If you know me, or you’ve read any of this blog, you know my first love was the water. My Mom can attest that I was riding on the tip of the bow of my dad’s boat long before Leo made it cool. I think I could live on a boat. The only problem that crosses my mind is, where would I run? Being out on the water is my happy place; It’s where I feel free; It’s where I reflect on life (and catch up on some sleep). It truly puts a smile on my face.

While I was out on the water this weekend I thought a lot about this bathroom and the direction it went. This past week was the first time I’ve used the bathroom since mid-May. It was great to get back in space and kinda sit with the design of the room, although it wasn’t 100% complete. I wrote about my struggles with the creative process for this project in my last post, here. And although this makeover looks NOTHING like my original vision, that’s okay. They say that art mirrors life and this couldn’t be more true about this room. It has been a busy, exciting, wild ride these last 2 months. And the bold paint colors in this room are a direct reflection of that. It was a challenging project. I learned a lot about myself and my creative process that I can use going forward. So without further delay here are all the details on the master bathroom makeover……

So much has gone down in the bathroom since my last post about the tile update, here. The walls and vanity got a new coat of paint (GOODBYE yellow!). A new light fixture was installed and new accessories went up.

From the beginning, I’ve never had a more difficult time picking paint colors for a room until now. When I moved in, I chose yellow for this bathroom to go with the gray bedroom. This bathroom was the last room we were painting on a Thursday evening/Friday morning before I moved in Friday evening. I knew as soon as the color went up on the wall it was all wrong. But there was no time to go get samples and figure out a new color. So yellow it was.

Going into the makeover, I knew I wanted to get rid of those ugly yellow walls. I loved this inspiration picture from Pinterest with the teal vanity, but I didn’t necessarily want white walls.

I went in a direction of a dark accent wall and then a lighter color for all of the other walls. Thank goodness they don’t charge for paint chips as Lowe’s, because this is probably only a quarter of the ones I had floating around in my purse while I was trying to decide.

After narrowing colors down I got some paint samples to try. None of them turned out like I expected. It was extremely hard to pick a color because the yellow paint was altering how each of the samples looked in the room. In total I bought 9 paint sample cans for this project…..it was a frustrating process.

The final paint selections for this room are:

Ceiling & Trim – Valspar “Du Jour”

Vanity: Sherwin Williams “Watery”

Accent Wall: Olympic “Sailor’s Coat”

Walls: Olympic “Delicate Mist”

For the vanity paint, it was primed first with oil based primer and sanded smooth. The knobs on the drawers were replaced with drawer pulls. I had a little difficulty installing the drawer pulls. The face of the drawers are maple hard wood and the drawer itself is MDF. The drill bit got too hot going through the face and it was melting the MDF and getting stuck. I ended up drilling halfway for each hole then letting the bit cool before going through the MDF. Here’s the before, primed, and finished vanity with new drawer pulls.

Originally I wanted to change the single light fixture to two separate ones, so that there would be one over each mirror. It can be done…..but that’s a challenge that I’ll take on another time. It was going to cost just as much to buy 2 light fixtures, install 2 new electrical boxes, and patch the wall from the old that I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. I found the light fixture I wanted on Amazon, here. I was looking for something with an industrial design to go with the rustic and industrial accents on the mirrors I made, here. Here’s the before and after of the light fixture.

The last phase of the makeover was deciding on accent pieces and what to put on the wall over the toilet. In the guest bathroom I made an industrial pipe shelf, which I LOVE. I wanted to put some kind of shelf above the toilet but I didn’t want to repeat the same one from the guest bathroom. I found this inspiration picture on Pinterest.

Since this bathroom went in a Rustic/Industrial/Nautical feel direction I decided that my anchors on the wall were going to be dock/boat cleats. I didn’t realize the many options there are for cleats until I went shopping for them. There are galvanized, stainless steel, open mount, closed mount, and they come in all different lengths. GOOD GRIEF. I settled on these 6” Stainless Steel ones on Amazon.

To hang the shelf from the cleats, I originally went with 3/8” Cotton Rope in a natural color. After hanging the shelf with a figure eight wrap around each cleat, it looked all wrong. There was too much rope around each cleat. The natural rope had “fly-a-way” strands coming out everywhere. It was a hot mess.

After some research I decided to use a 3/8” White Nylon rope instead. I thought about changing to 1/4” Cotton Rope, but felt there were too many other problems with the look of the Cotton Rope. I also decided to use a different method to secure the board to the cleats. Instead of having 4 individual ropes, I would only have 2; one for each side. The next step was to find décor to fill the shelf. I downloaded a nautical map of the Beaufort Inlet from NOAA’s website, here. You can find current and historical charts for free going all the way back to the 1800s. This particular map is from 1985.

The last piece to tie everything together was a new set of hooks on the back of the door to hang up stuff. This was put together with a 1X3 and 4 – 4” galvanized cleats from West Marine.

I learned A LOT from this project, espcially that I don’t do well with chaos that invades my space. I definitely would have a very difficult time living through a kitchen renovation if I was living in the house at the same time. It was a struggle having project clutter and drop cloths in my bedroom for almost a month and a half. I also learned that I can’t fight the direction that a creative process is leading me. It doesn’t work and it makes for a very challenging experience on a project. I feel that the way the space turned out in the end is more “me” and my style than the original inspiration picture I was using for my vision. Here’s some Before and After pictures.