Spring Refresh Challenge: Main Bath
The Spring Room Refresh Challenge started inside my facebook group on February 28.
Sometimes you know a room is feeling stale and unexciting – but you don’t know exactly how to start. This is how I felt about our main floor bath when we moved in to our home last June.
The long term goal is to convert this main floor bath into a laundry room powder room. Currently our laundry area is in the basement (not ideal- lugging laundry up and down two flights of stairs). We do have a second bath on our upper floor but it does not have a shower. We are nowhere ready to tackle a project of that scope for a number of years due to some other higher priority improvements we want to make.
In the meantime, I do want to do some cosmetic updates to our main floor bath so it feels more like us.
When tackling any project, I like to refer back to my Interior Design Starter Kit. It really helps to get me thinking about the space and set some realistic goals.
The first thing I made note of were the things I liked about the space and what was working for us.
Storage. The space has a ton of storage between the vanity and the linen tower on the left.
2. I like the floor. I could tell this was a recent update as I used the same flooring two years ago in the home we were living in out west and I had used it previously in a client’s bathroom.
Next, I made note of what wasn’t working. I mean I was refreshing this space for a reason so here goes:
The style of vanity, the countertop and faucet.
The countertop is very dated while still in great shape. This area where we live has really hard water so it had corroded the finish on the faucet. The water issues are resolved so I feel comfortable spending money on new fixtures.
The vanity in itself is in good shape, made from wood and provides a lot of storage but it is sorely lacking in style. It’s pretty rudimentary. However, it is not in the budget to replace plus I would have to repair the floor and I’m unable to find more of the same flooring. The linen tower shown to the left also provides a lot of storage as well. Again lacking in style and design but the one good thing it has going for it is: it does have sliding pull outs. I have a DIY in mind to elevate the overall look of the linen tower and vanity.
And it lacked in function from the perspective there were no hooks or towel bars/rings to hang any towels or TP!!! How a home of this age (over 100 years old) are lacking in those items is a real head scratcher.
We addressed this issue just a couple of weeks ago. Still not sure why it took us 8 months to address the issue of damp towels as this fix took all of an hour and $30 on a Sunday afternoon.
I identified what was working and what wasn’t so now it was time to sit down and work out the budget.
At first, I thought I would live with the countertop, sink and faucet and do a DIY on the countertop (I did this in our previous short term home and it worked like a charm) and turn to my trusty friend, a can of spray paint, to refresh the faucet itself. Those are all great for short term fixes and you can get great results but, I decided to do some research and found products to give me the look I want that I also fit with in our budget.
You may be wondering about the tub and shower. Since we plan on converting this space into a laundry room/powder room in several years, I am not going to invest money in to changing this side of the space. The tile, while not my style, is in good shape and so is the tub itself. The washer and dryer will eventually replace the tub and shower.
Determine Budget
I’ve allocated $550-$600 to do this refresh.
Countertop: $90.75
Faucet: $120
Sink $100
Paint: using what I have
Hardware: $50
Wallaper: $50
Mirror: $50
Light: $50
Trim: $100
Create a Mood Board
Once I determined my budget, it was time to pull my mood board together. Your budget and sourcing kind of go hand in hand with creating your mood board especially if you’re unfamiliar with the costs of items to refresh your space. I always recommend starting with a mood board to gather items, colors and fabrics you love. A mood board will help you shape your design, minimize clashing ideas, and keep your vision together. It will also keep you on point when shopping for your space and reduce buyer’s remorse and the buy return cycle.
I use Canva (a free app) to create mood boards and you can check out my tutorial on how I do that here.
My goal for this space is to add some character by installing a board and batten wall treatment. I will add texture with a faux grass cloth wallpaper to be installed above the board and batten. To add further visual interest, I will use a mix of different metals, I settled on matte black and brushed gold. I recommend mixing metal finishes to create a timeless interior with character. However, there is an art to mixing metal finishes in a balanced way. I wrote an entire blog post dedicated to THE ART OF MIXING METALS.
Now that I had my budget, items sourced and my mood board created, I can confidently move forward and start making my purchases. Next week, I’ll share the links to the items I sourced for our main bath as well as some progress of our refresh.
