I live in a beautiful house filled with ugly bathrooms.
It’s no secret that I love renovating bathrooms. I LOVE it. Some teachers want to take a year’s sabbatical to travel. I wish I could design a bathroom for every era of house. And find a way to put a chandelier in each one.
This is what we’ve done :
And this is what we currently live with. The day of reckoning for these baths can’t come soon enough.
Since renovating a bathroom at Martin Place isn’t an option right now, I was super excited to be able to do the bathroom at the Cottage. It’s done, it’s gorgeous, and I wish it were mine. I’m sorry if I’ve blogged about some of these details before, but I’m trying to wrap it all in one little package, and that requires a small trip down memory lane.
It’s just simple and lovely from the moment you walk in the door.
When we bought the house, this is what it looked like. There has never been a shower in this house it the whole of its history. It was built in 1876! Please note the classy and efficient ceiling fan.
Step one was to create a floorplan. To get a shower in, we had to lose a window, which seems logical because it’s on a ground floor facing the street, anyway. After discussing options on social media, I opted for a double vanity, tub/shower combo, and toilet. If I was doing this bathroom for US, It would have been a single vanity, and a separate tub and walk-in shower. But, everyone talked me out of that. I really love the puzzle of old bathrooms and trying to fit in a modern layout with lots of windows and doors. It’s such a fun puzzle. I used the shower to create a nook for the toilet, and put the tub and vanity opposite each other. And the other side of the room hosts the myriad of doors.
The awful floor had to be ripped up…..and structure rebuilt.
In its place, we added ceramic tile. We bought this off Craigslist for about $.03 a square foot. And we have a TON of it leftover. If I was buying new, I wouldn’t have picked this. I thought it was too big, and too “kitcheny.” But once it was down, and grouted with the black, I liked it more and more. And there’s no way to beat the price, although we did hire out the tiling since we were under such a time crunch. I was sad, because of how much I love to tile.
The vanity with the marble top was also a Craigslist score. The people who sold it, bought it for a renovation, and then changed the floorplan and it no longer fit. It’s all about the floorplan, folks. We added feet to the bottom, to give it just a bit more height.
I love black and white for a bathroom, because it’s graphic, and can mix with so many colors. I usually try to stay neutral with bath tiles, and it especially makes sense for a rental.
The fixtures are all chrome, and are all basic models – not the cheapest, but DEFINITELY not the most expensive. I wanted a bit of Victorian styling, and I’m happy with it.
The closet in the bathroom looked like this when we bought it. So, we fixed the roof.
We ripped out the floors, found some lead pipes….
And now, the closet looks like this. Jealous!
Storage abounds in this rental, because there is also a giant reach-in closet, as well as the walk-in.
Which is also nice, because that means there are lots of lovely doors everywhere.
Another bit of storage is the medicine cabinet over the toilet.
When I found it at Goodwill, it was $10. And looked like this.
I bought it because the moulding on the cabinet….
….matched the moulding on the doors and windows. Kismet and Storage for $10. Thank you, Alexander Hamilton.
I replaced the knobs to black and white, and even though it’s a rental, injected a touch of pattern, which makes me smile.
Little details like hardware pop out all over the room – I’m forever glad that I restored the hardware, and that I found fancy cast-iron vent covers. I also hope renters love the hooks on the wall. I wanted the space to have some character and function.
In case you forgot the fancy lighting and ventilation that existed before, allow me to remind you.
Now there is a ton of light, and the coolest exhaust fan ever.
That’s the bathroom! I wish I had one this nice at my house, but alas. A girl needs time to plan, four times over!
Did you miss how we got here?
You can find all the other Cottage Bathroom Posts Here!
Not much to say other than WOW! Amazing job!!!!!!
Thank you for always being such a great cheerleader! I’m so grateful. I’m glad you love it!
Where did you find that exhaust fan??? I’m dying to find something nice like that for my 1928 lilac and black tile bathroom.
It’s a Hunter – the model is Garden District. We found ours at Menards, but since that’s fairly regionals, I just did a quick search and found it online at Home Depot, as well!
http://tinyurl.com/p68yny6
Good luck with your room! I’d love to see it. Lilac and Black tile sounds like something I would LOOOOOOVE.
I was coming here to ask this question! I love this fan!
I was also wondering about the texture you have on the ceiling. How did you achieve it?
I didn’t! It was already there. Luckily – the ceilings were in great shape, and we LOVE them!
As always, just dazzling! Thanks so much for taking the time to maintain this blog; it is a delight reading all your posts!
You are the sweetest. I’m just glad anyone wants to hang out and read! Also, dazzling is such an underused and wonderful word. Thanks for using it on this space!
What a wonderful bathroom for a rental. It’s a testament to your work that the people you choose for their work are then in turn people who want to rent from you. That says a lot.