The master bathroom in our rental house was such a drab room – I don’t think it could have been any whiter! And other than the tiny vanity, there was no storage.
I wasn’t looking forward to painting the bathroom because I thought it was going to be really awkward but it actually was easier than I expected. And I managed to not have one of my usual paint catastrophes :-)
I already had an almost-full gallon of BM Ocean Air that I used to paint the hallway, so that was my starting point. I wanted to break away from my usual colours, so decided to go outside of my comfort zone and use coral as an accent colour.
The guy who owns our rental house had agreed to buy a new vanity fixture and faucet for the bathroom. The fixture is a bit too high, but such is life, that’s where the hole is :-) I picked up a can of coral spray paint for about $7.00 and painted the mirror frame.
I already had the turquoise soap dispenser, which I got on sale at BouClair.
The towel rods and brackets were all white. I thought about replacing them with chrome ones, but then thought, why not paint them? So I used turquoise spray paint that I already had to paint the brackets.
The vanity is really not very useful – the drain pipe takes up a lot of space inside, there’s a narrow drawer at the very bottom, and there’s not much space on the top to put things like toothbrushes and toothpaste. I picked up a dark brown basket at Canadian Tire for $3.00 and spray painted it with leftover aqua paint.
I used a couple of screws to hang the basket on the wall, and now it holds our most-used toiletries in a handy spot by the sink.
Another basket that I picked up at Winners – this was my biggest splurge for the whole room!
I had planned to return this frame to Walmart, but decided to keep it and use it in the bathroom. The art is just something I printed out on paper, I’ve got a photo waiting to be picked up at Costco. I haven’t decided yet whether to leave it black or paint it.
The switches on the wall above the toilet aren’t very attractive, and we never use them. Hmmmm, how to cover them up…
With art, of course! I went to a friend’s house last Friday to paint for a few hours, and the painting I came up with works just right here :-)
You might recognize this little table that I made over with a few coats of spray paint. It’s not terribly functional with that one little drawer, but I really wanted a place where I could put a few decorative pieces.
You might also recognize the basket from my bedroom makeover. I decided to move it into the bathroom, because it just so happens to work with the colour scheme :-)
The vase and brass crab are from garage sales (I think I paid $1.00 each), the faux flowers are from the Dollar Store, the starfish is from a shop in Lunenburg, and I found the shell on a beach.
A friend asked me to look after some of her plants while she’s back in the US for the winter. I bought a turquoise planter at the Dollar Store and put her coral flowers into it. Now we’ll see if I can keep it alive till next summer!
The big empty wall above the tub was just screaming for a big piece of art. But I can’t paint something that big, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a piece of art. So I came up with a way to make my own inexpensive easy art. I’d bought three yards of this beautiful fabric from Tonic Living without really having a plan for it – I just really wanted it! We bought some 1” x 2” pieces of wood at the hardware store, Brian made them into a big frame (it’s about 30” x 50”), and I used a staple gun to attach the fabric. Voila, big & easy art for about $15.00!
And this is how it all came together…
It’s not the fanciest bathroom ever, but not too bad for using what I already had on hand and spending about $75.00 on new stuff. I still miss our bathroom back in Ottawa – I mean, how can you NOT miss body jets?! – but now this feels like a pretty happy room :-)
Before…
After…
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