Downstairs Bathroom Renovation: After

When I last posted about our downstairs bathroom renovation, I called it a “mini project” – considering how long it’s taken us to complete it, it’s hardly “mini” any more! We started in August and have only just completed it this week, mid-February. Although to be fair, it was at the stage of finished minus the tiling in September. We painted the tiles using white tile paint over winter, but that turned out not to look great, then my dad suggested we just get one big tile and replace them with that. We found the perfect one at B&Q but decided to wait until we got our en-suite bathroom retiled, when we were getting a professional in to do it, and get that tile put on at the same time.

So without further ado, here is the before, when we moved in:

The middle, when we attempted to paint it a light grey, but the paint turned out to be terrible quality and showed the pink through so went a funny lilac colour:

And the after:

What do you think? We’d wanted to go for sophisticated and something of a statement with it – we’re not very brave with paint colours, but my mum and dad had some left over from painting their living room and suggested it would work well for us. Turns out we loved it! It’s a sort of grey-brown colour – I can’t tell you what it is (because I’ve forgotten) but it looks a lot darker and more brown on our walls than it does on theirs, which is odd!

The hallway just outside is a similar shade – it’s Farrow & Ball’s Elephant’s Breath but mixed by Valspar. We did up the hall around the same time as the downstairs bathroom, but it’s ridiculously difficult to photograph thanks to very little to no natural light in there at all, but as a quick run down, it features new prints, a brand new paint colour and this side table I DIYed from IKEA. It’s SO much better than it was before (in a lovely shade of highlighter yellow!), but if you’re looking for more inspiration, this article from The Strawberry Fountain might be useful.

If you remember from my original post, the only stipulation I had was that the room work with my green glass soap dispenser from H&M. It was trickier than it seemed! In the end, we went for gold accents which fit quite well with the grey-brown walls. I’d ideally wanted a WHOLE Gatsby themed room as I’m obsessed with the style (but Ben wouldn’t let me!) so of course, I had to fit a Great Gatsby quote in there somewhere! I got this on Etsy here and the gold frame from Amazon. I’m not sure Ben has actually read it and realised that it’s Great Gatsby ;D

Details are the thing that make it for me, so we added plenty of those! I’m not so keen on the white multi-photo frame, but I wanted to include lots of photos of friends and family in the downstairs bathroom to give it more personality. We also bought this hexagon box shelf and a floating shelf from B&Q which houses a small photo frame (yet to be filled!) from a local shop and this gorgeous Salted Grapefruit Paddywax reed diffuser from Rooi*.  We also spray painted our old heart shaped mirror gold to fit the theme, bought (I actually want to move this to the other wall rather than hanging on the mirror!) and moved the towel hook to be closer to the sink. I’d like to swap for a better towel in there though!

Then the final touches – we already had my 3 cacti in there (although I must remember to water them – I’ve already killed one cactus in the living room!) but we also picked up this pot plant from Lidl which was exactly what we were looking for. I also spray painted a nicely shaped bottle with gold strips which houses some old IKEA fake flowers – these could do with replacing with something nicer to be honest!

So what do you think? I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out! And keep your eyes peeled for another bathroom post soon – our en-suite just needs the walls painting and the flooring replaced and we’re finished with that too!