Besides hanging up Hadley’s shower curtain and putting a picture frame up on the wall, I hadn’t attempted any kind of updating in our hallway full bathroom until a couple weeks ago. We spend so much time in this space from the time Hadley gets up until the time she goes to bed, so it’s been driving me a little nuts that it was so dark. I am so far from an interior decorator, so envisioning what I wanted this space to look like was really challenging!
I’d been browsing Pinterest and looking through magazines for months trying to gather inspiration for a future update, and at the end of the day I decided to just brighten things up with white paint and add a little character with some gold stenciling detail. Here’s what it looks like today!
So much better in my humble opinion!
The first thing I did was pick up a $20 can of Glidden’s Trim, Door, and Furniture paint in a bright white finish (the same paint I used to the paint the interior of my exterior doors) and the rest of the my painting materials from Home Depot. Glidden also offers an antique white paint in this type of “no drip” gel formula, and though I was majorly torn, I decided to go with the bright white. No regrets!
I taped off the mirror with my favorite green Frog tape and did a couple coats on the mirror. Since I knew I’d be painting the walls, I didn’t worry about how messy I was painting the mirror. Two coats did the trick!
Next, I took off the vanity doors and all the hardware. I don’t want to fool with new hinges right now (a task much more complicated than it may seem), so I spray painted them with one coat of Rust-Oleum Silver. I’m sure that spray painting hinges isn’t an awesome long-term solution, but for now the outdated brass hinges are gone and I am happy!
Because this white Glidden paint is so thick, the vanity and doors only took two coats of paint. There is no evidence of the original wood grain!
I really love the bright white, super glossy finish! For this bathroom makeover, it works well. I would never touch my kitchen cabinets with this paint though.
For the walls I selected Sherwin William’s “Dove White”. Since my walls were dark originally, I had to do a full three coats. This was the first room in the entire house I’ve had to do three coats on, and I wasn’t too happy about it. There was no question though – it needed that third coat!
To add some pizzazz to the bathroom, I grabbed my quart of the gorgeous Ralph Lauren Metallic Gold (left over from my living room wall art) and decided to try my hand at stenciling. I purchased a $16 stencil from Hobby Lobby (came out to around $10 with a 40% off coupon) and got to work.
If I ever decide to stencil again, I plan to invest in a better stencil (most good stencils are around $50). The cheap stencil made this project much more tedious than it would have been if I had a higher-quality stencil, so that would be my biggest tip if you’d like to try stenciling yourself. Watch several YouTube videos, grab the right materials, and invest in a good stencil – you should end up with a beautiful room!
Even though this project wasn’t my favorite, I’m glad I tried it and learned how to do it correctly. My work isn’t perfect but I’m overall pleased with how it came out!
This little toilet seat isn’t new, but I just have to show it to you! The previous owners added it to the bathroom because they also had a little one, and it’s such a cool touch to a child’s bathroom. Though we’ll primarily be using her normal potty chair for potty training, she likes sitting on the “big toilet” occasionally too. All the kids that come over also think it’s really neat! I found a similar one for sale online here.
If you look closely you’ll notice that the small seat lifts up so that this toilet can also be used normally by adults too.
Now I’m done talking about a toilet seat… 😉
To complete this room 100% I’d like to add a towel rack, a new light fixture, maybe some different decor over the toilet, and possibly more stenciling around the rest of the bathroom. For the most part though, this room is finished!
Another before shot:
and after!
