Powder Room Refresh

With the kids back in school and Brent in California for the Labor Day weekend, I was really ready to take on a project (or two) and decided to paint the office and powder room. An update on the office will have to come later because I'm waiting on a couple of orders but I'm happy to say the powder room is complete! 

This isn't a total renovation because someday I would really like to take the tile off of the wall. Between the stone floor, stone sink and marbled tile, I feel like it's just a bit too much but as I researched what it would take to remove the tile I quickly realized it would be too labor intensive to take on. Broken tile can create shards like glass so this is one project we will have to save up for a professional to take care of. 

Before:

 After:

First job was the ceiling. I've painted so many ceilings in this house! But light bounces off a ceiling and illuminates the entire room. In a bathroom, the white ceiling also make the space feel more clean and sanitary. The powder room used to feel cave-like and now the high ceilings feel much more light and airy. As always, I went with Benjamin Moore's Super White.

There was no towel ring when we bought the house so I put one on this wall because I was nervous about drilling into tile. Over time that ripped right out so I spackled and well, didn't get back to it for a while. I finally dedicated the time to properly sand that spot down and make it look as nice as I could. Previous owners had left a HUGE mirror on that back wall which was odd because no one thinks to do a 180* to use a mirror. I took that down and repaired the wall where it hung. Still not sure what I'm going to do with it- that sucker is big and heavy. I couldn't paint the walls a stark white so I decided to coordinated with the nearby kitchen and paint them Benjamin Moore's Cedar Key. Bonus- I was able to touch up the kitchen paint when I was done!

So many of the things that bugged me about this bathroom had to do with this wall. The tile is just too much and needed to be tamped down a bit. That meant learning to drill into it. Turns out that just entails getting a special drill bit so the tile doesn't crack. Not really a big deal. I had to be careful about my bit size or the sinkers were too small. I installed a mirror (round to cover up more tile and over the sink where it should have been), a towel ring and a couple of shelves for storage since there is a pedestal sink. I also installed a toilet paper holder. Previous owners left a free standing holder with space for two more rolls of toilet paper in the bottom. That thing just always looked dusty and gross. There used to be a large copper looking garbage container that ended up looking sloppy so I replaced that with a slim, black one that just covers the toilet pipes.

 The vanity light was a saga. I really wanted to paint it black because the antiqued brown looked old and dirty. While her sisters were invited to go swimming at a country club, Ireland stayed behind to help me. With the electricity cut off so we wouldn't hurt ourselves, it was incredibly dark. After removing it from the wall I decided I couldn't paint it like I thought I'd be able to but then we couldn't get it screwed back on. We ended up taping the stupid thing to the wall because our arms were shaking so badly. Ireland was cheerful as I grumpily drove to get us lunch and we took another look once we were fed and rested a bit. This time I figured out how to remove the wiring so I could paint it and that's what we did. I cleaned out the lamps (filthy, completely filthy) and let the paint dry. It was evening by the time we reinstalled it so the powder room was super dark and I couldn't tell a yellow wire apart from a white wire. When we flipped the breaker, a horrible buzzing sound told us to flip it right off again. Finally I was able to get it right and reinstalled but the paint job was all scratched up by then. I don't think you can notice and it still looks better than what was there before. I have to give kudos to Ireland for sticking by my side during dusty, frustrating work. 

The newly cleaned lamps and white ceiling add major wattage to this small space. I'd taken the floor vent cover off and decided before I put it back I'd vacuum it out since it looked pretty dirty. Ugh!!! I don't know if the toilet once overflowed or what but the smell that came out of that vent as I vacuumed was unmistakably feces. With rubber gloves I used Clorox wipes to sanitize inside the vent as far as I could reach. The powder room always felt a little gross to me, even when I'd just deep cleaned it and I'm sure that had a lot to do with it. 

I had fun with the little items on the shelf. The Get Naked sign and his and hers figures crossing their legs came from Etsy. The faux orchids and succulent were from Home Depot and the fresh hand towels were from Bed Bath & Beyond (with a coupon, of course!) The powder room now feels clean and functional! I'm not embarrassed to have guests use it and one person even emerged stating, "That's a really nice bathroom!" Mission accomplished.