I finally revealed our bathroom a couple of weeks ago in this post but I wanted to offer up a few more details.
You already know that our bathroom went from looking like this…
…to looking more like this
What you may be interested to know is how we got to this point and why we made certain choices…or maybe you really don’t care and you’re just reading out of boredom. I’ll take either.
There were a few different things that we didn’t like about this bathroom, whether they were things that weren’t functional or things that weren’t very pretty to look at.
The vanity that was original to the bathroom took up SO. MUCH. SPACE. Seriously, I felt crowded every time I walked into the bathroom just because of how large this sucker was. Enter room, rub against vanity. Sit down to pee, bang elbow on vanity. Lean in to look closer at the mirror, almost fall over the vanity. I think you get the picture. We wanted to replace it with something quite a bit smaller that would still offer storage for extra towels, toilet paper, etc. After looking at vanity after vanity after vanity online and at every Home Depot and Lowe’s location in the city, I felt like I would never find something that I really liked enough to drop a few hundred bucks on. We finally settled on one at Home Depot but it was back ordered and we were on a deadline to finish this space up before a wedding shower we were co-hosting. Plus, neither of us was really in love with it. And then I remembered these lovely things called vessel sinks. I was never really sure how I felt about them but I figured if we could find a piece of furniture we liked that could work as a vanity, then we could easily plop a vessel sink on top (easily…right).
Enter: this cabinet from the Threshold collection at Target.
Kyle and I had both been drooling over this cabinet for months but couldn’t justify it since we didn’t actually have a place for it. I pitched the idea to him and luckily for me, he was sold…and so was the cabinet. We ordered it online on sale for around $120 (and now that I’m looking again, it’s on sale for even cheaper…hmmm) and waited patiently for it to arrive on our doorstep. Well, Kyle waited patiently. I obsessively checked the tracking info every day until it told me what I wanted to hear. We left the backing off to allow for the plumbing and we frosted the glass with spray paint (I believe we used Rust-Oleum) so that you can’t see all of the plumbing and other odds and ends that are stored in the cabinet when the doors are closed. We still need to go back and do another frosting coat/clean up what’s been done. You can see some pretty obvious lines right now but it’s been low on our priority list as of late.
And here’s how it compares to the old:
Our next order of business was to find a sink. Ha. Hahahaha. This is where things just got ridiculous. You see, this little cabinet is quite narrow. So narrow, in fact, that we could only really find one sink that would possibly fit and even then it would be a tight fit. We decided to just go ahead and order it because we already laid out the cash for the cabinet and we were kind of past the point of no return, at least in my mind. Again, I obsessively tracked the order until I saw in big, beautiful green letters my favorite word, “Delivered” and then I rushed home after work to open it up. Of course, when I picked it up off the front porch I heard the sound of my soul crushing…
Busted into a billion little pieces. Delay #1208252904. We immediately took it back to the store for a refund. Really though, I’m glad it happened because we ended up finding another sink that we liked even more and would better fit our sink cabinet. We ended up with this guy from our friends in orange and after seeing the busted sink on instagram, they reached out to me and offered a couple of gift cards so we ended up with an almost free sink.
We ordered the faucet off of Overstock and installation was easy once we got the right hoses and connectors. Installation for the sink and faucet was basically, use hole saw to drill here and here, insert pipes and such, make sure everything is secure, use as you please.
We also ordered the towel ring and toilet paper holder off of Overstock. It was surprisingly difficult to find what we wanted in the finish we wanted. These particular ones have had mixed reviews online but they work well enough for us.
The mirror is the same one in the master bathroom at the house Kyle’s parents own that we were renting last year. We both loved it so much that we bought one for our half bath. I really love the edge and how nice it looks against the dark gray wall.
The toilet is the Cimarron by Kohler. I was actually surprised by how expensive toilets are but let me tell you, this has been well worth it. The old toilet was exceptionally crappy (ha!) and I can’t wait to switch out the two upstairs. In case you’re wondering, that faux wood toilet seat is still sitting in our garage (with the rest of the toilet) but will soon be taking a trip to the dump. Removal of the old toilet and installation of the new was pretty simply. The biggest thing is just making sure that you get enough pressure on the new seal so you don’t have any leaks…speaking from experience here, people. This one has been approved by Gatsby.
We found the lights in the outdoor lighting section at Home Depot.
Kyle had to do some wiring since we went from one fixture to two, but I love how they look. They have a really nice texture and they were only about $20 each which made my cheap-o heart go pitter patter. These aren’t the brightest of lights and where we needed them placed left a dark shadow around the top of the room. See:
Pair that with the dark gray walls and the bathroom started feeling a little cave like. So, we decided to switch out the beige-y fan with a new white one complete with light. It’s a total game changer and kept me from going all DIY-zilla and repainting the whole room.
The last thing we needed was some sort of something to go on the wall above the toilet. This had me stumped. What the heck do you put in the bathroom? A mirror? Shelves? Embarrassing naked bathtub photos from your childhood? I thought about this for weeks (read: days) and finally settled on a little DIY art. Kyle cut these guys out of card stock and then we used glue dots to mount them in some cheap Target frames. Still undecided about whether the white backing will stay or if we’ll switch to gray.
One of the biggest things we did in this bathroom was put down a new floor. A lot of the old tiles were busted and I’m not the biggest fan of pink tile. We just picked up some 16×16 gray square tiles and laid them in a grid pattern. The accent tiles aren’t quite flush with the large tiles but it’s pretty darn close – that was something we didn’t think about at the time but would have done if we could go back in time. I get a lot of “How do you know how to do that?” – especially with this floor. The answer is: I don’t. Or I didn’t. Neither did Kyle but we Googled the heck out of it and asked a contractor we know for tips and then we just went for it. I think it turned out pretty well for our first tiling job.
I think we were both pretty terrified to take on a project like this but doing it and having it turn out the way it did makes me feel a lot better about all of the projects on our “To Do” List. Although not as great as Kyle apparently who just offered to fix our leaky roof by himself. I think we’ll leave that one to the professionals.
Let’s take one last before and after look:
Ahhhh, this makes my heart happy.
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