My home's ugly duckling grows up

I'm very happy to report that our home's ugly duckling has grown up!

Our downstairs bathroom was so ugly and "off" it made me cringe every time I used it—or walked by it. Check out a few of the "before" pictures.

It's really not the room's fault (it never is, is it?). The previous owner went to the home store and asked for all of their ugly bathroom items and put them all in one tiny, awkwardly-shaped, oddly-laid out room. 

Starting at your feet there was a sheet of linoleum covering the floor—your basic white with diamond shapes in a blueish color. It was slightly peeling up around the edges.

Next is the space ship tub/shower—this is still with us, but we've now hidden it—it's one big piece of plastic enclosure with a ceiling and for some bizarre plumbing reason it sits about 6" up from the floor. Oh, and it had sliding doors, so you could see inside the ship! I've really never seen anything like it.

Then there was the toilet's position. It sat at a 33 degree angle in a corner, opposite the corner sink. It just messed with my mind that it wasn't at a 45 degree angle or straight. More on that later. Then, above the toilet the aforementioned previous owner recessed a cabinet in the wall. So there was/is a random, not-especially-attractive cabinet door on the wall over the toilet. Odd.

The lighting over the corner sink and cabinet is just sitting on top of the cabinet (we haven't fixed that YET, but it is the next step and requires building up the cabinet and mounting a new light...).

This is getting long, but stay with me!

Let me take you back to my Jan. post, "Dreaming of the after." I wrote a bit about working on said bathroom, but there's a story behind the story. Last Dec. we had an issue with the toilet backing up. Enough said. So, the same night we brought home our freshly-cut Christmas tree, my husband spent the next 24 hours in the bathroom cleaning up and fixing the plumbing problems. 

The floor came up (yipee!), the molding came off (great!) and we HAD to do an instant update on that room. Luckily we had already picked out a floor tile in anticipation of an update. It's a nice tan and brown pattern with flecks of blueish grey.

Once the floor was down we put in new, custom 6" molding and trim to cover up the fact that our tub sits on a wooden frame. When the toilet went back down we discovered it was never in the right position (I could have told you that) at 33 degrees from the corner. It was intended to sit straight out from the wall! It looks 110% better and it's the same darn toilet.

When we first moved in we took the doors off of the space ship and made a shower curtain rod out of piping parts because (and, you'll be shocked here) the way the shower is positioned there is no place to anchor a rod, so we had to make one that curved one side and was straight on the other...pretty ingenious if I do say so myself!

A fresh coat of paint (covering the cabinet over the toilet so it "disappeared") in Sherwin Williams "lazy gray" really makes the room peaceful. New shower curtain, mats and towels (the new towels are tan, not white as pictured) finish it off. Light coming next. Art to come soon. I'm thinking beach pictures from past trips.

Best thing about our new swan—it cost only $205. Once we add a light and art and we'll finish up around $300. Not bad for a face lift in our ugliest room! Now onto my office....the new ugly duckling!