By Jessica

So far 2020 has been a pretty crazy year, and honestly the month of May has fit into the “pretty crazy” category quite well. This month we transitioned from working at home to opening the store again and we are so happy! It feels so nice to be back in our beautiful store while serving customers (and still being safe and respecting all the guidelines). There are several design projects on the go and I’m excited to be able to share them once they are in full-swing. Right now, they are all still in the planning stage. I’ll share more as soon as more details get set in place.

May also brought along more outdoor time, working in the yard (still planning and figuring out exactly how I’m going to update our shed), more homeschooling, Mother’s Day, learning TikTok dances, time in the sun, building garden boxes, and watching all the plants start to come up and plant some new ones. I also started tackling a small bathroom update! Here’s a bit more info for you and you can see my design board at the end with what will be updated! I think it’s going to be good.

At some point, I would love to gut our bathroom, change the layout and replace everything. We are not at that stage yet, but our bathroom desperately needed some love. This is our main bathroom that we use most frequently and our guests would also use. Confession of a beginner blogger….I got too excited to start tearing everything apart that I neglected to take a picture of the bathroom before I started….

This was taken after adding a rug and new shower curtain….sometimes it’s the little things that add so much to a space! Also…this picture has quite a bit of filtering on it….the bathroom didn’t look quite this white.

Here is the one picture I could find. It was touched up and filtered. What is not seen in this picture is very dated laminate that had a bad spot, potentially leaking water through where the countertop met the backsplash. A very old sink with rust spots and rust happening on the faucet. The vanity offers a lot of storage which I love. But the paint was peeling and just getting quite gross. We had never finished up our baseboards, which needed help and the hardware was quite dated. Honestly, I’m not sure if the bathroom had been touched much since the 80s. Also, I painted this bathroom when we first purchased the home in 2012 so it was definitely time for an update on the walls.

When I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I had to take into account what was not going to be changing. There is pink tile for the tub/shower surround, which lucky for me, pink is a hot colour right now. The problem was the grout. So I purchased the Mapei Grout Refresh in Pewter #2 and cleaned up the grout (you can read more about this process in How To Change Your Grout Colour). Once the fresh caulking was around the tile and tub with fresh grout it honestly already felt 1000 times better.

The next thing that was not changing, but could definitely be updated was the vanity. The paint was peeling and just not in the greatest shape. I used a paint remover first and then sanded the remaining bits off. So far I haven’t applied the finish but I’m pretty happy with the results. To me it looks like a restoration piece that you would find in an old English home….it still has some white paint stuck in just a few of the groves and I really love the effect that it gives. I’m hoping to use ….. as my stain colour and then clear coat over top. My goal is to take the yellowness out of the wood without it looking like it’s been whitewashed. Hoping for a really natural wood tone. I’ll let you know if it works!

Paint! I debated going with a wallpaper or a paint colour and ultimately to save some cost we decided to go with paint. I wanted to find a shade that was green and would compliment the pink tile. You may wonder why green and pink? Honestly, I have a shower curtain in this bathroom that is a cactus scene and I love how the greens and pinks and warm tones go together in the curtain, so that’s the inspiration starting point! I dug through paint cans in my home and found one that I had never used and decided to give it a shot to see if it might work…I LOVE it. I knew I wanted to keep gold accents so I tested the paint by the mirror I had hanging on the wall and fell in love. It’s dark, and moody, and the perfect mix of green with a bit of blue. And my husband is happy that finally a room in the house won’t be painted all white…bonus! To be honest I felt nervous about painting the entire room green so I went with Yorktowne Green (Benjamin Moore HC-133) on the walls that I would have put wallpaper. And refreshed the rest of the room with Oxford White (Benjamin Moore CC-30). I really love it…it feels fresh and crisp but also moody. But sorry…I’m going to save the reveal of the colour for when I can post the finished room…

This next month I’m hoping to finish everything up and share the reveal with you! In the meantime, here’s a design board of exactly what I’m doing/have done….what do you think?!

Hopefully this is encouraging to you. It’s ok to work with what you have if you’re not in a place to completely gut a room and start over. Sometimes it’s the little things (like fresh caulking…made such a big difference!) that can make enough of a difference for it to be a whole new space. Painting, switching out a mirror, adding a rug, or replacing hardware and fairly quick and easy little touches that can be done to breathe new life into a space.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I had to work with the things that were staying. Sometimes that can be very challenging! If you have a room where you’re stumped, trying to figure out how to get the look you want, while working around the things that can’t change, book a design consult with us -we’d love to help you!

I’m excited to keep progressing in the bathroom and showing you the finished product once I’m done!

Here’s to June!