Bathroom affairs

We have two bathrooms in the house. Our upstairs bath generally gets the most use because we shower and get all pretty/handsome in there. When we moved in (January 2004), both baths needed serious remodeling, and we got them done pretty quickly.
Because the downstairs bath would see the most 'guests' we logically spent more money and effort to spruce that one up. I still love it - here's a picture:


Unfortunately, we didn't think to take a before picture (we started doing so for subsequent renovations). It had a rose pink tub and surround, matching rose sink in a big country-fied vanity, fake grey wall tiles, and was really, really ugly.

The upstairs bath had flowery granny wallpaper, stick-on vinyl tiles, and one of those mirrors with the row of 'ball' light bulbs on top. I don't know what they are called, but they remind me of backstage dressing room mirrors. We spent much less money and effort on this renovation, but it still made a big improvement.
We replaced the floor with a solid piece of vinyl, stripped the wallpaper, and added a new mirror and lights. Here's a picture of it right after. You may not be able to tell (unless, of course, you know because you've been here), but this bathroom has 2 doors - one to the hallway and one into the guest room, which is where this shot was taken from:

Now, you might think that color is wild. It kind of is. It's called Pottery Red, and was not originally one of my choices - in fact, we were heading toward a more earth tone palette, when Tim came home with this chip. I resisted at first, but then I didn't care because we had a lot of other things going on at the time.

Fast forward 5 years - the toilet hasn't been working properly (beyond fixing), the paint is tired and chipped, the floor has seen better days, and, oh, did I mention? That door there on the right? It hits the toilet when you open it - it always has, and it has always been annoying. And classy. We finally decided that we needed to step up our renovation efforts a little more with this room.

Tim took out the door between the guestroom and the bath and sealed it up. This increases the visual space a lot. He also moved that other toilet door down about 6 inches and reversed the hinges, so now the door doesn't hit the toilet when you open it.

We got a new toilet. One that works. Thoroughly. And with much less noise and general scariness. This gave us the opportunity to sneak in a new floor, and clearly, we had to paint. We still have much to do, but so far, the floor and the toilet are both in. Tim painted behind the toilet area before he put the new one in (wow that makes things easy!)

First up, the new floor. We went with vinyl again, because down the road, we plan to 'gut' this bathroom and do tile and so on, but for now, we just wanted instant improvement on the cheap. There's a great remnants flooring place in town, and we got this piece of Armstrong (in the highest gauge they make) for a fraction of its retail cost. $65 for a generous piece that Tim was able to cut perfectly:

Here's a close up - the leaves are embossed. It's very simple and neutral.
And of course, the piece de resistance:

The lighting in this shot does nothing for it, but the paint we chose is a really soft grey which complements (but does not 'match') the floor. I know, grey is brave, but we definitely don't fear color. I think it's going to give the bathroom a more modern and fresh feel.

Of course, I want a new vanity, a new tub, new hardware and all that jazz, but we'll have to live with this for a while. As you can see, we have to finish painting and add the trims and cosmetics back.

Though it hasn't been long enough for us to forget it was back there, it was still fun to see our' mark' from 2004 behind the mirror - and look at that, exactly 5 years ago - aren't we adorable:

So tonight I started to shop around a bit for a new shower curtain and accessories. With a neutral/khaki/light greyish floor, dove grey walls, and bone fixtures, I think I want to go in a black/white or cream/black direction but nothing busy. There's a lot of options out there, and then there's Tim, of course, the great Style Blocker. It's going to be a compromise.

This entry makes me want to do a big Before and After entry of each room we've redone since we moved in. It will be fun. Stay tuned!