One Room Challenge – Guest Bathroom – Week 1

Thank you for joining me on the journey to complete our guest bathroom renovation in the next eight weeks! If you’re new here, I’m Sasha. My husband, Matt, and I purchased our turn-of-the-century Victorian home almost two years ago, and we have been slowly renovating it ever since. I started following the One Room Challenge for inspiration when we moved in, so I am absolutely thrilled to participate this year.

The Guest Bathroom

When we first moved into our home, we had a long list of projects that we hoped to accomplish during our tenure here. This bathroom was near the bottom; it was dated, but functional. As new homeowners, we had no experience with any sort of renovations. At the time, we could not imagine undertaking a bathroom gut renovation ourselves.

How We Got Here

The luxury of pushing this project off ended last spring. We discovered every homeowners’ worst nightmare – a water leak. This shower had barely been used since we moved in the summer before. Then, after some guests visited, we noticed the drywall on the ceiling beneath the shower was bowing. We had a plumber assess the situation and he determined the leak to be from the grout around the fixtures. We figured that if the renovation was limited to just retiling and grouting the shower, it wouldn’t be difficult to do ourselves. However, as with all home projects, of course it wouldn’t be that simple.

It turned out that the plumbing needed to be completely redone. The old galvanized pipes were corroded. If we didn’t replace them now, they would likely fail within the next few years. Therefore, we decided it would be best to redo the plumbing now to head off any more serious issues. As the plumbing progressed, the project grew in scope. Our old 1920’s toilet, which we had really wished to keep, needed to be replaced as the old toilet did not sit properly with a modern flange, which was necessary to tie into the new PVC plumbing. It turns out that it is exceedingly difficult and expensive to find a vintage-looking toilet that will fit in such tight quarters. We ended up going with this one from Toto, with a brass lever.

Now that the plumbing portion of the project is finally done, after around 8 months of work, the fun can begin!

Inspiration

As this bathroom is on the smaller side, I thought it would be fun to go bold with the color! I have wanted to paint a room a deep burgundy or eggplant shade since I stumbled upon these photos on the Farrow & Ball website shortly after moving in.

This is the photo that solidified my decision to use a similar shade in our bathroom. I love the striking look of the black trim paired with this wallpaper.

When I saw this photo in a Benjamin Moore color collection book, I knew that I had found the shade I wanted to use.

The One Room Challenge Plan

We strived to preserve the historic character of our home with our other renovations and will try to do the same here. We are keeping the original sink and bathtub; both will be refinished. However, the lighting, hardware, shower fixtures, and external sink piping will be replaced.

The full to-do list:

• Tile the shower
• Install shower fixtures
• Sew shower curtain
• Replace lighting
• Make lampshades for new sconces
• Refinish shower and sink
• Update sink fixtures and external piping
• Add shelving and storage
• Sew window curtain
• Update door and window hardware
• Paint
• Install trim

I think that covers the majority of our to do list! As you can see, we have a lot to accomplish in the next few weeks. However, as this project has been going on for over a year now, it really feels like we are in the home stretch! I will be sharing more throughout the week via Instagram stories so please join me there as well. Make sure you check out the other participants here. Good luck to everyone with your renovations.

See you next week!