The Bathroom: Part 2

After we ripped out the medicine cabinet and the other one on the wall, we had to decide what we would do with the holes. These are things we didn't think about before because well... we didn't know what was back there! We definitely wanted to add some chrome and get an old style medicine cabinet.

When we took the old medicine cabinet out, there was a hole in the wall which seemed to be a standard sized hole for the original cabinet that was put in in '53. We were scared about removing the light because we didn't know what kind of crazy assed wiring would be goin on but thankfully it wasn't too bad (past experience has made me wary of any Gerard renos). I had some days to kill before Baby Time so I headed to the ReStore by my house to see what they had. Sometimes I feel like stores send me good vibes, telling me that they have what I am looking for if I were to come RIGHT NOW! Well the restore definitely sent those vibes out to me that day because I found a couple of medicine cabinets, plus the perfect light shade! They had a few good ones to choose from but in the end I stuck with my gut and it looks fab.

We went to the Electrical And Plumbing Store, also by our house, to get the white cover with 3 prong outlet. This store is super sweet, they have alot of old stuff hiding in the back and the guys that work there are older so they know what you are talking about when you ask them crazy shit... unlike Home Depot or Rona, though they do try. I stole the silver knob off a different light at the Restore (in all fairness I bought the whole thing but it was like a hybrid of the stuff I wanted). Greg wired it up and I love it!

OK. So, before we could install anything, we had to paint everything. We got out the BIN, covered up the tub (a luxury it hadn't been offered before) and Greg got to work. I must give Greg props for doing so much work, because I was so pregnant I couldn't do anything except tell him spots he'd missed or how to paint better or faster and take pictures of him. I'm glad this was mostly my idea and he did most of the job. Thanks baby!!!

Nice fake serious face.. I know you are totally happy right now.

Painting in the daytime....

... painting in the nighttime....

....painting all my troubles away!

A part of this that I found pretty cool was looking at the different layers of paint that were on the walls. You can tell the history of a place by peeling back the layers! First was Ugly Cream, the original colour. Whether it was a primer or actually the first colour ever, I do not know. Next was Ugly Yellow, a nicotine-stain sort of yucky light yellow-cream. The next colour is a light blue, almost a grey-green-blue. It probably looked decent because the tiles have a tinge of this colour in it. Over top all of it is the Pepto Pink that is so hated by me and everyone else.

Pretty, isn't it :)

I took alot of pictures of this reno because I was really excited to be doing it. It was the first room I tackled when we moved in and it is always the place I start at when cleaning the house. Here is a pic of the medicine cabinet hole, spruced up by me!

See how Gerard broke that top corner tile to make room for the ugly wood-backed light? WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID YOU DO THAT????????
Also in this picture you can see what was behind the other cabinet, in the pink rectangle. My theory is, that when the house was built, there was a little cabinet there. At some point Gerard took it down and put something else up, that was smaller. So he used extra tile to fill in the inside of the rectangle. Then in the 80's he just threw up the ugly cabinet and left us to find it in 2010. Here is a picture of said handiwork:

I put that picture there for a few days cause the background colour was disgusting and I didn't know how long I'd have to look at it. I was kind of scared that we had bitten off a bit more than we could chew coming up to Baby Time. What were we going to do with that wall??? Should we paint it Pink? Should we leave up those extra tiles? Should we get a new cabinet? It was a topic of discussion for many days.

We decided to take down the tile. We got a sample paint thing at Home Depot and matched it as close as we could to the plain pink tile. We didn't know what else to do with it, it's a very odd feature. One day we may figure out something better but for now it will be pink. It's not overly noticeable when you go into the room.

We're gonna have to fix that top tile... grrr

That is the chrome Space Saver I got at Home Outfitters. We had a really hard time figuring out what we were going to do in the way of storage, and we looked around at all the major stores to find something like this. They were all really ugly and didn't fit the look we were going for. Then one day, as I was out wasting time again, I went to Home Outfitters to take a look at what they had. HOLY EXPENSIVE, BATMAN! But, there were a few on sale, hanging out on the floor in boxes. This baby was originally $190 and I got it for $40. It is plain, shiny chrome, exactly what I was looking for. Again I think I was feeling those Deal Vibes :) We are still not convinced that it is right for the space but it will do until we stumble across the perfect solution.

This is my light. I love my light.

Pretty.

This is my medicine cabinet. I also love it.

One problem we had installing the cabinet was that my measurments were off. It was smaller than the hole. So we used pieces of wood inside to prop it up and then we framed the gap with scrap Gerard wood (there is a tonne of crap wood in our garage). There is some funky wood/tile crap going on over there but you can't see it when the door is closed. And who cares anyways!

Do you like the colour we picked for the walls? It's called Celery Ice, and it's very pretty :) It's a very light minty sort of green, but not too cool of a shade. I think it goes perfectly with the pink tiles, and it pulls the other colours out of the little tiles so the pink isn't so in-your-face. I like pink bathrooms and all, but this was a very hard one to work with. It would have been easier I think to have those all-pink tiled bathrooms! If you have one of these you might argue that though!

Here is a montage of my faucets. Please ignore the grout, as I said earlier these people smoked in the house for 50 years and the grout is uuuugly. Also there is some nice patching done on the spout. I will have to fix that at a later date.

As for the sink, we are going to leave it there as it is. One day we'd like to put in an old sink, possibly one on chrome legs (eeee!!!) but tose cost alot of money and we also need some plumbing done under there so I painted the cabinet white and replaced the hardware. It looks pretty good!! Nice and fresh, like.

We also painted the ceiling and trim in white. Now I can bare to look up when I'm having a bath without wanted to gag!!! The swan is still there, but I kind of like him :)

These are a few of my favourite features in my bathroom:

The pink shower curtain rings came with the house. They were attached to a god-awful brown grandma shower curtain frilled with pink lace. The second picture shows off the paint colour well, and also my cool switch plate cover. We have this style in other rooms too and I don't know if it really goes well in here but it is better than the old one. Lastly the built-in towel bar and paper holder are original in pink and awesome. The paper holder doesn't like double rolls, in case you were wondering!

So that pretty much concludes our bathroom renovation. We didn't do too much but it really made a huge difference. One day I hope to add to this part of the blog, maybe we'll get a new (old) sink, or maybe we'll re-tile the floor in a nice pinky mosaic! And just so you know, we got the bathroom done with a week to spare before our little Else joined the world. Now she will never have to know what horror was awaiting her in our 80's ugly bathroom!