Half-Bath Makeover

Today, we bring you another installment of your favorite series: Bringing Mom's House into the 21st Century.  We had almost the whole gang here last week.  Mom and Dad came down to organize the attic and move more boxes to Virginia - which was so much fun during a heat wave in Charlotte.  When they left, Laura, Mr. Dump and I were free to tackle the real projects that we wanted to tackle.  Which brings us to the transformation at hand...

This is the half bathroom in the downstairs of Mom and Dad's house.  Twenty or so years ago, it was lovely.  Today, however, NOT SO MUCH (sorry, Mom...)!

The room is located in the center of the house, so there are no windows to let natural light shine in.  It has always been a little on the dark side, and the hunter green and maroon stripes didn't help.  The photo below is the result of the fabulous flash on my camera... It is much darker than this in person....

My dad installed the wallpaper shortly after the house was built.  My dad is somewhat of a perfectionist and this wallpaper was meant to NEVER come down!  It was a little heartbreaking to transform this room because I can still hear Dad's choice words and frustrations while making sure all of the lines connected perfectly.  (I love you, Dad!)   

Here are a few more shots of the bathroom before the magic happened...

Although the paper was never intended to come down, it did start to peel in a couple of spots.  Therefore, we tried to steam the wallpaper off with our handy steamer - we failed.  See our other bathroom transformation (where it worked) here.  The picture below shows our effort and failed attempt at taking down the "I'm never coming off this friggin' wall" paper.

Needless to say, we gave up.  We decided to prime the walls (over the wallpaper) with two coats of extra strength latex Kilz.  Between coats, we spackled a few spots where you could see the seams.  While it dried, we painted the mirror below that I just happened to have in the garage.

We stuck with a neutral color to help the room feel bigger and brighter. We added a couple of cute frames, a homemade towel rack (thanks, Mr. Dump) and voila... Here she is....  Updated and beautiful!

We left a picture that Mom had in the bathroom originally because it reminds her of her three babies - Awww...  However, we did update the frame with a little spray paint.  We also decided not to put the wooden shelves back in to give it a larger feel.  We still need to add a light fixture, change out the faucet, and put new electrical outlets in the walls.  More staging and updates to come! 

Happy Junkin'!

Sarah