How does your bathroom measure up?

I have to start this by saying that I really am not obsessed with bathrooms, although looking back over my past posts you may think I am. Now that I've said that, here's another bath/restroom-related post!

I recently spent a great weekend in NYC—specifically in Brooklyn. (On a side note, if you've never been to Brooklyn make it part of your next trip to NYC—it's a wonderful Borough, full of great restaurants, shops, a farmer's market and a beautiful park.) While there we dined at many great restaurants. As you all know by now, I notice things like decor. All of the restaurants were beautiful and unique—until I made it to the ladies restroom.

I left a beautifully-decorated seating area and once in the ladies room (of one restaurant in particular) entered what looked like a roadside rest stop bathroom! Ewww. I'm talking below average. It was like night and day. The friends we were visiting live in NYC and shared in my observations. I couldn't understand why the restaurant had stopped decorating at the bathroom door!

In all fairness, most restaurants we visited had LOVELY bathrooms and this made me very happy. I feel that a bathroom should match the rest of the building. It should not be an afterthought, but a factor in the overall design plan.

This got me thinking about our homes and bathrooms—specifically do they "match" the rest of our home's decor? They are such small spaces (even when they are big, they are small compared to living spaces) they can be overlooked OR that can make them an easy choice for a makeover.

I recently worked with a client on her master bed and bathroom. Through paint and a few accessories I was able to transform her bathroom to match the bedroom (which also received a slight update). 

I've included some before and after pictures here. It's now a room they enjoy versus just a room they have to use first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Don't you deserve a room like that?

How does your bathroom measure up? Would a fresh coat of paint and new window treatments breath new life into it? Should you retire the mats on the floor? Add art, a new mirror and a colorful shower curtain. Who knows, it might just become your favorite room in the house! 

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!

Dreaming about the "AFTER"

I love a good home project. 

There is always one going on at my house (seems that every room is in need of some sort of update). Pre-kids my husband and I would get a room done in a weekend -- paint, build, arrange furniture and hang pictures. Now, with two little kids we don't move as fast (okay, we move very, very slow) but, we still move. My husband would much rather watch football, but he always joins me as my "labor."

For me a good home project is a thrill. I get a rush out of it -- out of the AFTER. 

You've seen the shows where they show the "before" picture and then they busily create, labor, move, create more and BAM -- the "AFTER" is achieved. Well, at least they make it look that easy on TV. Anyone who has ever done any home project knows that's not the case...but I digress.

It's the thrill of the AFTER that motivates me to spend night after night, free hour after free hour, painting, planning, hanging, nailing, agonizing over color, size, the right curtains, etc. My problem is that I can see the AFTER so clearly in my head that I can't stop moving until I get there. 

We're currently redoing out downstairs bathroom and we just put up new 6" base molding. I was recently on the floor of this tiny bathroom putting another coat of white gloss paint on the molding and I was excited about it. Yeah, that's right. I was excited. Painting molding on the floor of a tiny bathroom doesn't sound too exciting, huh? But, the AFTER got a hold of me. After the molding comes new lighting, new paint on the walls and a new shower curtain, bath mats and maybe towels. Along with the recently laid new floor and repositioning of the toilet (long story), we'll have an updated room. I'm giddy just typing this.

The AFTER usually means a lot of time, learning something new, researching how-tos, reading decorating magazines (pure heaven in and of itself), shopping, asking tons of questions and maybe making a mistake along the way, but that's all part of the AFTER process.

And I LOVE every bathroom-floor-minute of it!