Bathroom Redo

I am so excited! My mom has been doing some upgrades on her house this past year.  I asked her if she would share some of them that they did with all of you.  I'm so happy that she did this.  Thanks Mom!!

My daughter asked me to share a little bit of some of the projects we did this summer/fall/winter.  There are a lot of projects so we will start small.  Here is what we did in our master bathroom.

It started out a sage green (sorry, I didn’t think I was going to need to take a before shot of the wall color).  We paid a contractor to tear out our existing shower, install a new shower (which entailed putting tile on two walls) and put new tile on the floors.  Here are the before and after shots of that.

You can see some of the green wall color in these pictures.  This shower was old and UGLY!!!

The floors were showing their age as well!  You can see how the contour rug had discolored the floor around the toilet.

As a side note, a few years ago I sanded down the cabinets (they were that pinkish tone bleached oak) and then stained them Minwax Red Mahogany gel stain.  I ended up using that same technique in my kitchen (I will show it to you another time).

Here are the after shots.

Yes, that is tile not wood.  I wanted the durability (and water resistance) of tile but I really liked the look of wood.

The accent strip is leftover tile from the backsplash we did in our kitchen.  We are so glad we paid a contractor to do this job--he struggled with the shower install so there is NO WAY we would have got it right.

Our bedroom and bathroom had been painted the same wall color.  In the middle of all our projects I decided the bedroom needed to be repainted a more neutral color.  This, of course, meant the bathroom was going to have to be painted. 

Here is what the sink/countertop/mirror looked like before.

I actually painted the “panels” between the glass over the lightbulbs when I painted the bathroom green several years ago.  I never really did like the light fixture at all so NOW was the time to replace it.

Here is the new fixture:

We had a hard time finding a light fixture, for the price we were willing to pay, in the oil rubbed bronze that we had switched all our faucets.  We ended up buying one in a brushed nickel finish and I spray painted it with Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

You can see the new wall color as well.  I still wanted to keep the “tropical” theme but figured neutral walls would give me more flexibility in the colors I could introduce as well as make my existing decor really pop!

I have seen several posts on pinterest on “framing” contractor grade mirrors.  I have wanted to do it but my husband was afraid it would make it feel closed in.  After putting the new light fixture up I really wanted to put a frame on the mirror.  When I sent my daughter the above picture she said the same thing so I just told my hubby I was going to do it.  We are BOTH glad we did it!!

I had read several posts about how to do it but obviously didn’t pay attention to ALL the details--I will explain more in a bit.  I knew I would never get the corners mitered the way I liked them so I bought decorative corner blocks so I could cut the moulding with straight edges.  I bought wood moulding and wood corner blocks.  I stained them the same Minwax Red Mahogany gel stain as the cabinets.  I glued the four corner pieces onto the mirror, then I measured (twice, teehee) the distance between the corners to know what size to cut my pieces of moulding.  I measured each side because I knew that each set of sides would not be identical.  Case in point, my left short side measured 30 3/4” and the right short side measured 31”.  I used adhesive I found at Lowe’s that said it was instant setting (liars!!!).  I let the corners set for about a half hour but as I measured and then installed the sides those corners sure moved around A LOT!!  It took some patience but I got the pieces up.  One of my moulding pieces was bowed so it took both of us to push on it to make it stick.  The picture up above is when I finally got it all to stick----or so I thought! 

The next day I noticed that one of the short sides was also bowed and it had popped off halfway down.  I tried to squirt glue in there--easier said than done.  Still couldn’t get it to  stick.  In all that mess, the entire side popped off.  So I tried gluing it all over again.  Next day it still wasn’t stuck.  So I popped it off again, scrapped off all the glue on the mirror (a straight razor blade works GREAT!) and the back of the board (I used a flat screw driver for that).  I looked up on pinterest other posts to see what they used for glue and one said she used good old HOT glue.  So......I went and got my trusty hot glue gun and gave it a shot!  It STUCK--bowed end and all!!!  You have to work fairly fast with the hot glue because it sets up fast as it cools.  Be ready to attach it to the mirror quickly and get it exactly in the place you want it on the first try. 

The same blog post said she had done TWO mirrors.  One with wood moulding and one with MDF moulding.  She said she had the same problem with bowed wood (that’s why she ended up using the glue gun) but no problem with bowing with the MDF.  She spray painted the moulding using the same spray paint I had used on my light fixture.  I don’t have anymore mirrors that need framing but if I was to do it again, I would use MDF and my good old HOT glue gun.  This gal said she also used super glue in some of the more stubborn spots.  I didn’t have to resort to that to know if it works or not.

That’s it for my bathroom projects......for now!  We are going to put ledge stone on the skirt of our jetted tub.  I will take pictures and do a post on that when we are done.