The Little Bathroom Update That Could...

... although it wasn't even planned.

Sometimes one thing leads to another, and when I am involved, it isn't always necessarily as planned.  I am good at taking something and running with it {or as my husband would say, making a mountain out of a molehill}.  Me running with the purchase of a new vanity caused the entire bathroom project to have the Lorax effect.... it kept biggering and biggering and biggering.

It all started out when our old vanity had seen better days and the drawers busted due to little climbers and the fact I hadn't kept a good stool at their disposal.   The vanity had been painted multiple times and was never intended to be long term anyway {although 12+ years was pretty long term}, so I was excited to pull it out and say farewell.  And being that we had leftover materials from lower level and guest bathroom projects at our disposal, it seemed as though the stars were aligning in our favor of a sweet little bathroom update.  All we would need to purchase is a new vanity and boom, much better right?!  Not quite.

Once the old vanity was removed, the walls needed to be painted and far more than what we had left in our touch up paint jar.  So, the cheapy in me just pulled out a gallon of paint we had on hand and painted the walls in Behr's Burnished Metal.

Bryan installed the flooring {these from Home Depot which we have used in our guest bathroom and throughout our entire lower level}, and we also updated all of the trim in the bathroom.  We followed the exact same process as we shared in this post here {which also links back to more step by step tutorials}, so I didn't duplicate the documentation process this time around.

This is where the biggering comes in.

The new vanity really opened up the bathroom and allowed us better storage {I will touch on that in a moment}, which also meant we could remove the stand-in storage cabinet we had been using.  Removing the small cabinet left the big giant wall looking sterile and blank and the dinky hooks looked just that; dinky.  My wheels were spinning and I decided that subtle stripes paired with beautiful new substantial hooks would be much more fun for the space.  Simple, yet functional while also filling the big empty wall.  No big deal.

I shared the beautiful stripe and house number projects in my last update.

And then things went entirely downhill.

As I was taking and editing the post photos, I noticed that the light was catching areas that needed to be touched up.  So after I posted my last update, that is exactly what I went to do.  I touched up edges and corners and even a missed spot on the stripes here and there.  Then it happened.

Jennifer Jones was painting a wall, Jennifer Jones had a great fall.

Yep, I fell as I was touching up the ceiling.  Completely lost my balance and not so gracefully bruised my wrist, ribs and ankle.  At that point I called it quits, slowly walking away to allow my touch ups to dry and to take a few days to recover.

Once the touched up areas were dry, I was left completely disappointed.  Because the metallic glaze was a mixture that I created, even though I stirred and stirred and stirred some more, it didn't provide the exact coverage.  In fact, the spots I "touched up" only looked worse.  Blotchy, runny and oh so wrong.  I panicked.

I went and spoke with a paint specialist at Sherwin Williams and asked about finish options to fix the metallic mess I created and to see if they had any options that would allow me to redo my stripes.  I was told that applying any type of metallic glaze can be a finicky process due to running, mixing and edging, and that they usually recommend hiring a pro.  Um, that was not part of my plan.

So, we went to Home Depot and heard the same thing from there paint department.  Somehow, I got lucky and most of my stripes looked beautiful, so I am guessing that if you can get it all on and blended at once, you should be OK.  Just don't attempt to touch it up after.  Ever.

Feeling deterred and frustrated and sore... I chickened out and purchased the exact same color of paint as the walls were already finished in, only in a glossy sheen.  My fingers were crossed there would be enough of a difference between the eggshell and gloss paint sheens, to still achieve the subtle stripe effect.

Re-taping was easy, we just followed the lines we had previously created so no re-measuring was required.  Hubby and I whipped out the glossy stripes together in under an hour, and started pulling the tape again.  This time, it was nearly impossible to even spot a difference.  Strike two.

Before getting too much tape pulled, we stopped knowing we would have to paint yet again.  Nervous to head back to the glaze I loved and risk messing it up again, I decided to just find a pretty complimentary shade and call it good.  Lame I know but sometimes you have to know when to fold 'em.  I went with Glidden's Misty Moonstone and it was juuuuuust right.  Did you hear the sigh of relief from there?

Other than the paint drama, the rest of the bathroom came together easily and quickly and makes me grin for a lot of different reasons.  In fact, I was fairly happy with our previous bathroom refresh, but this one takes the cake.

My visions for this bathroom down the road include a lot of tile, including a whole new tub and shower.  Knowing the direction that I see the bathroom heading, anything purchased this time around had to fit with those plans.  I searched high and low and when I spotted the vanity online I knew it was "the one".  The vanity was one that I could see myself loving for the rest of the life of our home and had all of the characteristics I was after.

And that vanity was an absolutely game changer.  Attempting to translate size within photos is nearly impossible, but this bathroom is a whopping 5' x 5'.  The beautiful new vanity {purchased here from Lowes}, was actually not as deep as our previous version, giving us an extra few inches of floor space.  That few inches paired with the leggy base resulted in a bathroom that felt twice as big. 

Although smaller, the cabinet actually works harder for us in the storage department.  The previous vanity had one small cabinet paired with two small drawers.  The drawers held random bathroom clutter and the cabinet was utilized for cleaning supplies.  There was no room to store our extra set of towels, however, the open shelf on the bottom of the new vanity solved that problem instantly.  Love.

To organize the inside of the cabinet, I added a caddy to hold the cleaning items and rags on the left....

While a basket on the right holds daily toiletry items.  I gave the bottom of the basket a coat of the coral paint to tie it in with the house numbers and freshly painted stool.

Speaking of house numbers, they are so stinkin' darling floating above each of the bathroom hooks.

The entire bathroom is done in neutral grays and blues for my boys and to stay consistent with the flow of the rest of our home, but the little pops of corally pink sure speak to me. 

A few years ago we switched from towel bars to hooks in the bathroom, and I will never turn back.  Hooks are so much easier for my boys to use.  No need to fold anything nice and neat, just toss the towel back on the hook and go.  Occasionally, towels would slip off of their hooks, so this time around we sewed small ribbon loops onto each towel.  Couldn't be easier for the boys to maintain yet adds a sweetness to the space.

We toss a soft bathmat over the edge of the tub which is placed on the floor during showers, so I opted not to put down a rug for now.  This allows the stool to glide across the floor on felt pads, and encourages the boys to grab the stool when washing and brushing.

Of course all of the room accessories were curated from items we already had around our home.  My favorite elephant print still set the tone with its fantastic colors....

While the other frame was updated with a small print I received with a recent order from Aedriel.  The shower curtain was purchased at Home Goods and allowed for us to play a game of musical shower curtains around the rest of the house.

The hand towel may be a little too much stripe on stripe, but we already had it on hand and the color was too perfect for now and really ties in the house numbers and stool on the opposite side of the room.

So that is the story of our little bathroom update and the three attempts at getting the perfect stripes.

Have you had a "third times a charm" project recently?  Or a room that started out as one itty bitty update and kept biggering and biggering?

sources:  floors, vanity, light, stripe towel, candle, vase, frames, elephant print, shower curtain, hooks - discontinued from Pottery Barn, towels, stool

Paint colors - Behr's Burnished Metal / Glidden's Misty Moonstone