If you are new to the blog, welcome! The Flashback Friday posts are all projects from our previous house – you know, the one we never planned on leaving. So, just a word of warning – if you come to our Victorian on Martin Place, the bathrooms don’t look like this. Yet. Anything marked Jackson Street is our old house!
After the floors, we kept going with the non-fixtures in the room. There was originally a floor-to-ceiling linen closet in the room, with a regular full-sized door. But, the bottom third was useless anyway, since it was over the back stairwell and was slanted on the bottom. In the re-design, we wanted the toilet to be in front of the closet, so we had to change it up. We decided to close in the bottom, and add an open shelf to make access easier with the toilet right there. We’d never built a closet / cabinet / linen closet before. It was such a throw-away project for me, and you know what? It ended up being one of the parts of the room that I thought was the most beautiful. Go figure!
We started by framing the inside edge of the closet (actually, we started by drywalling in the bottom of the old closet). We also built the shelf on the bottom. And of course, when we closed off the bit under the stairs, we hid something silly inside. So, you know, when someone decides they hate what we did, they will find something to make them laugh.
I climbed in it, because I wanted the inside to be painted the wall color, and this was the easiest time to do that. I look exhausted. The paint was a really soothing mint green – I didn’t really plan the colors for the upstairs bathrooms, I just discovered them. This was also a $5 mistake gallon from Lowe’s. Love it.
Next, we framed the rest of the closet. We basically built a giant picture frame around the opening. I stained all of the wood to match the dark wood in the rest of the house. Matching wood stain is like an Olympic sport for me. I love just adding and playing with different colors to get the best match.
Doug hung the doors next. We just used pre-made, unfinished doors for this project. Both of us wish we were a bit better with a router to make our own doors, but we aren’t there yet! Getting the angles and the levels to make sure they closed properly was a task. And by that, I mean Doug took a lot of time to make it right, and I was probably eating oreos or drinking milkshakes or something.
We also hung the medicine cabinet. This came from Restoration Hardware, and the wood color and style matched the woodwork in the house PERFECTLY. Also, there was a small chip, on the top of the cabinet, on the right hand side. You couldn’t see the chip unless you were ABOVE the medicine cabinet. And, if that’s the case, then we must be having one hell of a party, so I don’t care if you see it at that point. Because of that chip, we bought a $365 cabinet for $90. SCORE.
Time for some things to make the bathroom REALLY special. The back window was glass block – functional, but not beautiful. We looked forever to find a piece of stained glass to work in this spot, and we finally found one. My $.02 : When you move into a house, measure all of your windows, and keep those measurements with you at all times. Better yet, draw simple floorplans of all of your rooms, if you stumble onto furniture that you can’t live without. We found a few pieces of stained glass that way! This one came from one of our favorite spots, the Centerville Antique Mall (formerly Webb’s Antiques). It was just a few inches too short, so we built a frame and made new sides to the window casing, and moved the header down, so it covered about an inch of the window. The glass block is still there, and the original sides are still intact, so if anyone wants to take it back to glass block, it’s an easy process.
The Chandelier was an easy antique find – it was a simple brass fixture that I refinished to look more like iron, and I added some french cut crystals. One thing we always do when renovating a room is to add dimmer switches. Not only is this nice when taking a bath, but as someone who suffers from migraines, it’s great to be able to control the lighting in any room.
We finished the shelves and the staining on the cabinets, and added some knobs – we used the same knobs on the sink vanity to be cohesive. More on that in a later post!
It really is a TON of storage.
Next Flashback Friday, we build a shower! If you missed the previous Guest Bath post, you can Find it Here.
