Welcome to my
new bathroom! After lots of work and a bit of patience, I'm so happy to
say that's it just about finished! Come on in!
I am so so in love with the new sink! I found the top on Craigslist for $75 and I built the bottom part out of barn wood from the shed my dad took down at his house to build my mom's studio. The legs were angle supports for the upper floor. I kept the v shaped ends and now they look like dainty feet and sort of mimic the shape of the tile in the shower. The shelf underneath isn't finished. I need to raid the barn for another piece of wood.
Here's what it looked like before...Not super terrible or anything, just boring and plain and definitely not very fitting for our antique Victorian house.
My photos are little bright, but there are sun burst lines in the sink top. It used to be a kitchen sink. The faucets are new, but say "hot" and "cold" on the porcelain handles...love it!
A 50 cent towel bar I've been saving from a garage sale is perfect for the side.
On the side against the wall I put in three antique square head nails to secretly hold the washcloth for when I wash my face (some of my washcloths aren't super pretty).
I bought these three bathroom cup holders at a Boston flea market years ago. I wish I bought the towel bar that went with them!!
I kept the mirror that was in there because of it's functionality, but painted it white (ironically we saw the same mirror at Lowes that already came in white...grrrr...lol). It holds a ton of stuff and has those mirror doors that let you see the back of your head (good for checking out fancy hairdos). The light fixture is going to be getting a mega makeover sometime soon hopefully (I have a new found fascination with making light fixtures, but am at the beginning stages of figuring it out).
To make this ho hum looking mirror more interesting I added wallpaper to the back of the inside. My bathroom routine went from "just want to get it over with and get outta there, to "just want to stare at my toothbrush holder".
Having pretty containers in places that normally hidden away from view is a really nice surprise. I'm big into decanting and that goes for bathroom stuff too. I also hung a coat hook to the underside of a shelf for hair bands and such and screwed a small piece of old molding to the back as a tiny makeshift shelf within a shelf.
Functional but pretty too!
I got the vintage toothbrush holder at Brimfield a while with thoughts of this very bathroom redo. A tiny bisque doll sits on the shelf within a shelf. I'll have to find her more friends.
Ben gets his own side...I am thinking about hanging that awesome brass soap holder (bottom shelf) up inside the cabinet, but also want to hang it outside for all to see...maybe in the downstairs bathroom...we'll have to see...
Onto the closet...
I only spent about an hour or so on the closet...It originally had a clothes bar with no clothes and one shelf piled high messily with linens and a pile of tools and other random stuff on the floor. Very inefficient. I wound up taking materials that I had removed from other parts of the house to build shelves. The dark wood pieces for the sides were the frames on the mantel I just rebuilt. The shelves were the shelves that were in all the other closets I redid in the house...Lucky for me, this closet was the smallest and I just cut down the other shelves to size. Easy project! I think in the future I might wallpaper the back or add other interesting things, but for now this is great!
I made a place to hang towels on the inside of the door simply using an old piece of molding and 5 old hooks. A five minute project...literally.
The bathroom is pretty much laid exactly the same way. My dentist cabinet still proudly stands near the balcony door.
I've been using this pair of vintage necklace holders for a few years now...they are great because I can see everything all at once and nothing ever gets tangled. The cool little shelf was scored last summer at a local flea market for $20. The brass owl I just got last weekend at a small annual town flea market just down the street at the VFW.
The many drawers in the cabinet are completely perfect for bathroom storage. The top few drawers are shallow and hold my earrings and brooches...I cut some vintage velvet for the bottom of the drawers.
Again, I can see everything all at once and nothing gets jumbled. I love it!
We put our old toilet (which was pretty new) in the guest bathroom to replace the bone colored one that was in there, so we bought a new Kohler toilet for our bathroom. It's nice and tall for us tall people!
The fixtures and soap are finally in the shower! We had to put up our old shower curtain for now while we decided whether or not to get glass doors. My vote is an extra long clear curtain with chrome rod, Ben wants tall frameless doors...a few dollars vs. waaaaay more than a few! lol
Here's the shower before...Just a premolded insert.
The darker gray marble really contrasts with the light, almost yellowed marble.
We have teeny tiny hex tile on the shower floor...it feels nice on your feet!
Our ceilings are really tall, which makes our shower quite tall...the large shower head is perfectly proportioned I think and I love the curve of it.
A broken extra long acorn hook is perfect for hanging a towel or robe while in the shower. I hung it high so it wouldn't poke any eyes out, lol.
For the floor I used inexpensive, but classic hex tile with 1 inch squares.
I added a white marble threshold and somehow it really makes the whole bathroom seems that much more fancy! All the grout is bright white...over time it will discolor a bit I'm sure...which I'm actually kind of looking forward too. We did seal it though and probably will continually seal it...so that might take a little while. We'll see.
A view in the from balcony...I can't wait for the warmer weather...it's so nice taking a shower with the fresh breeze coming in.
