While we’re overall quite satisfied with our home, there are a few things about our house that Matt & I don’t love. Many of them, unfortunately, stem from bad style decisions of the former homeowners and the fact that the 1982-era builder-grade features aren’t exactly our favorite. These two sources of problems show themselves in things like honey oak cabinets and bad faux-southwestern-style wallpaper. Slowly but surely, we’re remedying these issues by re-doing things in the house. Over the past few years, we’ve re-done the downstairs bath, upgraded the lighting in kitchen & living room, put on a new patio/pergola, and many other improvements.
Right now, we’re focusing most of our creative energy & money on our master bath — but we recently did a minor upgrade of the guest bath, too.
It wasn’t a complete over-haul. We kept the same cabinet & counter/sink. We kept the light fixture & towel bars, too, since we installed them just a few years ago. We also kept the same tub & shower surround. We kept the same mirror, too. Still, for what we didn’t do… we think the change is good!
BEFORE
Unfortunately, I can’t find the before pictures, so use your imagination. Vinyl floor with “rust” colored squares on a should-be-white-but-yellowed-out background. Faux southwestern wallpaper (thankfully, my mom helped us strip that a few years ago*). Old toilet with mechanics that didn’t work quite right anymore – requiring you to jiggle the handle and flush multiple times. And, as we found out when we went to replace it — the old shut-off-valve didn’t actually shut anything off anymore. The room also had cheap mini-blinds, installed by us (but hardly an improvement over the old cheap mini blinds that came with the house when Matt bought it).
AFTER
New floor, new paint, custom window treatment & changed out the accessories.

The floor is a slate-wanna-be tile from Home Depot. This picture shows the floor & cabinet before I painted the baseboards — and wow, did they need fresh paint!

The paint color is very similar to what it used to be, so much that I doubt anybody could tell unless you saw the colors next to each other, though! The wall is slightly darker and the trim is now a true white instead of cream. We kept the same art — a picture taken by our friend Brian, and two pieces from the same Hawaiian artist.

We replaced the toilet with an American Standard Cadet-3 (round bowl). We have the same toilet (but elongated bowl) downstairs in the half-bath, and it flushes great at 1.6 gallons/flush. This new one is 1.28 gallons/flush, but works just as well so far.

The soap bowl & dispenser (not pictured above) were actually wedding gifts. They are made from soapstone, and were on our registry at Crate & Barrel. I like them so much more in here than in our master bath, where they weren’t showcased (as they should be). The cabinet also got a fresh coat of white paint and new hinges (brushed nickel, instead of painted-over-off-white).

The “floral” arrangement is from the Autumn clearance section at Target & Michael’s. The spheres were sold as a set for about $4 from Target (40% off, I think). The reeds were 70% off at Michael’s (cost about $1) and the vase was half-price (about $4). I like when Autumn clearance time comes; Autumn colors tend to fit in with our house way better than the stars-and-stripes you find in during Summer clearance or the pastels you find when they’re discounting Spring merchandise.

The window now has a roman shade, a DIY project I made following these directions to make a shade out of a mini-blind (though I did some sewing, so mine was not no-sew). I’ll have a full review of that tutorial later. We like this shade better than the old blinds, but it’s not perfect. I may re-do it with another similar shade someday, now that I know the technique (but I’ll have to remember where I found that fabric — I pulled it from my stash of home-dec fabric purchased on sale in order to make pillows).
Overall, for a not-complete overhaul, we’re very happy with our “new” bathroom! And, it was far easier than the Master Bath work which is happening right now! If you’re on Pinterest, check out some of the parts of our master bath.
*Note: I don’t hate wallpaper. I just hate when people put it up directly over drywall without priming the drywall first. There’s simply no way to get the wallpaper off without damaging the walls. My mom got us a WallWik set, and provided the labor — which helped a lot in removing the wallpaper in the bathroom, but the walls are still not perfectly smooth.
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