I spend a lot of time showing you the pretty parts of our house on Instagram but there is plenty of ugly going on over here too. The truth is we have a long way to go and that can be frustrating and overwhelming but its alright. There is something to be said for living in a space for a while before you make changes so that you know exactly what you need from a space. Below are a few photos of our strangely connected bathrooms. The girls bathroom is off the main hallway upstairs. Here is what it looked like when we first saw the house...
I'm sure you're not shocked to see more brown. You might be shocked by what our bathroom off the Master looked like though...
Yep, orange. Here's the strange thing...
The bathrooms are connected through this door. I'm told our bathroom used to be a closet. When we first moved in we hated the arrangement of the bathrooms and wanted to gut them and turn them into one huge bathroom. After living with it for almost 4 years we are undecided. We kind of like the arrangement. It's nice having two toilets on this level and when we have guests they don't have to use our Master bathroom. But how nice would it be to have one big room with all that natural light! If we do one big bathroom we are down to two bathrooms in the house. One on the upper level, zero on the main and one on the lower level.
At first glance maybe they aren't that bad...
In the girls bathroom we removed the tile back splash, the mirror and toilet paper holder and patched up the walls. I painted the walls Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore and the vanity is Farrow and Ball's Pigeon, color matched at Sherwin Willams. The mirror is a garage sale find and the stool is ikea. The hardware is inexpensive and has held up great. Here are the pulls and the knobs. The pendants are from West Elm but they don't carry them anymore so here is the newer version. The art is a forever fave by Clare Elsaesser and you can find it here. Doesn't look too bad from this angle unless you notice there are no baseboards and know that the stick on vinyl tiles don't stick anymore.
Behind that curtain is the tiniest tub with plastic insert walls and a faucet knob that falls off every time someone turns it. I added a double curtain rod that curves out and that made the shower feel big enough to tolerate for now. The shower isn't properly ventilated so I am constantly trying to stay ahead of a nice bead of mold that forms where the tub and walls meet. The shower curtain is old Anthropoligie; here is their new version. The mirror belonged to Jake's Aunt. That tiny closet holds all of our towels, medications, and every other random neccessity. How about those two-tone push in door knobs and chipped up hollow core doors. We removed all of the baseboards and trim when we moved in because it was literally falling off. Oh, and apparently I never painted that wall into the hallway, just realized that!
Moving on to our bathroom...
There isn't much to it. It's a toilet and a sink and that's it. We have a nice big window which is the highlight of the space. The faux wood blinds need to go and there is a little breeze around that window because we haven't gotten around to trimming it out. The vintage cabinet holds all my bathroom goodies and that terrible leaning mirror used to be stuck to our bedroom door. It didn't get far.
The lovely track lighting came with it. I painted the vanity Raccoon Fur by Benjamin Moore and the walls are a basic white I can't remember. I never got around to hardware. The mirror is Ikea linked here. There is no toilet paper holder obvs. There is something wrong with the toilet. It flushes about 10 times and then the handle falls off and you have to take the lid off and put a few pieces back together inside the tank to get the handle back on. It's awesome. The floor is actually tile in this room, I assume its just leftover from our lovely kitchen floor. We hate it in both spaces. The rug is the first vintage rug I ever bought many years ago. This shop has a bunch of minis if you are looking for one.
Here is the view from our bedroom...
Our olive tree loves this southern exposure but she's looking a little sad without a pot.
Anyway, now you've seen a little of the ugly around here. I plan to share more soon and I promise it won't be anywhere near this pretty. Baby steps. Just thought it would be nice to remind you that we are far from perfect. We have design questions and struggles, budget issues and the ugly spaces to prove it. The plan is to keep saving and tackling each room by priority when we feel like we have it figured out. Lots to come down the road.
XO, Meg
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