home | shiny new bathroom

hello, hello! well, i've finally finished our bathroom diy-projects and they seemed to take longer than the actual renovation. it hasn't been sunny here the last few days, but this room is a life-sized lightbox. it's very white with a little bit of very pale gray & green at this point. we wanted to keep it simple and stay in a style that suits the rest of our apartment, which is kind of like grandma's beach house. we went with beveled subway tiles & trim for the walls and marble penny round tiles for the floor, which is all of 25 square feet. we really wanted to maintain a vintage feel and although the tile guy laughed out loud, we stayed with ceramic bathroom accessories and our vintage hamper with matching waste basket.


we had super-soft, lightweight dri soft towels from bed, bath & beyond and kept them. our garden isn't producing much this summer, but a bunch of mint in a karin eriksson vase on the windowsill is nice for its fragrance. everyday i use the shower squeegee from ikea because i don't want to spend a day cleaning this bathroom, especially since the tiles in the shower area extend up to the ceiling to bring your eye up. and, to break up some of the white, i added liberty of london fabric binding from purl to our waffle weave shower curtain. 


the fixtures are from the devonshire collection by kohler and the sink is by woodcrafters from home depot. i added the shanna murray magnolia garland decal above the mirror as a nice reminder each day and the microdry bathmat from bed, bath & beyond is plush and soft. the baskets are from muji and will be stored under the sink when not in use and they were expensive - oy!


the manila rope for the steam pipe is from home depot and started me thinking about some seaside touches, so i added the vintage buoys from brook farm general store. the fog linen work tray on the windowsill is from there, too. i lined the shelves with some extra vinyl wallpaper i had and turned it upside down so you can see the pattern from below. some pieces from our vintage english chintz china collection are displayed along with a mermaid we picked up years ago in cape cod, a sailboat ornament from my brother and a few starfish & shells. my transistor radio even got a makeover with new clear rubber bands to hold it together.

i just have to fix up the door a bit, but i think we're done with this room, although it might be nice to have the ceiling painted a soft blue and the rope pipe might be pretty with some white stripes. i'm happy we did this renovation, but i don't want to do it ever again. going down to the studs, ugh. but, our kitchen really could use a face lift and i'm sure i would cook a lot more if it was also shiny & new ;).

xo, cindy

ps i originally had a photo of our toilet, but replaced it. i thought maybe it was too much. i included it because since we only had a pipe with the other toilet, we were very excited to be able to drop something into the tank to keep it fresh and immediately did so with the blue tablet. but, maybe that wasn't such a good idea as the blue is quite intense. the jury is still out on this one.