Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7
Thank you for joining me on the journey to complete our guest bathroom renovation in eight weeks for the One Room Challenge. I can’t believe that it’s finally time for the reveal! If you’re new here, I’m Sasha. My husband, Matt, and I purchased our Victorian home almost two years ago, and have been slowly renovating it ever since.
In case you missed them, my previous posts are linked at the top!
These eight weeks have flown by. Participating in the One Room Challenge has been a wonderful learning experience for me and has really pushed me outside my comfort zone at times. My husband Matt, who has always done the heavy lifting on our renovation projects, has been out of the country for work for the past four weeks. This meant that if I wanted to finish the project on time, I would need to learn how to use our power tools and do it myself.
The Before
As you may remember, this bathroom was dated, and had many mismatched features, but it was not in horrible condition. This project was prompted by a leak in the grout around the fixtures that damaged the ceiling below. We initially reached out to a plumber for a quote to tie in the four water lines that went to the shower head and tub spout, which was a small portion of the overall plumbing work that needed to be done. After seeing the estimate we thought, “well, we are either going to have to live with a half-demolished bathroom forever or we will have to figure out how to do this ourselves.” As you can tell, we chose the latter option!
The Vision
From the start, I was set on using bold colors in this space. In my opinion, small spaces present a great opportunity to experiment with color! Another priority of ours was to preserve the historic charm of the bathroom, and our house as a whole, while adding the convenience of modern amenities.
I think we were able to achieve both goals!
The After
After more than a year of renovations, we could not be more pleased with the result! The walls are painted New London Burgundy. For the trim, we used Somerville Red. We painted the door and sash Hale Navy. All paint is semi gloss. I can’t say enough about the difference high quality paint makes. The color appears rich and multi-tonal, changing with the day’s light.
The Textiles
One of the best features of this room is its impressively tall ceilings. While this helps small space feel larger, it also makes finding things like window treatments and shower curtains more difficult. Since it was not in our budget to have these pieces custom made, I made them! Once you’ve made one curtain, making others is easy.
I knew that I wanted to use blues and greens in this space to compliment the walls. Since the color in the rest of the room would be so bold, I did not want to overwhelm the space with large, busy patterns. My goal was to find small-scale prints that only had a few colors. As I later learned, this is surprisingly hard to do on a budget, but can be done if you know where to look.
I purchased the fabric for the sconce shades and the shower curtain from this seller on eBay. Both are made by Lacefield Designs. These fabrics exceeded my expectations! I didn’t have to sacrifice quality for cost.
In my previous post I shared tips for making your own pleated sconce shades. I have a video tutorial on my Instagram page as well. Check them out if you’re interested in learning!
Funny story (to me at least haha) – I originally purchased the rug pictured in the mood board above. However, after several weeks had passed and I had not received a shipping notification, I messaged the eBay seller. They had accidentally listed that rug twice so it had been shipped to the other person who bought it. Luckily, the seller gave me a refund. This mistake worked out in my favor because I found a rug I liked better!
I purchased this rug on Etsy from NaturalRugHome. Even though it was shipped from Turkey, it arrived remarkably quickly. As I had chosen fabrics with blue and green for the shower curtain and sconce shades, I decided I wanted the colors in the Roman shade and rug to be more muted and neutral.
I purchased this fabric for the Roman shade. I think that the rug compliments it nicely. To line it, I chose an insulated fabric. As we have an old house, we have large, single-paned windows, which are a major source of energy loss. I hope that the insulation will help reduce it for this room.
The Tub, Sink, & Toilet
When we began this renovation, our goal was to keep the toilet, sink, and tub – all of which were original to the house. We accomplished 2/3 of this goal! As I touched upon in my initial ORC post, after we redid the plumbing, we discovered the old toilet was incompatible with a modern toilet flange. Since we did not feel comfortable retrofitting one, we purchased a new toilet.
It’s almost impossible to find a vintage-looking, modern toilet, with a “round” bowl to accommodate small spaces. We ended up spending much more than we would have hoped just so we could find one to fit the tight space.
After installing the toilet, we realized just how different the color of the new toilet was from the sink and tub. We had planned to have the tub refinished anyway to repair some damage to its finish so we added refinishing the sink to the ever-expanding project scope.
I’m incredibly pleased with house the tub and sink look now they’ve been refinished. Having them refinished was a fraction of the cost and effort it would have taken to remove and replace them.
Plumbing Fixtures
To maintain the vintage feel of the room, we chose exposed brass plumbing. Unfortunately, this increases the price and decreases the selection of everything. I have been very pleased with the Kingston Brass products we’ve purchased for the bathroom because they provide balance of good selection of reproduction vintage for reasonable prices.
Hardware
Selecting the hardware was one of my favorite parts of the decoration process! I purchased most of it from House of Antique Hardware. I highly recommend checking them out. They have a wonderful selection for all home styles and have great customer service. I still can’t get over how beautiful everything is.
Lighting
The sconces are from Hudson Valley Lighting. I had been eyeing these for over a year when I found an incredible open box deal and decided to pull the trigger. You can read more about finding high-end lighting for a great price here.
Art & Decorations
As with the textiles, I wanted to use a mix of blues, greens, and neutrals with accents of muted burgundy / pink. I purchased the large painting on eBay, in addition to most of the other decorations. I won the one below it in a drawing on Instagram held by Atelier Juno, a small print shop. If you’re in the market for some new art, I highly recommend checking out her shop! She has a wonderful selection of high quality prints for great prices.
Thank you so much for following along with our bathroom renovation. It feels great to be (mostly) done with this project. Now, it’s time for me to pack because I’m flying to the UK on Friday to meet my husband for vacation!!
I will be sharing more pictures via Instagram so please join me there as well. Make sure you check out the other One Room Challenge participants here. Congratulations to everyone!
