I realize that there are people in the world who just don't get very excited about home decor. And I get that, I really do.
Okay, I just lied. I don't get that at all. When you LIVE in a place, it's part of your life. It literally contains your life. It's a place that either nourishes your heart and soul or drains you of the will to get up in the morning.
For the past 23 years, I have loved our cottage. It's absolutely my heart-home. However, there was one room that sucked the soul out of me every time I walked into it. The bathroom. Just look at that photo up top there, and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.
In order to take that photo, by the way, I had to stand in the tub and plaster myself against the back wall of the shower.
No, of course we didn't live with it bare like that, and a step ladder sitting in the middle of the floor - but in that photo you can see the "bones" of the setup, which were just not conducive to breaking into song and dance upon entry. Not that there would have been room for that anyway, but you know what I mean.
That thing on the left side there is a plastic shelving unit that I covered with some retro-colored oilcloth. Yeah. Haute shite.
Just another example of the horrors of this bathroom - this was the ceiling.
And this was the ceiling after beginning this project, and removing the completely useless and horrifically ugly vent covers. That hole on the left goes directly into the attic. The ceiling stayed this way while I worked out how best to handle the wall covering situation. Which means I had to use the bathroom while it looked like this.
I was horrified that enormous spiders were going to pour out of that hole the moment I got my pants around my ankles, which would have caused me to try to run - with my pants around my ankles - and the closest thing to the bathroom door is the top of the stairs. Let your imagination fill in where mine left off.
At some point I just raised my head and shouted at the sky, "I AM NOT GOING TO LIVE WITH THIS DAMNED BATHROOM ANY MORE - I'VE HAD ENOUGH!"
That was actually some years ago, at which point I contacted a few contractors to come and give me an estimate of the cost of renovating our teeny, tiny little bathroom. I can literally stand in the middle of it and touch the tub with my left hand, the toilet with my foot, and the sink with my right hand. That's how small it is.
And the contractors came. And they all gave me a similar estimate.
TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS
Just let that sink in for a second. Ten grand. Ten thousand simoleons. Ten K. A one and four zeros, with a comma thrown in for good measure.
And I gave each of those contractors the same answer.
HELL NO!
In August of the year of our... Lord, is it really 2023 already?... I decided I'd really, really, but really had enough, and decided to wade into the dark and dangerous waters of DIY renovations.
You know, that part of the map where it says...
"Here there be dragons"
Before I picked up a single hammer or clicked "purchase" on any yummy bathroomy decor items, I did a deep dive for information. Generally, a lot of Internet research. Specifically, a lot of YouTube research.
What I found was this:
1. A basic, no-frills bathroom vanity can cost from $1,000 to $2,000 dollars. I mean, like one as boring as the one I already had. The ones that were really pretty, or extra wide? Way more!
2. There are a surprising number of women with YouTube videos of how they successfully turned a piece of furniture into a bathroom vanity. All. By. Themselves. Power tools and everything.
What I decided was this:
1. I was going to find a piece of furniture the exact width of the bathroom, and install a vessel sink and a faucet, and make this bathroom sing hallelujah like Bruno Mars in "Uptown Funk". (If you click that link, please make sure your volume is turned up high and you have enough room to dance - because you can't not dance to this song... it's physically impossible.)
2. I was going to do as much of this project as possible on my own. I don't mess with big electrical, and I don't mess with big plumbing. Those things I leave to the professionals. Everything else was up to me. I girded my loins for battle on the high seas.
*****
First up was finding a piece of furniture that was cool-looking, and exactly the width of my bathroom, from wall to wall (not counting the heating element). Simple, right? Well, thanks to a company called Wayfair and their extensive array of affordable home furnishings, I found this TV stand that was exactly fifty-four inches wide, and just an inch shorter in height than the old vanity. (This inch shorter ended up being perfect as well, because of stuff that happened later.)
Bear and I pored over the astounding array of available vessel sinks, weighing the pros and cons of glass (pretty, and easy to clean, but breakable), stone (very expensive, and insane shipping costs due to the weight), and we finally settled on hand-hammered copper. Once again, from Wayfair.
It's gorgeous, lightweight, and not likely to break from an accidentally dropped hair dryer or what have you. Added bonus: If you have a couple of toothbrushes handy, you can always work on your steel drum version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".
Thing is, it was sold as a "vessel sink". As it turns out, it is not a vessel sink. It's a "drop-in" sink. There's one important difference.
A vessel sink sits entirely on the surface of the countertop. If it's a bowl, it's touching said countertop only around the drain area, and if it's a box shape, it's sitting flat on top. You only have to drill a hole large enough for the drain pipe to fit through, add some caulk around the edges, and you're golden.
A drop-in sink has a belly that is lower than the surface of the counter top, so you have to cut a much larger and more precise hole. And if your hammered copper sink comes from Mexico, they might include a nice video of the artisans making the sinks, but what they don't include, apparently, is a template of the correct size and shape hole you need to cut in your countertop. You have to figure that out for yourself. ¡Ay, caramba! But more on that later.
Having secured the vanity and the sink, we also found a gorgeous single-handle oil-rubbed bronze faucet to complete the look. Unfortunately, I bought one that was too tall and didn't clear the bottom of the medicine cabinet. ¡Escándalo! Fortunately, they had the exact same design in a shorter model. BAM.
At this point in the proceedings, it was very easy to pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on how well things were going. Of course, this is because no power tools had yet been fired up, and no actual demolition had occurred.
This was the "honeymoon phase" of the project. The waters were calm. The sky was clear. The real challenges were yet to come.
When taking on an entire room, even a tiny one, it makes no sense to start decorating from the floor up. When you have to revamp the wall and ceilings, you do that first, so that all the detritus falls down on crappy stuff you're going to get rid of anyway.
In a stroke of luck, the old yellowish-greenish wallpaper of no particular pattern from the 1950s was much easier to remove than I had thought it would be. Once I got a corner peeled up, I literally grabbed it in one hand and it came off in a continuous sheet. The walls underneath were in very good shape, had been painted, and there was no residue or glue to worry about. WIN!
That's about where my luck ended.
Bear and I had talked about the ambience of this bathroom, and we decided that since we were so happy with our coastal bedroom renovation...
Click the photo to check out the larger version!
... we would continue the theme, but dial it in a bit to the aura of a ship... the inspiration being the captain's quarters in a clipper ship.
(If you were just now thinking "the poop deck", yeah, so was I.)
Whereas the bedroom was focused on the shoreline and the ocean itself, with sea shells and such...
... the bathroom would be more wood-and-metal, with perhaps some decor items from old ships.
My first thought was that we should clad the walls in wood - so that it looked like the sides of a ship. How cool would that be? As the logistics of this came clear, I realized that when a room starts out the size of a seagull's pecker, and you layer the walls with anything as thick as planks of wood, you are effectively reducing the space in the room by quite a bit, and making it feel even more like a closet. Not to mention, will it swell up with moisture from the shower? Get moldy? Get cobwebby? The possibilities made us decide to think further... and then I found it.
THE WALLPAPER
Being a person over-blessed with an analytical nature, I was naturally suspicious of "peel-and-stick" wallpaper. I'd found a really pretty wood-patterned wallpaper, and thought that would be a great way to have the look of ship-lap walls without having to deal with actual ship-lap walls, termites, and splinters. Of course, I was worried about peel-and-stick paper in a room where steamy showers would be a thing.
The company that made the wallpaper I liked (Tempaper) had specifically addressed the issues I was worried about. Their website assured me that the adhesive on their wallpaper was more than up to the rigors of steam. They assured me that they had specifically designed their wallpaper to be used in bathrooms. The fact that they actually addressed my biggest worry, plus a flurry of great customer reviews, made me feel confident that this was the answer to my ship-lap bathroom wall needs.
O! What a rogue and peasant slave am I...
The instructions for this wallpaper application stated that the walls must be clean and dry. Furthermore, the day before application, the walls were to be wiped down with rubbing alcohol, to make sure there was absolutely no residue of any kind on the surface when the wallpaper was installed.
I dutifully did all the cleaning, the wiping, and I took a large (old and holey) tee shirt, wrapped it around my Swiffer mop, and dosed it with rubbing alcohol. Wiped all the walls down, and the ceiling too, the day before The Big Install.
When the next day dawned, I was ready for action. Bear was at work, and I had the whole day to figure out how to get the wallpaper lined up and on the walls (including the one angled ceiling/wall caused by the roofline). What fun!
It actually was fun - I put some 1970s disco music on, and spent the next NINE HOURS covering the walls with the new wallpaper. (Minus the time I spent dancing to "Brick House"...)
I was really happy with the way things were going. The hardest part was crouching down on the floor making the measurements and the cuts, but putting it up on the wall was fairly simple. I'd bought a special silicone squeegee made for smoothing out the air bubbles, and it was really fun seeing the room start to look like something.
By the time Bear got home from work, I was still in full swing, and he helped me get some of the big pieces up on the slanted ceiling wall that I was having a hard time with. Finally, it was all done, and we headed downstairs for a bite of dinner.
After dinner, we were watching something on TV, and Bear headed upstairs for something. He got about three quarters of the way up, and I heard him say, "Oh, you're not going to like this."
I got a knot in the pit of my stomach, and started up the stairs. All of the newly-installed wallpaper had fallen off the walls - starting from the ceiling. Because each piece of wallpaper was overlapped onto the next, each piece that peeled off pulled the next piece off with it. They hadn't fallen completely off on the floor, but they had tangled together, sticky side to sticky side, and were suspended in a massed ball of wallpaper nearly touching the floor.
I am not generally a crying sort of gal. I mean, yeah, sappy movies or Hallmark commercials or sad songs... but when life doesn't go my way I usually put on my combat boots and stomp on. I'm here to tell you, when I saw nine hours (NINE HOURS) of hard work balled together in a big clump, I cried.
Then I got mad.
I'm here to tell you that I got the scurvy knaves at Tempaper to refund my money, but not before I'd exchanged endless emails, explanations, photos, and threats of bad reviews with almost every member of their staff and all the managers. Every time I'd get to the end of their questions and sent the requested photos, they'd pass me to someone else in the company, and I'd have to start all over again. It was a nightmare.
Yeah, I got my money back, but I'll never get that day back again, and I'm here to tell you their wallpaper SUCKS. We hadn't so much as run warm water in the sink in that room since the wallpaper had been installed, never mind taken a shower. Word to the wise.
As Wendy Torrance would say, something good did come out of it, because I really started investigating wall coverings, and came up with the
Best.
Thing.
Ever.
Seriously, the best thing ever. I found these absolutely wonderful peel-and-stick vinyl wall boards by Urban Decor on Amazon.
I can tell you that they are easy to work with - you can cut them with a big pair of scissors! I can tell you that they come in wonderful, shippy colors. I can tell you that the adhesive on these things could hold a rhino upside down from your ceiling, if that's how you roll. I learned quickly to get the piece in place first and *then* peel off the backing, because repositioning was nearly impossible once it was stuck down. But I'll just let the photos tell the rest of the story...
I am SO in love with this wall cladding, I can't EVEN. Not only does it look great and hang tough, it took much less time to install than the whoreson wallpaper, because you only install one "board" at a time, and it's easy for one person to hold and maneuver. No big sheets draping here and there. It's a dream!
I am totally tempted to just keep buying boxes of this stuff and do the rest of the entire house. Seriously. I even did the bathroom door!
Here's what it looked like before/during:
To go with the ship/ocean theme, I found these absolutely delicious glass bubble door knobs...
... and combined with the newly surfaced door...
... it's all shipshape and Bristol fashion! As it turns out, resurfacing both sides of the door meant that the door would no longer shut, because it was now a tiny bit wider, so I purchased another awesome power tool called an "oscillating cutting tool", made by Milwaukee...
... and I used that to trim a little less than 1/4" off the trim in the door frame, allowing the newly refinished door to close perfectly.
Why didn't I just remove the old trim and install new trim, you ask? Well, there are about seven hundred layers of paint on that old door frame, and replacing the whole thing would have involved a huge mess trying to pry off the old trim through all that paint, plus trying to cut beveled corners to refit new molding (I am SO not good at math / angles / joinery) and then paint the whole thing and have it dry, all the while wanting to get on with the project. It took me literally twenty minutes with this magic cutting tool to just zip off exactly the amount of wood it took to allow the door to close again.
Yeah!
Lest I forget: In my songs of praise about the vinyl wall boards, I must not let you forget the horrors of THE CEILING! Remember?
Well, look at 'er NOW!
Those beautiful vinyl boards are nearly water-tight, and with a brand new decorative vent cover which covers the area of both of those previous travesties, this is now a ceiling you could eat off of, if gravity didn't get you down. After finishing this particular part of the project, I had a crick in my neck from looking up and grinning!
On to the medicine cabinet.
I'd originally planned to just buy a new medicine cabinet. But of course, in a house built so long ago, they had cut the old medicine cabinet into the tile work on the wall. This left me with two issues.
1. I couldn't actually see how the old medicine cabinet was attached to the wall, so pulling / prying / cutting it out of its present location could likely cause a major repair job to be necessary.
2. Once I'd removed it, the likelihood of finding a medicine cabinet that exactly fit in the space that was cut into the tile wall was near zero.
While my goal was to renovate the bathroom, my goal was not to have to hire anyone to re-tile the walls.
As you can see, the old medicine cabinet had a flat-front mirrored door. With a little ingenuity, a hammer, and a piece of clothes hanger as a get-along, I was able to remove the hinge pin on the inside of the cabinet door.
I bought a pretty wood-framed mirror on Etsy, and with a couple of tubes of construction adhesive, I glued this mirror onto the door of the old medicine cabinet, then re-installed the door.
Found some dainty wee aqua bubble glass knobs to complement the clear bubble glass door knobs. They were intended for a different application, so I used a bolt cutter to cut the length to size, then drilled a hole in the frame, and with some epoxy on the bolt, screwed it into the wood.
Also, Bear installed matching oil-rubbed bronze outlet and switch plates (Amazon). He's really handy with connecting electrical stuff, and I'm so happy with the results!
Also exciting was that we finally fully installed the light fixture over the medicine cabinet. We'd bought this light fixture a long time ago (I am embarrassed to even say how long) and had just put up the base part, thinking (ha ha ha) that we were going to redo the bathroom just any day now, and literally years went by. I'm amazed we even knew where the rest of the light fixture was, but we found it and now it looks like THIS:
Okay, enough frippery. Back to work!
Next up was "the big stuff", meaning the vanity, the sink, and the faucet installation. I had watched a meeeellion YouTube videos about "how to (fill in all that stuff)" and felt fairly confident that I could handle it.
Then I opened the old vanity doors, emptied out the bilge under the sink, and instead of water line connectors sticking out of the back wall (like they were in every YouTube video I had seen), I saw this:
You guessed it. The hot water valve (the one on the left) came out of the floor EXACTLY where the supporting inner wall of the new vanity would be. I couldn't just ditch that wall, because it held up the shelving for the compartments on either side of that wall.
BOLLOCKS.
So I had to heave-ho my DIY pride over the side and call the plumber to see if there was anything that could be done without sinking the budget.
First thing we found out was that our plumber had died. No, seriously. We had a plumber that had been taking care of stuff on this property since we moved in over twenty years ago, and he had gone to Davy Jones' locker, and we had no idea. Sad!
And now I had to find a new plumber. Yikes.
Called a purportedly reputable local company, they sent a guy, and the guy and his assistant (who was a corn-fed country boy the size of a Mack truck) fixed our pipe location problem. I thought I was going to need a bottle of vegetable oil and a shoehorn to get them out of that tiny bathroom... I can't believe they both got in there and were able to work! Ain't room enough to swing a cat (o'nine tails) in there.
They ripped out the old vanity, which I took to the curb, and they did this:
As you can see (click on the photo for a larger version), they put dog-legs on each pipe, and moved them over to the right, so that they would now come up through the floor of the new vanity somewhat in the center of the right-side cabinet space. Yay!
I paid the plumbers their not-so-bad fee, and off they trundled. Once they'd gone, I realized I was really forced into the next phase of the project, because now we had no bathroom sink. We had to wash hands and brush teeth in the kitchen (or the tub), which was just really weird. I mean, I suppose there are people all over the world who have things a lot worse than that, but it's kind of unsettling to go from something that looks like an ugly bathroom to something that looks like the NYC subway system in the 1970s.
Next up was removing those tiled-in, dated soap dishes and towel rack. Amid dire warnings from my first mate that removing tiled-in features could result in the complete collapse of old tile walls, I sallied forth, armed with my previously-mentioned oscillating cutting tool, and...
... managed to remove said items without ruining the surrounding wall! Spackle happened:
(This is the kind of spackle that is pink when wet and white when dry - a very handy signal to indicate when you can move on with a project.)
Back to the water valves...
The plumbers were long gone when I realized that they had moved the water valves the correct number of inches to the right, but they had also put the dog-leg part of the horizontal pipes at a height that the new vanity would not fit over. OH NOES!
MacGyver could not have come up with a plan any quicker than I did. Handy-dandy measuring tape to the rescue, a little Google-fu, and guess what? A line of pretty, sharp-cornered grey building bricks from Home Despot (sic), purchased at a mere ¢85 apiece, would raise that vanity exactly high enough to clear those new water pipes! I had plenty of construction adhesive left from the medicine cabinet door project, so I just glued those babies in place, let it dry overnight, and had a functional and neat-looking base for the new vanity!
Before installing the vanity, I had to cut holes in the back to accommodate the drain pipe for the sink, and holes in the bottom for the water pipes. Cutting the back was easy, because the back panels on this type of furniture are very thin. The bottom, however, was extremely thick, and took a lot of sweating, profanity, and recharging of batteries to get through. But get through I did!
Next up was cutting the counter top of the vanity to fit the drop-in sink. I will admit that I was sweating this part, because the sink company did not include any template to assist in the process. Also, the sink is oval, and handmade, which means it does not conform to exact mathematical perameters. Basically, I flipped the sink upside down and laid it on a flat surface. Using stiff paper, I traced and cut ovals until I'd gotten the size and shape that allowed the paper to fit down over the belly of the sink and lie flat against the underside of the collar edge. Then I used that as a template to draw the cutting line on the countertop.
As fate would have it, the material that the countertop is made of is waterproof, and you can write on it with a pencil and it erases right off, with no marks visible. Yes!
After drilling a starting hole with my DeWalt drill, I used my brand-new rechargeable-battery-operated Black & Decker jigsaw (which has a push-to-tilt feature that makes cutting curves amazingly easy) to saw a hole in the previously-unblemished plain of the vanity countertop... using my kitchen chairs as a sawhorse!
... checked to make sure that the sink fitted properly...
... then drilled the hole for the faucet (using a special hole-drilling set that attaches to your drill for exactly this type of thing)
They have several sizes, from doorknob-hole down to smaller ones. I needed one that was somewhere in between. Worked well, but it was a little "grabby" at first and I had to put my full weight kneeling on the countertop to keep it from spinning off the chairs. I just squeezed the trigger to make it go faster (with power cutting, faster is smoother, and smoother is better) and put less pressure on it, so the drill did the work. Success!
Those little "L" brackets you see around the sink hole in the photo were installed so that they're tight up against the inner collar of the copper sink. No shifting, no wobbling, no nothing. This means the silicone caulk I put around the sink later will not break or separate, because the sink will not move at all. It's the little things that make for smooth sailing.
Next, I installed the sink drain and the faucet. Because
a) I am not a plumber, and
b) I don't want to pay a plumber if I don't have to, and
c) I really wanted this "DIY" to be legit
I researched online and found out they sell this awesome sink drain kit that does not require a plumber!
It's called "Simple Drain" - and boy, is it ever!
Literally all you need is what's in the box, and a pair of scissors. The instructions are amazingly simple, and if you don't believe me, see for yourself!
In a moment of complete inspiration, I checked and saw that the vinyl peel-and-stick paneling I used on the walls was almost the exact same color as the vanity, so I used some leftover pieces to neaten up the holes around the water pipes - it almost looks as if they grew right out of the floorboard!
Happily, the pop-up sink drain installation was equally trouble-free...
... so everything was smooth sailing! Until the next morning, when I'd let all the caulk and adhesives cure overnight, and I reached under the sink to turn on the water valves.
POP! WHOOSH!
Whooooaaaaah...
turnitoff turnitoff turnitoff!
I had neglected to tighten one of the water lines properly inside the collar of the faucet, and the moment I turned the water on from below, it popped off and sprayed water everywhere. Lucky for me, it was just a second or two, and there wasn't much water. Also, the vanity, inside and out, has a waterproof surface, so it was just a little wipe-up to get things back to normal. I re-tightened the water hoses, and verrrrrry slowly turned the water valves on again, and it was all okay.
I know you're casting a hairy eyeball at the cracked spackle behind the sink in that backsplash area... don't worry. It's all going to be okay. See how it's turned white? That means it was dry and ready for the next step!
In a cottage that only has one bathroom, there may be times when one person is sitting in the bathroom watching Instagram videos on their cell phone using the bathroom, and the other person is sitting elsewhere in the house with their legs crossed, waiting to hear the dulcet tones of a toilet flushing.
For those times, this bell.
I can now hobble past the head, and with one flick of the wrist alert the person in the bathroom that I've got the old mud turtle in a headlock - without going through the onerous task of yelling through the bathroom door (a highly unsatisfactory method of communication for both parties).
The sweetness of this chime is so pure that it cannot be construed as rude or intrusive, and yet it is strong enough to accurately convey the importance of the situation.
This particular towel rack was a gem of a find (Amazon) because of its double-layered design. I've always hated hanging a wet washcloth on top of or next to a dry hand towel. With this setup, the hand towels hang on the back portion, which is held up higher, meaning the towels don't drag on the vanity or impede the view of the cool accessories, and the washcloths hang on the front bar, where they have plenty of air flow to dry quickly.
As if that isn't enough, the towel rack itself telescopes, so you can make it exactly fit the space you're installing it in. What a great concept! Once the towels are hung, you can't even see the area where the telescoping bits overlap.
This bit of finery was a little more pricey than some of the other accoutrements - it's from a proper blacksmith's shop, hand-made, and I don't regret a penny of the cost, because it really feels old-school shippy, probably because of the weathered metal and the fact that the shape of the base reminds me of the shape of a ship's block (as in "block and tackle"), a bit like this:
As I came closer to finishing the major parts of this renovation, it occurred to me that there were yet some details to be dealt with. One was the fact that the shower curtain rod was bright chrome, which didn't fit in with all the oil-rubbed bronze hardware in the new scheme.
Most normal people with normal bathrooms would just purchase a shower curtain rod in oil-rubbed bronze. As a confirmed weirdo, with a bathroom that has one slanted wall, this was not an option. I tried one easy-fix method of solving the problem, which involved purchasing a "curtain rod cover" from Amazon.
This is what arrived:
Yeah... no. That idea walked the plank. Then I hit on the perfect solution. Paint the existing curtain rod with my awesome oil-rubbed bronze paint, which I'd used on the heat register!
Finally, after lusting after a hundred different shower curtains like this one:
I came to the sad realization that in a bathroom the size of a winkle shell, a graphic like that would look like this when sitting four inches away from it on the terlit:
After much searching, I found a beautiful ombre shower curtain and some sea-glass dingle-dangles!
Cool fact: The top portion of this shower curtain is actually mesh, which means that when you are in the shower, the light from the bathroom comes in that top part and gives you much better visibility in the shower (and a much less claustrophobic showering experience). The liner for the curtain is snapped on to the inside of the curtain just below the mesh area, so it does the duty of two shower curtains in one. The lower part of the curtain still covers up your naughty bits, in case a pirate sneaks in there trying to get a peek at your booty. You can also look right at them through the mesh panel while you yell "AVAST, ME HEARTY, GO HOIST THE MAINSAIL, I'M TRYING TO TAKE A SHOWER!" (or some other suitably nautical and insulting phrase).
Here's a close-up of the sea-glass dingle-dangles, with the newly-bronzed curtain rod, and bronze hooks that finally arrived (after the first batch got lost at sea and had to be replaced).
The accessories set that Bear picked out had a lovely little container for holding cotton swabs, me hearties, but did not have one for cotton balls, which gave me the perfect excuse to go all loose-cannon on ebay and find this gorgeous caged-glass container from India. I love taking a matching set and thinning it out a bit with some eclectic additions. Creates a bit of depth and visual richness that my eyes are pleased to behold.
Long before this project started, I had bemoaned the scattering of toiletries all over the surfaces of the previous bathroom situation. When I decided to take on the renovation, I swore that I would find some or several ways to store or otherwise hide unsightly but necessary items.
Since the new vanity furniture had this handy little top shelf dead in the middle, I thought "What a great opportunity to get some of those woven rectangular baskets, a his and hers, and use them to put all our hairbrushes and combs and cosmetics in!"
Little did I know.
The space in question is exactly 21" wide. Thus, to make sure there was room enough for the baskets to easily be slid in and out for daily use, the baskets had to be no more than ten inches wide. The thing is, they also had to be no less than ten inches wide, or the baskets would be so skinny they wouldn't hold all the ballast.
First thing I discovered was that woven baskets are damned expensive. Second thing I discovered was that if you are lucky enough to find baskets that are ten inches wide, they are way too long for the space, and would stick out the front of the vanity, making it impossible for the doors to slide back and forth as they are supposed to do.
After much throwing about of brains, I located two identical woven baskets in a colorway that really looks great with the vanity, and they're Cat Approved, which makes life so much easier.
Here they are, in situ, and doesn't this look like things are really coming together? I know you haven't been fooled by the fact that the towels on the towel rack are just barely hiding the as-yet-unfinished backsplash area. You might also be noticing a certain edge of what looks like another piece of furniture there on the left side....
Yes! I found an over-the-toiled storage unit which also has a sliding door, and I installed one of the little aqua bubble glass knobs on the door, and found a woven basket to hold extra toilet paper... (excuse the painter's tape there on the wall, I had just finished painting the heat register).
I got to use my power tools again, because that support leg on the right side there needed to be cut to fit over the heat register, so the unit would lie flat against the wall. RRROWRRRR!
It was an interesting moment when I discovered that the connecting slat across the lower portion of this unit had to be taken off and then re-installed because of the slanted ceiling... the cramped area in which I had to tighten screws required the purchase of some special flat screwdrivers.
This is a great moment for me to announce the most important tool in the entire project. A tool that I used during every single portion of this renovation. A tool gifted to me by my mother, which is so appropriate because she has always opened my eyes to what was sitting right in front of me:
I know it looks like some odd deep-sea creature, but it's a battery-operated headlamp. It has a neat feature that allows you to tilt the light bar forward, for viewing things that you're getting your face close to, or you can leave it flat against your head, where it faces ahead and lights up things farther away from you. It's absolutely essential to projects like this, where you're up on a stepladder trying to match up a seam on the ceiling, or on your knees under a vanity trying to hook up water pipes. (Or, in this case, on the floor trying to tighten screws on a piece of furniture that is nearly touching the wall behind a toilet.)
This bathroom is in near-total darkness much of the day and night, but I wanted to add a little greenery to the room. After some research, I discovered that fittonia, also known as "the nerve plant", can survive quite well with almost no light at all.
Bear bought me this lovely specimen at our favorite local nursery, along with a decorative pot which looks gorgeous in the new bathroom!
I decided to invest in a small grow-light, which plugs into a rechargeable power pack hidden in the left side of the storage unit behind the door. It has a timer on it, so it's super easy to use, and it gives the little plant more than a fighting chance to thrive, rather than just hang on by a thread. In this pic you can also (barely) see the new bronze toilet brush there on the left side of the bowl, as well as the new bronze and porcelain flush handle.
Finally, we come to the Next Big Thing....
THE BACKSPLASH
This was a really, really important item on the list. Not because it's actually going to be repelling waves from the briny deep, but because it makes such a dramatic change to the horizon, and the feel of the room.
So far I'd managed to pretty much lean into things that had features which made the room feel bigger, lighter, and less cramped. The wrong backsplash could take all that effort and toss it right out the nearest porthole.
For example.
My first foray into samples was faux tin tile. I found this absolutely gorgeous one, with a pretty bronze background:
The thing is, these tiles measure two-foot square - each quarter section is a foot square. When held up to the bathroom wall behind the new vanity, it became very clear that any quantity of this pattern in this size in that room would turn it from a calming and serene space to a chaotic circus. Sadly, I threw the faux tin tile idea to a passing seagull, and he had it for lunch. Seagulls will eat anything.
Next up was an idea involving self-adhesive aqua-colored glass tile. Nearly got hooked by that one, except the thought of having to hand-cut glass tile in order to fit it around the medicine cabinet just kind of made me keep on searching.
Bear floated the idea of a plain patinaed copper sheet as a backsplash, which could be ordered to size. We both loved that thought, until we saw the cost of a sheet of real copper. That idea went to sleep with the fishes.
Bear kept on looking, though, and found a product that absolutely meets our needs on all quarters. They're self-adhesive tiles made of aluminum, but treated to look like patinaed copper. Happily, they are less lime-greeny and more dark-sea-bluey, which is just what we'd hoped for.
Even better, all you have to do to get them to size is score them with a box cutter a few times, lean the tile on the corner of a table top, and push - the tiles snap cleanly along the scored line with almost no pressure whatsoever! If you need to adjust the line a bit, just take the boxcutter and shave off the bit in question. They really could not be simpler to work with - and the adhesive is SO STRONG.... another case of "don't let it touch the wall until it is exactly where you want it" - and, because the tiles are aluminum, they are so lightweight that there is no way they are ever falling off.
As you can see, there is a light metallic quality to these tiles, but they've been brushed so that the shine is more like a sheen... very subtle and not eye-assaulting in the least.
As you can see in the above pic, the backsplash ends sort of abruptly on the side walls, so I've ordered another box of them in order to complete the look all the way to the floor on either side. (More photos further on.)
Adding to our collection of bubble glass aqua "pops of color", this pretty tumbler from Mexico (via ebay) - another great idea of Bear's!
And because I just can't resist some really great old ship decor, I nabbed this 1850s British ship's lantern on ebay...
...kitted it out with some battery-operated fairy lights (has a timer!)...
... so when we go for a midnight wee, there's this magical glow to light the way.
And since something worth doing is worth overdoing, I bought another antique ship's lantern (smaller) to go in one of the side chambers of the over-the-toilet cabinet:
Also, this pretty brass compote jar with a bird on the lid:
A compote jar? In a nautical bathroom? Well, the flying swallow has long been a part of naval lore and historic sailor tattoo art, and I do love an eclectic mix of things.
According to the InterWebs, "Initially,
sailors got swallows before they went out to sea, because swallows
always come home; nowadays, one swallow means you've sailed 5,000
miles, and two means 10,000."
And just in case that wee bird on the compote jar is a sparrow and not a swallow...
... Captain Jack Sparrow confirms that this is
still totally nautically appropriate!
The glass containers of each have both also been kitted out with fairy lights inside, so the new bathroom at night looks rather magical!
Speaking of magical, I wanted a really pretty piece of artwork for the wall space just to the right of the medicine cabinet. I knew it was going to be a ship, but most of the big ship pictures are either too hokey and fake-piratey (no insult intended to Captain Jack Sparrow), or they depict ships being eaten by the Kraken or tossed about in frightening storms.
I really wanted the feel of this room to be calming, and serene, and I think this print on canvas captures that exactly, while still giving me "big ship vibes":
A ship sailing out of the fog, with a lighthouse just barely visible in the mist beyond... the seas are calm... you can almost hear the seagulls crying, and the musical sound of the breeze in the ropes, and the creak of the hull. The sepia tones are exactly right for the driftwoody hues in the rest of the room.
(LATER)
Hey! Some more nautical bits arrived! Specifically, a bit salvaged from a real ship: A hook with an anchor (how nautical can you get, really?).
Ain't it purty? I can hear your mind turning over the shadows on this photo... and you're right. It's not on a wall. Technically, it's on the ceiling, just above where it meets the wall. And yes, the two bases are screwed to the wall ceiling weiling? slightly off-center, because in order for the bar on the hook to line up vertically while hooked to the base, the bases had to be slightly off line from each other.
The point of this whole diatribe?
So glad you asked!
No, no, no... not THAT kind of tribe... a diatribe! (You didn't really think you were getting through this whole blog without a bit of Jack Sparrow in action, did you? Silly!)
This might be a good time to talk about that pretty greenish glass upside-down diamond-shaped thing there to the left of the new hook.
It's called a "deck prism" and it was a gift from Bear to celebrate the new bathroom! On the old ships, they would install these prisms in the ceiling of the below-decks chambers, upside down (flat part facing the sun, pointy bit downward) and the prism would take the sun's rays and multi-direct them to the darkest areas - much better than a plain old hole, which would just make a spotlight and another place for the rain to get in.
Here's a photo of one in situ that I took back in 2013 when we took a trip with Mommer to Mystic, CT.
That was down inside this ship:
Come to think of it, after perusing the many photos taken in Mystic, I think I have finally found a photo that I can use as a sign for the bathroom:
Since "Captain's Quarters" and "Poop Deck" are so over-used, I think "Royal Sheet Hole" might be just the thing!
You know you're laughing right now, don't be coy with me.
NOVEMBER 2023: ANOTHER DECOR ADDITION OR TWO
I finally found some ship-tastic decor items to finish off the wall to the left of the medicine cabinet!
Behold in close-up:
THE BAROMETER!
and
THE INCLINOMETER!
PS:
Just in case you were laboring under the impression that I did not indulge in a little "splash out" for myself after completing this project...
... why yes, I certainly did!
Hope you enjoyed this voyage with me. I hope it inspires you to lean into your dreams, learn new things, and push through the hard stuff in life to get to the good bits at the end.
