Main bathroom makeover

I mentioned last night with my guest room post that we've made some updates so several rooms in the house over the last couple of months. Although Charlotte's playroom and the laundry room are still works in progress, the other room that's been finished is the main bathroom.

Up until this November, we really hadn't done anything to this bathroom since the day we moved in. We hung up a shower curtain we already owned, put down some bath mats and hung a (much too small for the wall) picture of a sunflower field on the wall above the towel rack. Until Charlotte graduated from the kitchen sink to the bathtub, we literally never used this bathroom so it was easy to forget about. It is, however, the main bathroom for guests and the only full bath in the house other than the master bathroom. So even though we never used it, it did get used from time to time. I'd kept it in the back of my mind to change at some point but it wasn't an emergency at all. Now that we spend a lot more time in there with Charlotte on bath nights, I wanted to give it some updates that will help propel the room into its main purpose for the next handful of years: the kids' bathroom.

I wanted it to be a young, bright, kid bathroom without being too over the top and matchy-matchy. Even though they make some really cute bathroom sets out there where the shower curtain and the soap dispenser and the toothbrush holder and the bath mats all match, I wanted to avoid it and go with more of a primary colors/animal theme instead. Here's the finished product:

I started by painting the walls a medium-grey, and then from there the first item of inspiration was obviously that shower curtain. Isn't the absolute best? I love that it's got bright primary colors and animals but is so subtle it's not obnoxious and in your face. This isn't really the world's biggest bathroom, either, so having too loud of a shower curtain would have been overwhelming I think. The bath mats are the same color as the blue leaves in the curtain, so that made it easy. From there I just picked small things we could change in the room and tried to focus on colors.

We switched out the mirror, hand towel hook, hand towel, soap dispenser, and knobs on the vanity but left the existing vanity and lights. When looking for the new items, I decided on white for the towels to balance the grey of the walls and the bright colors of everything else, but focused on bright primary colors in the accent pieces like the mirror, hook, and knobs.

Thinking ahead to when more than one little person is using this bathroom - Lord willing - we took out the towel bar and put in a row of hooks instead. We chose the awesome towels with hooks specifically and hung them a little lower to the ground to make it easier for toddlers of the future to hang their own towels up. (Please note the unicorn hooded towel on the end. My aunt and uncle gave it to Charlotte and it's monogrammed and now every child we ever has needs one. It. Is. The. Best.)

I also stuck a big white trash can next to the toilet to hold lots of extra toilet paper.

One more look from the doorway:

And one (kind of wonky because I used the panoramic feature to get the whole wall) view from the shower:

And that's it! In the future, we plan to add a white medicine cabinet above the toilet, and I will have to spend time organizing underneath the sink at some point. Right now there isn't really anything under there but some cleaning supplies and a trash can, but someday it's going to have to be a space that works pretty hard.


It was really fun to make these small changes and see such a huge impact. Just like in the guest room, we tried to save as much money as we could on this little makeover. Here's the basic breakdown:

Things we paid for:

•  new towels (bath and hand towels): from IKEA, about $80 (they were about $10 each, and we got plenty of extras for both since IKEA isn't close)
• small trash can for toilet paper storage: from IKEA, about $4
• mirror: from Hobby Lobby, $50
• small hook for hand towel: from Hobby Lobby, about $1.50
• knobs for vanity: from Hobby Lobby, about $6
• soap dispenser: from WalMart, about $8
• bath mats: from Target, about $15
• shower curtain: from Target, about $30
• towel hook rack: from Target, about $20
• paint: from Home Depot, about $30

This one did add up because of the towels and mirror especially, but we plan to keep the bathroom this way for quite a while and we're really excited with how it turned out.

I'll wait till the playroom is done - just two more things that need to be done - before I share it with you, but I think soon I'll share a progress update on the laundry room renovation and fill you in on what still needs to be done (hopefully over the next few months).