The Little Bathroom That Could

I'm happy to report another room in our house is COMPLETE! 

The lucky space?? Our downstairs Bathroom!

This little bathroom is a pretty big deal... With the master bath upstairs, this space serves not only as our guest bath, but our powder room for visitors. Given the central location of the bath, and the number of people that would frequent this space, we knew this little bathroom needed to pack a big punch, aesthetically and functionally. I really wanted the space to feel classic and a bit dramatic, despite it's petite size.

Great things come in small packages, right!??!?! 

Dear Lord let's hope...

Let's start with the Before:

This bathroom was once the one and only of the house, so while it is not very big, it does have a full shower/bath that sits directly across from the vanity/toilet wall. While the room is small, the natural lighting is really nice and the space as a whole has great bones. All tile is original to the house and something I was excited to work with. 

Paint was the first item on the to-do list. I really wanted to paint the walls a dark color, as I said before I was looking for drama and nothing says drama like dark walls. The space is small yes, but I knew no amount of light colored paint was going to change that, so I decided to go for it and paint the walls Navy. Martha Stewart's Wrought Iron to be specific.

With the painting underway, it was time to figure out how to increase the storage capacity of this little space. With a tiny vanity and a mirror that doubled as a medicine cabinet, there was really no where to go but up from where we were.

In 2012 I posted about a bath remodel we did at Brent's old house. We were working with a similar medicine cabinet situation in this space. To up the storage and the aesthetic we removed the medicine cabinet and built custom shelves and added a mirror that slid from side to side with cabinet guides. 

We were so pleased with how well this approach turned out before, we decided to do it again in this space. Brent popped the old medicine cabinet out, framed up a new one, added guides and hung the mirror. 

For the mirror, we brought the one used in Brent's old house because it was his Great Grandmother's and has beautiful detailing. We went back and forth about what color to paint the mirror but ultimately decided to paint it Wrought Iron as well so it would blend with the walls. I love interest layered in through texture as opposed to color. 

For the vanity I designed a custom cabinet through the company I work for, Bell Kitchen & Bath Studios. We needed this cabinet to be as functional as possible so we made it as large as we could to allow the door to still open and close past it.  I designed the false front drawer to flip down to optimize storage capacity. 

We picked a beautiful remnant piece of white marble for the countertops from Construction Resources. In order to increase counter space we had the top banjo, meaning extend over the toilet to the wall. Not only did this increase the usable counter space but it elongates the room, making it feel deeper.

During this update whirlwind, we replaced the toilet (Home Depot), light fixture (Rejuvenation), faucet (Kohler) and sink (Porcher). We also added fluffy white towels and a soap dispenser (Target) as well as a fun shower curtain (Crate & Barrel). Things were coming together quickly and we were able to get the bulk of this space completed before we moved in, making this one of the most finished spaces of the house for a long time. 

The above photo represents how the bathroom looked for over a year. It was taken by photographer, Barbara Brown when she was at the house shooting the kitchen.

As much as we loved the space, there was one giant item standing between us and calling this bathroom complete....The window treatment. We loved the natural light that flowed in but for some reason our guests were averse to a bare window you could see straight through. Can you say high maintenance??? ;)

We needed a solution that would allow light to come in, offer privacy and be visually pleasing. Once we really thought about it we knew the answer was a stained glass piece. It just so happens Brent's Mom is a stained glass artist, nay genius. She is the name behind Cindy's Glasswork Designs and she does custom work all over the Southeast; in fact, she made the window we hung in the bathroom at Brent's old house. For this space we wanted something totally different and Brent came up with the perfect concept. He sketched the idea out and talked through the vision with his Mom/Cindy. 

Once the idea was transferred, things moved pretty fast. Measurements were taken, glass options were presented and the frame finish was considered.  A few weeks ago the piece was finished and Cindy brought it up to Atlanta to install.

 

Three panels were designed to virtually float between the frame. The panels are suspended from from springs, giving the piece an industrial - modern vibe. The frame was stained dark brown to tie into the vanity color.

It's unbelievable what an instant impact this stained glass window had on the room. Not only is it a bold focal piece, but it allows light to pour through (so much so that it's hard to photograph) and offers privacy - everything we were looking for and more!

We are so happy with how this space turned out. Not only do we love how it looks, but we feel we optimized every inch of functionality we could and really helped this little room be the best it could be!

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own. 

I Haint Scared of No Ghosts

From the beginning I have called our sun room the solarium. Sun room and solarium mean the same thing, but solarium just sounds so much fancier and pretty. The problem is, for 9 months the solarium has been a dirt pit, a construction zone and a storage area, basically the complete opposite of fancy and pretty.

With our deck now so inviting and awesome thanks to our new outdoor kitchen and TV additions, it was a shame to have the bridge between our deck and our house be such a blah space. So, we decided project-solarium was up next.

Let me re-acquaint you with the space: 

The sun room sits between the living room and the deck. The room is airy and bright and full of light thanks to all of the windows. While I love white, this room needed some color. Lucky for us we'd had a partial plan brewing for this space for sometime and this plan involved using Haint Blue, ever heard of it?

Haint Blue has a rich history here in the south. If you've ever visited the south, specifically coastal towns like Charleston or Savannah you may have noticed a light blue/green/aqua color painted on the front porch roofs of many of the homes - that color is Haint Blue.

Haint Blue was created by African slaves known as "Gullah people"who worked in rice fields in South Carolina and Georgia. These Gullah's were fearful of haints (or haunts), which were spirits trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead. The only defense they had against the evil spirits was the haints' inability to cross water. So, to protect themselves and their families, the Gullah's would dig a pit in the ground and fill it with milk, lime and whatever other pigments were lying around.  This mixture would create "milk paint". Once all the ingredients had been added, the mixture would be stirred around, creating this light blue color, and then applied to every window and door opening of their homes. The idea was that the haints would be fooled by this blue paint, thinking it was water and poof they would leave.

And that's not all... Haint Blue has even more mystery in it's origin. It has been commonly believed that the blue color keeps bugs away. As I researched Haint Blue and it's history, I found that it's not the color that deterred the insects but the ingredients in the mixture. As the Gullah's would make their Haint Blue in pits in the ground, the mixture often contained lime which is a common ingredient in insect repellent. Because the milk paint would fade over time it would have to be touched up every year or so, which is why it did in fact help keep away the bugs. However, today most of us rely on our friends Benjamin and Sherwin for paint mixing and lime is no longer included, thus, Haint Blue sadly does not possess the power of bug repellent. However some may still argue the bugs, much like the haints, may also confuse the blue ceiling with the sky and decide to hangout elsewhere...That theory is still up for debate...

Southerner's love tradition and the history of Haint Blue is no exception. The Haint Blue legend has been passed down  from generation to generation. Today, you will see porch ceilings, door frames, window sills, shutters and front doors displaying the Haint Blue hue.

.... And that was my long winded way of telling you that the first part of our plan was to paint our sun room ceiling Haint Blue. I mean, it was kind of a no-brainer. The room came with a bead board ceiling and with all this new found Haint Blue knowledge it just seemed like the perfect way to add a little southern charm to our home.

There is no one paint known as Haint Blue, there are a lot of options out there. As I mentioned above, the color is anything from a light blue to an aqua/green. After a little research, we settled on Martha Stewart's Aegean Blue MSL118. 

Photo from Google.

When we closed our eyes and thought of Haint Blue this is the color we saw - a nice light blue. Martha's Aegean Blue fit the bill so the choice was easy.

If you've ever painted a ceiling you know what a pain it is. Constantly looking up with your arms extended really starts to ware on the body. Let's just say it will give you a new found respect for Michelangelo ASAP. This was our third ceiling we've painted in this house, but our first textured one. I can now say textured = WAY harder. 

I got things started by going along all of the edges with a brush, while Brent went over the rest of the ceiling with a roller. One would think this was enough, but no... I had to go back over the entire ceiling again to fill in all of these little gaps.

Oh and there was a fan. My patience was shot at this point so Brent took over...

When it was all said and done, we were really happy with the results....Voila:

Now that's a happy ceiling! We have some other plans for this space but we thought it made the most sense to start at the top of the room and work our way down. Good thing we got this painted before Halloween. I don't need any evil spirits visiting my house! 

Unless otherwise noted all photos are my own.