The Lowe’s project/challenge this month was a bathroom. I was stumped. My house is newer, only 8 years old, so all of our bathrooms are in pretty good shape. Our basement bathroom has been finished even less than that…maybe 5.5 years. So, I picked a bathroom based on the process of elimination.
Kid bathroom? Dr Seuss-y and I love it. Don’t want to change that one yet.
Master bathroom? Has a wall that doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling, which means that any painting would have involved also painting my entire master bedroom. Last time I did that by myself it took 5 whole days. And, if I picked a color that didn’t work with my existing bedding… You see the size of project this could have turned into, right?
Powder room? Like one square yard. You can’t get in there to photograph (we bloggers worry about these things) and I just redid the mirror in the last couple of months. Plus, there’s not really space for anything other than the toilet and the pedestal sink.
So, the basement bathroom it was, in spite of the fact that there’s no natural light (back to that thing where we bloggers worry about our pictures 
).
Truthfully, I NEVER use this bathroom. As in, I have never ever ever bathed/showered down there (in 5.5 years) and maybe use the toilet portion once a month. My kids have get to clean toilets when they talk back, so I can’t even think of the last time I was down there to clean it. Once I got down there, I realized that this should have been my obvious choice from the get go.
The towel bar had been ripped off by a kid doing chin ups. The wall patches hadn’t been painted. The toilet paper holder was broken and no longer able to actually hold toilet paper. The kick place on the cabinet had fallen off. And don’t even get me started on that wall color. When I showed a friend the before picture, she called it “cat turd brown”. Let’s also not talk about what happened when someone washed the formerly white rug with the towels:
I was not a fan of the light fixture either…too pointy or something.
So, I headed to Lowe’s for some inspiration.
I don’t have a way before picture of the towel rack situation, but you’ll just have to imagine that it was pulled completely off the wall based on the super human girth strength of one or more of my children. Because it had been securely drywall anchored in place (after the first time it came down), A LOT of the wall came out with it. Instead of replacing a huge chunk of drywall, I decided to come up with another option for towel hanging. I found this coat rack in the closet/garage/organization section at Lowe’s and thought it would be perfect:
I picket up a new toilet paper holder and a light fixture and then headed back to get some molding to frame the mirror. I also picked up 398472 paint samples.
(That fabric is a laminated cotton from Riley Blake that I’ll be using for the new shower curtain. That tutorial will be over on the Riley Blake blog in March.)
I went with a color called Modest Silver from Valspar and it is PERFECT.
When I went back to get the paint, I got some Liquid Nails (to fix the kick plate), painter’s tape, garbage bags (to wrap the toilet so I could paint behind it), white silicone (to adhere the frame to the mirror), spackle (I like the kind that goes on pink and turns white as it dries) and assorted cleaning supplies (because I really have no idea when that tub was last cleaned).
The other thing I want to mention about this makeover is that I did it entirely by myself…no husband help at all. I’m not telling you this to mock him (he he he 
), just so that you’ll know that YOU CAN DO THIS BY YOURSELF!
Want to see some after pictures?
(Keep in mind the shower curtain isn’t finished yet, so the fabric is just sort of draped over the rod.)
Kick plate glued back in place:
Toilet paper holder replaced:
Paint applied (and Cheetos eaten):
Light fixture swapped:
Coat rack turned towel rack installed:
Mirror framed:
I gave everything a good scrubbing, too, and voila! A much more pleasant bathroom!
Don’t forget to pick up a FREE Subscription to Lowe’s Creative Ideas Magazine:
You can also find Lowe’s Creative Ideas on Facebook. (They’ve moved, so if you “liked” them before, you should “like” them again!)
And, now there’s a Lowe’s Creative Ideas blog. Go have a look around. You might recognize a face or two.
Disclosure: Lowe’s provided me with a gift card for supplies for my bathroom makeover.
