bathroom. Partly because I couldn't find anything that I liked for the room, and partly because I LOVE IT. I'm obsessed with octagon tiles. They're so vintage, so classy, so clean, and so beautiful. Somebody please call Nicole Curtis to come over to my bathroom and compliment my new bathroom floor. :)

Get it, Dan. :)
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Two other things I'd love to share about this room. We bought the mirrors on massive clearance at Lowe's because some of the pieces were missing. We purchased them, then wrote to the manufacturing company and they sent us the missing pieces free of charge. Thank you, Head West Inc.!  Secondly, we painted the tub in the bathroom using an epoxy kit. It worked beautifully! It was back-breaking work but it turned out great... However... I also tried this on the tub in our master bath and it failed. Miserably! You need to do a test spot on the surface (and I thought I had!) but apparently my test failed a little. It's peeling. :( But, it's the first thing in the house that we've really messed up, so I guess we're not doing so bad? Eh?

Alright-- here's the final result!! :):)

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IT'S A LIGHTHOUSE PICTURE!!
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Here's the vintage tile that I'm so obsessed with. :):)

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It doesn't even look like the same cabinet...

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The legs! Way to go, Dan.

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I'm obsessed with this hardware, too.

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I'm also super obsessed with this fake eye chart sign! I made it. :) If you want a copy of it, shoot me an email. I'll be happy to pass it along :) Ugh-- I just think this is such a super cute little corner... Even if it has a toilet. :P (Hey, at least the poop wall is gone!)

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Eeee I love it!
It says, "The sea sings songs of love and grace to each and every bead of sand."

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If anybody knows how people take pictures of their light fixtures, let me know! Mine always turn out washed out or super dark.

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The painted tub! Can you tell it's a DIY project? That bad boy used to be brown... 

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This is a shelf my husband installed into the shower (instead of the super cool towel rack that soaks your towel for you before you even get out of the shower!). I didn't know this, but you have to ever so slightly slant the bottom of the shelf so that water will run off and not sit on it.

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Fake wainscoting! Thank you, billions of fellow fakers on Pinterest for the idea. 

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Hello, door we haven't painted yet. This is the color our trim used to be. Why so much brown???

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More cozy corner pictures! Mason jars + baby's breath + sign about nautical stuff = love love love!

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Token artsy shot. :)

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And that's our bathroom! I hope you enjoy it. We certainly do. It's just another part of our house that makes us feel ridiculously blessed and provided for. We are so grateful for each and every little inch of this room and every room in our home. :) I could write 1,000 blog posts about that.

Here's the cost breakdown:

Shower tile (plus cement board, thin set, grout): $150 at Lowe's
Floor tile (plus cement board, thin set, grout): $180 at Lowe's
Mirrors: $140, Lowe's clearance
Faucets: $80 total, Lowe's clearance
Light Fixture: $10, Habitat for Humanity
Light Globes: $4 total, Habitat
Vanity Refinishing (gelstain and supplies): $30, Woodcraft
Vanity Legs (and wood to fasten): $60
Vanity Top: $60, Habitat
Hardware: $8, Lowe's clearance
Toilet: $100, Lowe's
Paint: $60, Lowe's
Tub Epoxy Kit: $40, Lowe's
Shower Faucet: $20, Groupon
Shower Faucet Trim Kit: $30, Lowe's
Wainscoting Trim: $50
New Receptacles, Caulk, and all that extra little good stuff: $30

For a grand total of: $1,052. Not bad at all for such a significant change, right? If we had hired a contractor and bought everything new, it could have easily cost us over $5,000. 


P.S. The picture taking process was interrupted a few times by this little curious cutie. :)

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And while I was trying to write said post!

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Thank you for stopping by! I love sharing these adventures with y'all.
If you have any questions, please let me know! Also, if you want a copy of the fake eye chart sign, let me know that as well. I'd be happy to share.

Until next time!
Agape,
CC