Thursday, 28. April 2011
I put the finishing touches on our guest/kids bathroom today. You may remember from my Free Art post that I needed a new rug (see here for that story) for this room. I decided that I didn’t want another blue, cream and brown rug. It would have been easy to just search for on, throw it in there and call it quits, but I am changing things up around here. I want the house to flow better so I decided to do black, white plus a color in each room.


I started this project by painting the walls. I wanted to change the paint from blue (Ralph Lauren’s Shoreline Blue) to yellow because there is absolutely no natural light in this room. I found the most beautiful shade of yellow. It’s Ralph Lauren’s Ginger. I wish these pictures did the color justice. It is a sunny, sophisticated color that just makes me happy whenever I look at it. That being said, a little goes a long way. The first coat of yellow paint went from floor to ceiling. It was too much for this little room. I decided that it needed to be broken up. I went over a couple of different looks in my mind. Board and batten, bead board, or chair rail would have all been beautiful but I have no patience. Doing one of those mean a trip to the store and power tools. I wanted something quick and easy. I had white paint leftover so I painted the bottom third of the wall white. I had some ribbon for some pillow covers I was planning to make. I thought the ribbon would be cute to use in place of the chair rail. I drew a level line and lined the ribbon up so it was straight. I secured it to the wall with doubled-sided tape. It looked good and stayed in place well, but I started to think about it and decided to tap in a few upholstery tacks just to make sure my two year old didn’t pull it off the wall. Here is a close-up.
I liked the ribbon so much, I decided to put some around my mirror to trim it out.

The next thing I did was paint the vanity. I have lived with that golden oak and the mismatched doors for longer than I’d care to admit. The doors are mismatched because I experimented with them (see here for that story). I kept putting off painting because I want a new vanity, one with twin vessel sinks, granite counter tops, and definitely something not oak. But life has a way of sidelining my plans (someone needs dental work, the oven needs fixing, etc., etc.). I am hoping that one of these days I will get my dream bathroom but for now I am loving the grey.


The rest of the room came together pretty easily. I bought a black and white rug and shower curtain. I pulled all of my black and white towels out of the linen closet. I pulled a few things out of storage that were waiting for me to find them a special place. Here is a picture of a couple of new things I picked up. The wire-mesh star is a thrift store find. The chalk board is from Hobby Lobby. It has really come in handy in the bathroom.

I just wanted to take a minute and show how the black and white trim/doors is working. I have mentioned before that I am only painting the the trim/doors of the public areas black. All of the private rooms are keeping their white trim/doors. Now I like the way the room looks with the door open or closed.


Well, that’s about it. I put just under $100.00 into this makeover and just over two weeks. I could probably have done the whole thing in a week. Nothing was difficult. There was just a lot of drying time and I only put in a few minutes here and there last week because my kids were home for Spring Break. Hope everyone had a happy Easter.






![putting_it_all_together_thumb[1]](http://mingledelements.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/putting_it_all_together_thumb1-300x167.jpg)