Bathroom Renovation Project

I don't know if it is appropriate to call it a "renovation" since we haven't done much other than taking the vinyl tiling off the walls and changing the fixtures. The transformation certainly looks like we have done a lot but we have changed the look of our bathroom without replacing the bath/shower unit and ceramic tile surround, sink or toilet. I didn't take a photo of the bathroom before we started but I do have a couple photos that show the vinyl tile wall covering and will give you an idea of the general state of our bathroom before we undertook this project. When I moved in back in August it looked like either an old woman or a bachelor lived in the flat. It was difficult to discern which because Jason had just layered his bachelor style "decorations" over the outdated decor. Below you can see the lovely dolphin toilet seat (Jason's choice) and also the very classy sign he posted above the toilet. I guess he was just worried he would get distracted by the dolphins so he thought he should remind himself. Anyway, those things aside you can see in these photos the vinyl tiling that was covering the walls. The tile wasn't installed very well so it was peeling off and bubbling in many places and the pale pink and green motif went out of style sometime in the last century. I had a feeling that the tiles were hiding something horrendous underneath and as we began to peel them off it revealed about 4 layers of chipping and peeling paint and many large gouges in the plaster. It certainly wasn't the worst situation I have ever seen but it was a lot of work to remove the old wallpaper paste, sand down the rough edges where the paint was chipping off and fill in the gouges. To be honest, when we finished the wall wasn't 100% smooth. Since the paint color I chose was a clay color I thought it would look fine if the wall was uneven or textured in places and I am glad I made that decision because it would have taken us countless hours to get the wall completely smooth. Last weekend Jason and I painted the walls and I spent this week shopping around for bathroom fixtures and we completed the project this weekend. Here is the final result, well at least the completion of Phase I.


As you can see the walls have been painted a clay color. The name of the color is Rum Caramel 4 but I honestly don't think it looks like rum or caramel and I am very familiar with both. The dolphin toilet seat was replaced with a pine toilet seat which coordinates with the pine medicine cabinet. Before we just had a plain unframed mirror bolted to the wall so it is nice to have a good medicine cabinet.

A few years ago for Jason's birthday I gave him this set of three hanging photo frames with photos of Chicago and we thought it went really well with the bathroom decor. Actually, this was the only part of the bathroom that was Jason's idea so I feel I should give him proper credit.


The old bathroom had some very cheap beige plastic fixtures which we replaced with these nice chrome accessories.
We used to have a really ugly wooden cabinet in this corner that was painted pale antique green. We replaced it with this chrome and glass shelving unit and I found some great things at TK Maxx (exactly the same as TJ Maxx except here it is with a "K"). This is my favorite part of the bathroom. I think every woman aspires to have a "spa inspired" bathroom and this is my little spa corner. I found some nice little spa bottles of toiletries, some handmade English soaps, some little sea sponges, a reed infuser and a faux orchid plant (I killed the last live orchid that was left in my care). I think it was the most confusing moment for Jason when I spent a good 20 minutes in the bath product section of TK Maxx sniffing and inspecting an array of soaps and trying to explain to him that these were for display, not for washing your hands.

One thing you may notice is that there are no electrical outlets in the bathroom. This is no freak accident, there are no electrical outlets in any bathrooms in England. I might even go as far as to say that this is the one thing I miss the most about America. I just feel very strange about drying and styling my hair in my bedroom. I haven't adjusted to storing my hair products anywhere else but the bathroom even though it would probably make more sense if I didn't have to walk back and forth from the bathroom to the bedroom with my hair products and hairbrush and clips but I guess old habits die hard.

I am really proud of us because we did all of the work ourselves with minimal arguing and I think we did a quality job. My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law Diane have both been up and they were amazed by the transforation. Eventually Jason would like to replace the toilet, sink and bathtub but I think for now this is something we can definitely live with.

Thanks again for reading everyone! Have a lovely fall, I really miss the Midwestern changing of fall colors and here the leaves just kind of turn brown and fall off the trees so its definitely making me pine for that unmistakable smell of a fall day in Michigan.

I would like to take this moment to apologize to the my male readers for putting you through all that talk of handmade English soaps and hair products.