Half Bath Progress!

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about all the things I wanted to get done around our house. I'm happy to say I can cross one of those things off the list. 

I painted the cabinet in our half bathroom! Yay!!

Ok, let me start from the beginning.

When we first moved into the house, the floors in our half bath had already been updated with a nice grey-ish neutral tile that we really like, but otherwise the room was your standard 1980's builder grade bathroom. The cabinet was oak (I don't have a picture of it, but it was the exact same color that our kitchen cabinets were before we painted them, you can see pictures of that here). We also had one of those ugly light fixtures that you see often in homes built in the 1980's, one that looked a lot like this:

So several months ago we bought a new light fixture to replace the dated one. I'm really happy with the way the new one looks, but it turned out to be a bigger project than originally anticipated. When we went to swap out the old fixture for the new one we realized that because the base shape of the new fixture was different (it was oval whereas the old one was rectangular, like the one pictured above) it wouldn't fit properly. There wasn't enough space between the light fixture and the mirror and the base of the new fixture overlapped onto the top of the mirror. To compensate, we had to take down the mirror and get about 4 inches trimmed off of it. We took it to a windshield repair place and they trimmed it for us for $10. We also had to repaint the wall because the wall color behind the mirror was a dark green and four inches of that would have shown once we hung the mirror back up. I decided to just paint the one wall rather than the whole room for a couple of reasons. 1) I wanted to keep the room neutral and light because it is such a small space and 2) I was being cheap, and just wanted to reuse paint I already had rather than go buy more.

Here is a picture of the new fixture:

This room is really hard to photograph because it is tiny and has no natural light, but I did my best to make the colors in the photos true to life.

So that is what our bathroom looked like for months. An updated fixture and a blue accent wall, but otherwise, still a standard half bath. I did manage to buy some cute accessories, including that large framed bird art which I love in this space. I think the subtle blue and neutral colors and natural theme tie in nicely with the rest of our house. Here is another peek at some of the accessories we put into this space:

(SIDE NOTE: Look closely, and you'll notice the toilet paper dispenser from this post, and the DIY door knob from this one). 

I felt that the room was decent the way it looked at this stage, but I didn't want to settle for "decent". I wanted it to be "really pretty and welcoming". After all, practically every guest in our home will go into this room at some point, so why settle?

So.... I recently managed to carve out some time to paint the cabinet. Gone is the 1980's oak, and here is what it looks like now:

I think the grey is really fresh and ties in nicely with our flooring. I may even get brave and try installing hardware (read about why I vowed never to do cabinet hardware again after our last disastrous attempt here).

I really want to get the mirror framed BEFORE Thanksgiving, and if I do, I promise to share it with your guys! I've already got all the supplies, I just need to do it! I'm hoping that will be a small project that goes a long way towards making this room feel updated and pretty. Once the mirror is framed, I have even bigger plans for completing this space, but I'll keep those secret for now because it will likely be another two years before I get around to doing them! While this room is not yet complete, I'm happy with the progress we've made.

What about you? Have you taken any steps towards getting a room in your home up to date? Thanks for coming by!

-Jesse