Upstairs Bathroom Re-Vamp

Hello, Fellow Blog Readers!

Since I decided that I could practically write a novel about our entire house and how I've done updates on each room, I am going to write a blog post about one room at a time.  Today's blog post is about our upstairs bathroom.  It's a small bathroom, with a cabinet/sink/mirror, a toilet (with a button!), and a full shower/tub.  The house flippers we bought from redid this room, installing a new shower, new toilet, new cabinet/sink, and new tile to match the other tile in the house.  It was a very plain room.

I really don't like those towels. For the umpteenth time.

See?  NO COLOR.  Other than those ugly paisley towels (they'd be better if they weren't brown and green).

This room has a lot of potential!  Everything in here is new except for the walls and ceiling, so it's clean and functional.  However, I love to have a house with personality and some "coziness" factor.  So, off to the paint store I went.  I originally had a can of "oops" paint from the Home Depot, which was a darker blue color.  I painted the room, and decided it was way too dark.  So, I spent extra money and got a color from the Home Depot that I picked and paid full price for.  Much better!  It's crisp, light, and makes the room feel bigger than the dark blue color.

Much better than green paisley.

Now if only the dog didn't eat the bath mats...

One theme I wanted for this room was a shabby chic/vintage feel.  Since we're on a semi-tight budget and S doesn't really care if we have tons of decor (he doesn't care if the walls are blue, yellow, brown, whatever...it's a wall to him), I try not to break the bank on stuff.  We got the super comfy tan towels from Macy's (Hotel Collection, color is Chamois), but they were a wedding gift, so we didn't pay for them (however, we did pay for the wedding!  So I guess we sort of paid for them in a round-about way).  The shower curtain was bought from Kohl's about 4 or 5 years ago for S's old apartment, so we've gotten plenty of use out of that.  The window pane is actually a real antique from a 1930's house in SE Minneapolis.  I bought it from a guy on Craigslist who was re-doing his windows.  $15 later, I had two windows!  This one, I painted "Glass of Milk" from the Martha Stewart Collection at Home Depot, to match the off-white decor in the room.

My pretty vintage window!

The one out-dated thing in the room was the light fixture.  It blasted us with absurd amounts of artificial light every morning, and it was ridiculous.  It was basically a mirror with 5 circles cut out for lightbulbs that faced directly towards you when looking in the big mirror.  It was an eyesore.  People could even tell when I didn't dust the lightbulbs, because they were 100% exposed (sorry people, better things to do than dust lightbulbs).  So, S and I decided we were sick of the crazy light in the bathroom.  We went over to Menard's and bought a much softer light fixture.  Ahhhhh, no more being blinded by light.  It has 3 lights, covered by a frosted glass shade of sorts.  Much easier on the eyes.

Voila!  New light fixture!

The little pieces of decor are from a hodge-podge of different places.  I got the large fruit crate from my mom's attic, actually.  This is an antique and was sitting up there, existing.  I decided to use it as a toilet paper holder in the bathroom!  Put some cottage-y feeling flowers in a cute little off-white pitcher from IKEA, and bam!  It feels so much cozier.  I got the little rustic wood box from Etsy a while back, and took some extra white ribbon and made a bow.  The white lantern was an extra from our wedding decor in the church!  I loved the decor so much that I had to use them again.  I made the flower vase out of a wine bottle and some acrylic paint, and stuck some fake daisies in them.  Lastly, I found the little flower wall hangings at Goodwill.

In love with the old fruit crate and white vase

My Goodwill find!

Oh! I forgot- we also took our traditional towel bar down and installed towel hooks.  We got this towel bar rack at Target and we love it.  So much easier.

No need to nicely fold those towels!

Love the style of the hook rail.  So vintage- looking!

Loving the towel hooks.

A few things we might do in the future- take some white wood moulding and make a frame around the mirror (upcoming blog post I'm sure), and raise the towel ring up that is near the sink.  Or maybe just a hook?  It's up in the air.  I'm always up for ideas to spruce our room up, leave a comment with your ideas!

Until next time!