This could quite possibly be one of the best Before & Afters YET at Crafted Niche! I won’t blab, because I want you to dive right in. Today my sister is sharing her master bathroom makeover and Ummmm yeah. It’s increadible.  Seeing how this is my blog, I can totally steal her thunder and show you guys the REAL eye-candy:

Oh. Emma. Gee. right?!  Nooooow I’ll turn the show over to Christy and let her walk you through how she made the magic happen:

Hi again!!!

So, I’m mainly writing this post to get my sister off my back.  Hehehe.  I’m soon going to be redoing this bathroom (AGAIN) and Dana wanted me to post about the original projects I’ve done in there.  Being the world’s best sister, I agreed to write this.  I also want to apologize for the blurry and not-so-great pictures.  This was before my sister started blogging, so we’re lucky that I have any in process pictures!

My upstairs bathroom, when I moved in, was U-G-L-Y.

This is meant to look like a cheaply done panoramic.  Perfect, right??  Okay, let’s highlight all the lowlights of this bathroom:

1. The toilet faces a wall.  Boring and if you leaned too far forward, you could rest your head on the wall in front of you.
2. Um, the wallpaper is like a bad 80’s hotel painting.
3. I can’t handle glass shower doors.  I like the steam shower effect they give, but I’m way too clumsy for glass doors.  It would have been a matter of days before I fell through one of those bad boys.
4. Random, hung-in-the-corner-so-you-can’t-open-the-door-all-the-way, medicine cabinet.  The door would hit the light fixture when you would open it.  Plus, there’s a HUGE linen closet in the bathroom.  So, no need for that thing.
5. The gold flecked laminate countertop.
6. CARPET.  Oh, and they really went all out with the carpet.  It was carpet scraps (3 pieces) that they just kind of cut and laid over the linoleum.

The first thing I did was remove the glass shower door.  Super easy.  My mom helped clean up the caulk that was left behind and filled the holes in the tile wall from the screws.  Easy enough.  My dad then hung up a curved shower curtain rod.  I have a love-hate thing going on there.  I love how much space it gives me in the shower.  I NEVER touch the shower curtain.  But, It takes up a little extra room in the bathroom.  When I redo this bathroom again, I’ll be going back to a straight rod, hung high like Young House Love.  I did that in my downstairs bath and I love it.  Plus, I plan on tiling to the ceiling when I finish the redo, so it will be perfect.

Next up was tearing down that medicine cabinet, the old light fixtures, and also looking under the carpet.  You know what was under the carpet?  Just some old linoleum tiles.  They were waaaay better than the carpet pieces so my mom just cleaned them up for me and I lived with it like that for quite some time.  But, like all good DIY-ers, I had plans for it.  Hold tight.

Use a steamer to get old wallpaper off.  My mom has one, so I just borrowed hers.  I know there are other tricks that make it easier than just scraping and peeling, but odds are that you know someone who knows someone who owns a steamer.  Use it!  That paper came off so quickly.  And, what did we do with the walls??? Wallpaper!!!  I know, I know.  But, this was a gorgeous print and really girled up the space.

BEFORE:

And, AFTER:

Some other changes you’ll notice in the picture above:

1. I painted the vanity white to get rid of that lovely orange stained wood.  Don’t forget to sand and prime before painting finished wood!!!
2. We went from a plain mirror to a framed mirror.
3. My dad replaced the light fixture.
4. I replaced the old hardware on the doors with brushed nickel.
5. Pictures were taken by me and then I used Paint (the computer program) to remove the background and had them printed on Walmart.com.  My mom still likes to look at them and say “I sure grew some pretty flowers!”.  Dork.

OH!  And, my dad installed two electrical outlets for me.  Previously, the only outlet in this bathroom was in the light fixture.  So, my dad cut a couple holes in the wall and ran the wiring down to the outlets.  He also installed GFCI outlets so I would be safe around the water.  It totally changed my morning routine when he did that.

So, things were looking better…

But, the vanity top and the floor were still an eyesore.

And, I was still facing the wall whenever I happened to sit on the toilet.

Time for a new floor and a new countertop!!!

In the spirit of honesty, those two events happened two years apart.  But, since I’m blogging about this bathroom that started four years ago, I can make it look like it was a fluid process.

I went with a hexagonal tile from Daltile.  Very affordable and easy to work with.  I did, however, learn a couple of things:

1. Use the correct size slotted trowel when putting down the tile adhesive.  Otherwise, the adhesive will ooze up into what should be your grout lines.
2. Wipe up your grout immediately instead of letting it dry overnight.  Otherwise, you’ll want to scrape up the whole project and start over.

I won’t get into the details too much because I’ll cry, but it was a lot of hours of me laying on the floor with a Dremel to clean out the grout lines.  Then, a lot of hours of me laying on the floor scrubbing and SCRUBBING to get the dried grout off the top of the tiles.  (Dirty little secret:  Inside the linen closet, there is still dried grout on top of the tiles)

I also spun the toilet around so it was facing outward into the bathroom.  I’ll show you that in a little bit.

I’m still in love with the floor.  I feel like it goes well with my 60’s era home.  Updated, but still with the decade.  The countertop was an in-stock option at Home Depot.  It’s just black granite with the white under-mount sink.

But, I still wasn’t in love with the vanity.

I didn’t like how everything was just black or white.  It was starting to feel a little kitschy.  Plus, I hated that scroll detail on the doors of the vanity. It just looked dated to me.  So, why not use some of my favorite lattice and paintable wallpaper to dress things up??  I used the same process as what I used for the closet door makeover and got to painting.

The doors are open so that the paint could cure for a week so that it wouldn’t stick to the doors/drawers when they were closed.  I love how it looks like a piece of furniture now instead of a built-in cabinet with a granite top.

So to recap, this is the BEFORE:

And this is how the bathroom looks today!

The wallpaper is a bit “exciting” for my home look now.  I’m more into greys and muted blues so I have a bathroom update in the works that Dana will show you when I’m done.  But, I’d love to have a bathroom like this one day for a little girl to get ready in.  So, who knows, maybe I’ll be calling on my mom to use similar print wallpaper one day!

Thanks for keeping up with my long-winded post.  I can’t believe how far this bathroom has come!  One thing I wish I had done more was taken a lot of “before” pictures.  It’s definitely a motivator to see how much work you’ve done when you’re finished!

-Christy

Pretty flippin’ great, right?!  That girl never ceases to amaze me. Her projects always push me to work harder on my own house. Hope you guys loved her bathroom makeover. I can’t wait to share the next chapter with you – I’m taking her some supplies to get started on it THIS weekend! Woop!

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