Navy Blue Half Bath

We painted the half bathroom navy blue a few months ago and I never took pictures because this room is impossible to photograph. It's just way too small. I decided to just take a few quick pics to share here today though, because I figure a few snaps are better than nothing! I really like the dark blue for this space - it compliments the wallpaper nicely, coordinates with the navy blue couch in the living room and hides dirty handprints from the boys well (coming in from outside to wash their hands in here)!

We had lots of navy blue paint leftover after finally painting Matt's bedroom ceiling (photos coming soon). He wanted a dark blue night sky with glow-in-the-dark stars just like his big brother. The yellow walls were not in good shape, so this was an ideal solution. The color is Benjamin Moore's Historical Collection Hale Navy, just to keep things consistent around the house. 

The room needs some updating and fixes, but that's a project for another day. Just don't look too closely. The paint is good enough for now. 

Half Bath Back Wall Restyled

Once the radiator cover was in, I was able to look at this small space with fresh eyes. Last week I added in a piece of art on the opposite wall by the mirror. Here it is again to refresh your memory:

Now next to the radiator cover below the shelf, it was a big empty space. I decided to add a couple framed pictures, using leftover black frames. The Oyster is a notecard from Rifle Paper and the whale was a free image I printed from my favorite freebie art site, vintageprintable.com.

I also took a little time to style the shelf a little better. For the first time ever, this room feel truly finished. It’s cozy and pleasant and pretty - a far cry from the “outhouse” references I used to make about the space.

Half Bath Radiator Cover: Finished

So here’s what the finished half bath radiator cover looks like. Mike put it together, stapled on the screens and touched up everything with caulk and paint. I love how much more finished this looks. No more ugly hot exposed pipe!

It’s a tight squeeze because not only was the pipe ugly, it was also stuck at an awkward angle leaning right. We couldn’t fix it. So I think considering the challenges of the extremely tight space in a tiny room, this is fantastic.

Half Bath Radiator Cover In Progress

We’ve needed a radiator cover in the bathroom for a while, but the strange shape and size of the tube required a more imaginative solution. Something tall and thin that could squeeze between the toilet and the wall. The top cap required an open screen because the pipe releases steam. However, now that Oliver is fully mobile and the radiator gets HOT, we had to get a cover made before we could turn the heat on in the fall.

Mike built the last two radiator covers together, for the half bath and the kitchen. He cut the pieces outside and tested them to make sure they fit in the tight space. Next it was time for priming, painting and screens.

Half Bath Wall Art

When we originally refinished the half bath, it was a rush job thanks to Oliver’s impending arrival and an unstarted nursery. We covered the basics and made a huge difference in the room, but I never really took the time to style it. With the cooler weather fast-approaching, our focus on this room is renewed. As Mike undertakes another radiator cover project (to protect Oliver’s curious fingers from a very hot pipe!), I’m taking the time to bring the room a bit more polish.

Since this space is so tiny, I don’t want to overwhelm it with too much. But like any half bath, I think the space could benefit from a few finishing touches. So for starters, I added a piece of art next to the mirror. It’s actually been living in the office over my desk on a shelf, but the color/style/frame were perfect for this room, coordinating beautifully with the wallpaper.

The artist is my very talented personal friend who does pencil drawings, watercolors and amazing jewelry. She did two pieces up on my gallery wall. You can find her JWardWells Etsy shop here.

Then & Now: Kitchen and Half Bath

(For the next two weeks we're celebrating our 3 year blog anniversary with a long overdue, fully updated house tour)

Kitchen
The kitchen was straight out of 1960 with outdated cabinets that had seen better days, a damaged enamel sink, ugly linoleum countertops and several layers of outdated wallpaper hiding crumbling plaster walls. Here’s the kitchen before:

The kitchen went from dark and run down to bright and cheerful. We painted the kitchen cabinets white dove, repaired and painted the plaster walls edgecomb gray, replaced the linoleum countertops with butcher block, tiled the backsplash with white subway tile, updated the window light fixture, replaced the sink with stainless steel and upgraded the faucet. We also added a moveable white kitchen island for more counter space. Here’s the kitchen after:

Half Bath
Long referred to as the “outhouse,” the small half bath left a lot to be desired. The walls were covered in peeling wallpaper with cracked plaster underneath. The cheap medicine cabinet was rusted and cloudy, the faucet needed replacing, the outlet awkwardly place, the only light an exposed bulb on a pull chain. Within weeks of buying the house, a plumber had to rip a hole in the ceiling to repair the bathtub drain from the bathroom upstairs. Then the pipe in the wall started leaking into the basement, thanks to a crack created by the previous owner’s love of 5 inch nails for every project. Here’s the half bath before:

We removed the ceiling light and installed one over the new medicine cabinet, putting it on a dimmer switch next to the new outlet. We installed beautiful tin ceiling tiles and put the living room wallpaper on the window wall for extra charm, then painted the wall color to match the yellow background. With some new bathroom hardware, it was a whole new room. Here’s the half bath after:

Half Bath Window Film

While reorganizing the basement to make room for the couch, Mike found the privacy film for the half bath window! I’m relieved he found it - it's a little pricey for a sheet of plastic. I think it’s a nice touch - it lets plenty of light in, but now makes the half bath feel a little more private.

Before & After: Half Bath

It’s hard to believe that this is the last original room in the house we’ve redone (except the basement and attic, but those don’t count). After this we’ll be redoing our own remodels! This room has had more unexpected destruction than any other, so it was in a really terrible place. The before photos are a mix from the first month after we moved in, and from when we first started the work when the wall was missing.

The Finished Half Bath

The half bath is finished. And we love the way it came out. For such a tiny small awkward space, I think we added a lot of glamour to distract from the poor location. This space went from bad to worse during our time in this house, but I’m glad we waited to redo it since two plumbing issues required demolition of the half bath’s wall and ceiling. And now it no longer resembles an outhouse.

We actually had a really tight deadline to finish this bathroom - we were hosting a party for a very special little family member. The threat of too many guests for one upstairs bath was enough to light a serious fire under us. As awful as it is during a project (like building the patio), extreme deadlines might make us miserable but they certainly get the job done.

I love how the wallpaper brings the half bath, kitchen, and living room together. When you view all three wallpapered walls together from the living room, it makes the downstairs feel more cohesive.

A quick recap of all the work: We replaced the missing wall and patched the old crumbling plaster ones, added a new ceiling, added a light switch (no more gross pull chain!) and new vanity light, scraped and fixed the window, added new trim where it was missing, painted the walls and trim, wallpapered, reinstalled the sink, added a new medicine cabinet, added a new towel ring and paper holder, hung a roman shade over the window and put up a glass shelf. We kept the existing toilet because it is a nice Kholer and the tile floor because it was new when we bought the house. For such a small room it was still a ton of work!

We still need to put privacy film up on the window. We have a roll leftover from the upstairs bathroom, we know it’s in the basement somewhere... we just haven’t figured out where we put it yet. When we find it, we’ll put it up. At some point this year we also need to build a radiator cover for the pipe in here - it gets really hot. But for now, the room is in good shape. It’s so nice not to be embarrassed by this space!

Sink Re-installation

Mike put the sink back in the bathroom! He reconnected all of the plumbing, installed the new faucet, fastened it into the wall (and plywood behind the wall for extra stability), and caulked around the edges with clear caulk.

It actually was not quite as easy as that. We actually attached the sink to the wall first (it’s a 2 person job), then Mike went to install the faucet. Except the sink was too small for the wrenches to fit! So we had to disconnect the drain, pull it off the wall, have Mike connect the new faucet, then we put it back up again and Mike redid the drain again. We should have put the faucet on before we installed the sink to begin with... but we’re learning as we go. And it only wasted time (and a little bit of plumber’s putty on the drain) so it wasn’t the end of the world.

The room is finally really starting to come together... now we just have to put up the finishing touches this weekend and we’ll have the big reveal on Monday!

The New Ceiling

Here’s the half bath ceiling with the steel ceiling tiles laid in. We ordered the metal tiles in the plain steel finish instead of white because I wasn’t sure if I wanted the metallic or white, and I figured we could always paint them if I didn’t like it.

With the metallic sheen on the wallpaper and the shiny chrome fixtures going in the room, the steel tiles looks great. I love it. Of course if I redecorate this bathroom in the future I can always paint them white if I want to, but for now they really work well in the room.

Let there be Light

Before installing the ceiling, Mike had to remove the hideous overhead light fixture. With the short winter days, a new light was crucial to being able to get the rest of the bathroom done. So Mike’s next step was to finish wiring the light and the switch (during daylight hours so the power was off). He put the new light on a dimmer switch. It's very convenient to be able to choose the level of brightness in the room.

Half Bath Trim

When the wall in the half bath was demolished, the trim under the sink disappeared with with all of the plaster and lathe rubble. Mike used an existing 1"x6" we already had in the garage and a small piece of trim purchased at Home Depot (where you pay by the inch), cutting the edges with the miter saw. He primed and painted the wood before securing it in place with the nail gun to help prevent paint splotches on the new shiny wallpaper. The nail holes were filled in with putty and covered with a dab of paint.

We also painted the rest trim in the half bath - the window frame and the rest of the base molding. The window of course looks a million times better now that it’s been scraped and repainted, and the base trim looks a lot better too after years of neglect.

Pipe Face Lift

The water pipes for the sink have seen better days. Much better days. Over the years they’ve obviously received more than one coat of thick white house paint - leaving them looking very dingy with lots of chips and dents and scratches on an unevenly painted surface.

The water pipes before (the drain pipe is new for a comparison of white and dingy)

We tried some different methods and ideas before finally coming up with the best solution - we could use the same plastic white shower rod cover we used to cover the ugly hanging rods in the closets upstairs. The clean white plastic is cut to size and covers all sins. It comes in a long tube with a slit that we trimmed down with scissors.

It was easy, no-mess, fume-free and makes the pipes look like new. Definitely a win-win.

Half Bath Wallpaper

My wonderful mother gets all the credit for putting up the wallpaper in the bathroom (just like the hall and living room). I barely qualify as an assistant. Between the two different wall depths and the window it was not an easy task, but it was so worth it. I LOVE IT. The wallpaper looks great it’s the interesting focal point I was hoping it would be.

When viewing the bathroom from the living room with all three wallpaper spots in view, it really pulls the the rooms together. I’m can finally visualize what the half bath is going to look like finished. I’m going to save the shot of this for when the bathroom is finished - right now the construction mess is too distracting for a decent picture.

We put the wallpaper up before the sink and fixtures because it’s so much easier to install it on a mostly bare wall (instead of trying to go around a sink, cabinet, etc.). When the time comes (in a few years) to say goodbye and try something new, we’ll just cut around everything with an exacto blade. The remaining paper can be like a time capsule awaiting the next renovation!

Half Bath Paint

The half bath is officially painted... bright golden yellow. Benjamin Moore’s Firefly #229 in an eggshell finish to be exact. It’s like liquid sunshine (or liquid faux cheese product if you’re not a fan). It's showing up a brighter in the pictures than it is in real life... but it's still pretty bright, just like the swatch below!

Why such a bright bold yellow? Because it’s actually the same exact shade as the wallpaper in the living room... which also going to be on the main wall in the half bath. It’s such a tiny, odd, weirdly located room, we decided that a little extra pizazz was in order. Something to help distract from the obvious, so if the door is open people might go “Oh pretty wallpaper in the bathroom” instead of “Ew toilet in the kitchen.”

To make such a bold print work on the walls of such a tiny space, we decided the best thing we could do was blend the wallpaper background color into the rest of the walls. I really like the color, it's a lot less orange than in the photos, and it makes the room feel very sunny and cheery. While it’s not part of my base pallet for the house, it is from one of the main accents. And I LOVE the wallpaper, so it’s nice to use the leftovers somewhere else.

We decided to conserve paint and not cover the new wall entirely with paint where the wallpaper would go - just in the areas where there could be some overlap or a seam for better blending.