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Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

by | May 31, 2014 | Bathrooms, Decorating Inspiration, Luke's Bathroom, my house

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Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

One of the very first room makeovers we did in this house was our son’s (girls’ and guest, too) bathroom. At the time, we skipped more complicated or messy things like new counters or painting cabinets and instead added a wall of DIY board & batten, some fun cheery paint, a DIY faux tin tile backsplash (which by the way you can see is still there and working great for us years later!), two home improvement store outdoor lanterns, new cabinet hardware and some art. We left everything else as is.

The goal in the first makeover was to take this builder bathroom and give it a little charm and personality on a budget. You can see the previous bathroom makeover here (please know that I had no idea how to take a photo in the dark bathroom before and while the color was bright, it really wasn’t as bright as it appears with my horrid photos, haha).

Flash forward to now. My son is almost 14 and since we were working on his bedroom makeover recently, it seemed like a good time to freshen up the bathroom too!

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

This time we actually refreshed even less, and ONLY changed the paint! It was one of those weekend projects we had been putting off for awhile, but we finally made it happen.

I still have dreams of maybe new counters, a new mirror and flooring but you know, priorities. Slow decorating and all. Sometimes those big ideas are exactly what slow us down or keep us from moving ahead at all, so it helps to reel in the project and make it more manageable with the time, budget and the tolerance you have for messy projects. We had no tolerance for any of the above so we stuck with only wall paint.

I can’t believe how much more we love it now, even without changing anything else but the paint!

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

It feels like a whole new bathroom to us! It’s calm, peaceful but still quirky and fun. It works for us so really there is no need to do more at this point.

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

We still love that quirky animal gallery wall, so we left it as is.

Maybe we will update it someday but it still makes us laugh. It’s just random art we found on Etsy years ago, a couple of drawings of our old pup Winston, and photocopy or two of silly childhood storybook pages like Frog & Toad are Friends. It’s all meaningful to us and reminds all my kids and me of childhood.

Bathroom Makeover {DIY Weekend Refresh}

And one of my favorite parts is all the hooks. That’s the best part. You can never, ever have too many hooks.

Amen?

What weekend refresh have you been putting off?

Maybe it is time to get it done!

Color: Polished Grey by Glidden {ask about it at the Glidden paint counter, it is several shades lighter than WoodSmoke in the Glidden paint color book).
Towels: Blue and white are from Target, grey and white are from World Market.
Round rug is from Anthropologie.
How to DIY a Faux Tin Backsplash instructions are here.

23 Comments

  1. Julie

    I really like this new paint color! It is a great look for a teen boy. The art is great, and it’s nice that your son still enjoys it :) I loved visiting his bedroom makeover project as well. The desk is awesome and I just love that dresser with the fun knobs. What a lucky young man!

    Reply
  2. Kay

    I need to buy some plants + fill those window boxes of ours — it’s time!

    Reply
  3. Rose L

    I haven’t put off any weekend projects really, I’ve just been diverted to working in the yard. ;) The fence is done, the surrounding garden beds have had manure added, the vegetable garden (25×50) has been planted. Still have to finish off and plant the outer beds and spread manure and dirt in the former driveway to prepare it for grass seed. Mean while house remodeling has taken a back seat. Last night I started steam cleaning the walls and ceiling in the DR in preparation for painting. My DR is going to become a much more needed home office. The list of things we want to do never becomes any shorter…we just keep adding to it as we finish off projects that have been on it for a while. It’s good to be alive and able to keep moving forward though so I take it as it comes! Love the fresh paint color in your bathroom and pictures are adorable!!

    Reply
    • Melissa @ The Inspired Room

      Thanks Rose, I agree, the list never seems to get shorter but it is a blessing to be able to be moving forward! Love that! :-)

      Reply
  4. Janice A

    We bought new closet doors for the guest room (which was our son’s room)and painted them white. Now I wonder why we didn’t do this years ago. It gives the room a fresh new look.

    Reply
  5. teresa

    Nothing like new paint….changes everything. Beautiful room!

    Reply
  6. sandyc

    Duh!!! Just hit me over my morning cup of coffee – of course, BHG readers would select The Inspired Room as their favorite decorating blog – achievable, fun and truly inspired ideas for real-life people on a real-life budget. I check HOUZZ out regularly and can get thousands of pics of a certain concept but usually shown in a room the size of my whole house or otherwise impossible or inappropriate for me. I go to BHG for practical ideas and I always find them. I’ve found The Inspired Room to be a wonderful addition to my Decorating Favorites. Today’s post on a mini-bathroom reno is perfect for me. Although my 1986 bathroom is probably quite a bit older than yours, I have no desire to spend thousands of dollars doing an update that will shout out “new” but that won’t be in keeping with the country/cottage effect I want and that I think can easily be achieved by working around my current pale yellow faux marble countertops by painting the oak cabinets (as I plan to do in the kitchen) and the walls and changing out sink and lighting fixtures. The shower door is being repaired and I’ll get new toilets down the road but, since the footprint can’t change, why blow the money. It’s all part of the “decorating my home” journey/adventure that you talked about in your recent post and I’m loving it. (In fact, I don’t have a minute’s envy for the new owner a couple of houses down who bought my model home in April and immediately embarked on a huge reno without spending a night in the home. I had the opportunity to see the finished product and although it was “beautifully done”, my thinking is that if I were looking to buy a house, I wouldn’t choose that one.). I think we really are lucky when we can’t do or have everything we want. We miss out on the opportunity for the journey/adventure. The trick, as I think you help us achieve, Melissa, is to enjoy our homes at each stop on the journey and during and after each adventure.

    Now, for my weekend refresh – produce an updated list of what I need and want my handyman to do NOW and call him Monday to set up an appointment.

    Reply
  7. Nyree Morris

    Where are those striped curtains from?

    Reply
  8. staci torgerson

    Love this color. Light, fresh and neutral.
    Have a question for you: what is your ceiling height? It looks like maybe 8′. How high did you bring the B & B wall treatment? We recently moved into a new home, we’ll last summer, and I so wanted to add lots of board and batten wall treatment but the interior designer I had asked for help in paint color and such suggested I not do that because it would make the ceiling height seem low which I’m desperate to try to make them seem +9′. Seeing his bathroom doesn’t look like the ceilings are low if in fact they are only 8′. Any suggestions on how to create ceiling height or disguise low ceilings other than with moving curtain rods up? Thanks for any help you can pass this way!

    Reply
    • Melissa @ The Inspired Room

      I will measure them but they are a nice height, not really short so maybe 8 feet and 5 feet maybe on the board & batten (but I’ll measure to be sure and let you know). One trick I like to use in a bathroom like this is to paint the wall and ceiling the same color. That helps your eye to not stop at the break in the ceiling!

      Reply
  9. Christine

    love it…..say is that curtains from World Market in the back? Do you use them as a shower curtain or is it a window? I am asking because I have them and use them as a shower curtain…lol Christine from Little Brags

    Reply
    • Melissa @ The Inspired Room

      It is from World Market but it isn’t used as a shower curtain. That is a hallway and it is just a hall closet. The doors came off the track a couple of years ago and I just put the curtain up because we were too lazy to try to fix the door :-). We love it though so it stayed!

      Reply
  10. Leilani

    What a lovely bathroom. The tin backsplash is such a good idea. Where did you get all your hooks from? (I especially like those black ones).

    Reply
  11. Jen

    It looks great. I really like all the hooks. I especially love the numbered hooks. I’m going to steal that idea and do that in our kids bathroom this summer I think! Any suggestions or tips for painting a bathroom with the toilet in place? When I painted it the first time- it was before we moved in and it was a new build. No pesky toilet to have to paint around. Thanks for the tips.

    Reply
  12. Sharon

    Lovely home and so fresh and light for summer! Can you tell me the name of the fabric on your office drapes? I found a swatch of that in my stack of fabric swatches and it doesn’t have a label! It was one I planned to do drapes for my sitting room and now I have no idea what it is. Thanks for your help!

    Reply
  13. Lauren

    Oh my gosh! There are so many things in this bathroom that I have on my wish list already. B & B, gallery wall, galvanized barn lights…gorgeous! And I love the pressed tin. And the paint color. And the stripes…okay I need to stop. You get the idea. ;)

    Reply
  14. Ann

    I like that you didn’t even seem to consider getting rid of the “horrible builder grade mirror.” I put that description in quotes because of all the apparent disgust homeowners/renovators have for this type of bathroom mirror. Just about everyone wants to remove them and replace with two downsized mirrors, one over each sink. (But how long before that trend looks dated, I wonder?) I have builder grade mirrors in both of my 1994 bathrooms, and other than possibly framing them some day, I plan to retain these mirrors. My condo bathrooms are pretty small. Having these expansive mirrors visually opens up the rooms so much that I can’t imagine not having them.

    Reply
  15. Cookie Wilson

    Congratulations on your new book. I looked at your sample of the book and its really very interesting and should be very successful. Loved the mirrors and frames in the bathroom and the misc childhood pictures grouped together as well as foiled backspace at the bottom of the bathroom mirror.
    I enjoyed the home tour and love the colors you used. I’ve also signed on to receive your post.

    Reply

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