Inexpensive Bathroom Redux

A couple of months ago I decided to upgrade the upstairs bathroom. This room is used by two twenty-somethings, so needless to say it needs to look good, but be able to be cleaned efficiently. That basically means that I want to scale down the "stuff" and make it easier to clean.

The area consists of two small rooms, one for the toilet and one for washing up. Currently the walls are green, with a faux finish and a wall paper border, white molding/fixtures with white cabinets, white tile floor and white counter top. Here is the most cost effective changes that I can do myself.

1. Paint the room. Takes one can @ $30.00. I'm going lighter this time to make the room look larger. The green was dark and closed the room in.

2. Since I'm going light on the walls, the cabinets will go dark. I'm looking to create a dark, rich wood tone on the cabinets. Much easier to clean too after a few coats of polyurethane.

3. I've selected 2 decals for the walls. I like them and they are easy to apply and give the room a "younger" feeling.

4. Change the faucet. Currently there is one ugly, cheap silver fixture there- It's going-I hate it.

5. Change the accessories-towels, rugs and shower curtain.

6. Change the light fixture

7. Frame the mirror with wood.

The room is prepped for painting. This time I purchased Sherwin Williams paint. More expensive but not as great as I thought it would be, however the results were nice. I also painted the ceiling with the same color. Next came the cabinets. I lightly sanded all of the drawers and base just so the paint would adhere to it. I decided to use artist's oil paint to create a "walnut" appearance. First I painted the drawers a light pink (base coat) latex enamel.

Then I blended 3 colors of oil paints: a light yellow ochre, burnt sienna (rusty brown) and a dark brown. I picked oil paints because they take days to dry and that would give me plenty of time to blend the colors and get the effect I wanted.

Above photo gives you an idea how the blending goes. After blending the three colors. a large brush is used and dragged down the front of the cabinet.

Three coats of glossy polyurethane finishes them off and this is how they came out.

All the handles are original but repainted with Rustoleum.

Above you can see the entire vanity and also a small curtain that I made to cover a storage area. Lord only knows what's behind that! If you look closely you can also see the replacement faucet. I selected a bronze faucet, about $98.00 in Home Depot. Put it in myself and saved myself a bundle.

Above you can see the decal I added plus the actual paint color (a creamy beige-yellow). I added this light fixture to replace a very ugly, dated silver fixture.

Above is the other decal I hung above the shower.

Added some nice fabric shower curtains.

Below.....and I'm not sure you can really see what I'm doing here, but I am building a wood frame that will surround the large, plain mirror that hangs above the vanity.

I haven't finished the top and bottom pieces yet. I used fluted wood with four wood squares for the corners. It's glued to the mirror with clear, silicone adhesive. I've done this before and it works very well. The wood is easy to cut because it's all straight cuts, not mitered corners. The wood was painted dark brown and in between the flutes is black paint to add some dimension.

With all considered, this upgrade didn't cost me much since I did all the work myself. It's all finished now except the frame that surrounds the mirror. I was happy with the way it came out and even happier that it didn't cost me an arm and a leg.

Christy

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