Our main-floor bathroom on the first floor has a maroon bathtub, a maroon sink, and, you guessed it… a maroon toilet. When we first bought the house, C and I both agreed we’d be demoing the bathroom in year two of living here. We were ready to bid farewell to the colored bathroom that was coming in hot from the 80s or 70s or whenever people were making colored toilets.
It’s Happening! …Right?
We were scared to do the demo, though. Ripping up floors in a house that’s 100 years old is scary. It’s likely that you will open a whole can of worms and problems, and your budget will start to grow right before your eyes (those that have demo’d an old house are likely nodding along right now). Even still, we were committed! We were going to do it! I had even started asking neighbors who they used for their demos and was collecting names and numbers. It was going to happen!
But then… we had friends over for dinner one night who told us we should not change anything and that it was a cool bathroom. We were like waaaait, what? Then we had different friends come over and say the same thing! They loved the bathroom! We still weren’t totally convinced, but the thought of ‘what if we just…. didn’t change anything?’ started to roll around in our minds.
I started using my trusty Canva whiteboard to see what it could look like if we just upgraded a bunch of things in the bathroom without actually ripping everything out. The lights, the mirror, the window treatment, adding art, etc. I wasn’t hating what I was seeing.
The Sink Dilemma
Early on in figuring out what to do with the bathroom (before our friends came over for dinner) I discovered a pretty significant setback – the sink I’d picked out since before we had even moved into the house was not going to fit in the space. (sink link – it’s perfect, right?). I realized that the sink was way too deep. As I did more research, I realized that there were basically no great sink options that could fit. Our best option was to buy the one we loved, and shave off the front of it by 2 inches. We didn’t know if that was even possible. That was a pretty big deterrent for me and a large part of why I paused and started to rethink this whole bathroom remodel.
Ultimately, we decided to wait on the bathroom. As we were talking through what all we wanted to do, what we anticipated to run into, and then the whole sink debacle, we realized that maybe this wasn’t our year to rip everything out. Our friends were thrilled to hear that the maroon was staying! (for now!)
The End Result
Listen, if I could snap my fingers and the bathroom be redone, I’d be snapping faster than I’ve ever snapped before. But what we ended up with is fine. We had a whole house we were also trying to furnish at the same time as this bathroom facelift, so doing these budget friendly updates was totally fine and will carry us through until the day that we actually do redo the entire bathroom. I’m happy with it, I think the light fixtures are badass, and I’m leaning into the maroon. For now. Like I keep saying.
What We Did
Brass Mirror: We removed the dinky small mirror and chose a GIANT mirror. It’s from Ballard Design and it’s a great value for what you get!
Light Sconces: We also got rid of the small light fixtures and opted for these very long statement lights. By adding in the mirror and lights, the ceiling suddenly feels so much taller.
Small Marble Corner Shelves: I’m so bad at taking before photos, so I don’t have a pictures of how much of an impact this light ‘remodel’ did to the space. But we had previously put this large / awkward shelving unit next to the sink. This was primarily for when our parents are in town to give the option for more counter space. Our parents are not here enough to have those large shelves up all the time and were taking up so much space. It would have been weird to leave it empty, so these mini marble shelves are perfect.
Cafe Curtains: This upgrade made a huge impact. The previous curtains rattan material and did not allow any light into this bathroom that already is pretty dark (as shown in these photos). One day the idea of cafe curtains popped into my head and I knew that’s exactly what we needed to do in here. I got the actual curtains from etsy, and ordered the curtain rod and hardware from Rejuvination. I also found this blog post extremely helpful when I was trying to figure how how to go about this. Before and after of the window treatments are above.
Wall Art: I love Slim Aarons art, and I decided if we were going to lean into this retro vibe, this artwork was perfect to hang in the bathroom.
