Bathroom on the Cheap/ Lipstick on a Pig

I received a lot of questions and emails about the bathroom I featured yesterday.  I decided to do a post to help answer them and to hopefully inspire anyone else out there that is stuck with a "dated" bath. 

We have 2 of these lovely 1960 era baths. 

 One day our big plan is to renovate and make both baths into one master bath and add a second full bath using a corner in our family room that is right near the bedroom hallway.

 UNTIL THEN something had to be done.  

before picture taken when we were looking at the house to buy,

sorry it is so blurry...

.

#1 TILE

First off, we had bigger issues than the fact that it was chartreuse yellow.  I knew the yellow could work since it was going to be a kid's bathroom.

It turned out the shower/tub had rot and mold.  

There was no wall board holding the tile up on the first foot, it was all rotted and tiles were loose.  

before

We had a contractor friend come in and tell us we needed to replace the first  18-24" of tile and fix the wall backing.  I was really hoping he would say "Its crap, rip it all out!" (We did rip out the rickety sliding doors and replaced them with a white shower curtain.)

They weren't able to save much of the tile they ripped off, and I couldn't find a match so we needed to improvise.  I found some glass sheets at a local tile store that had 

the same citrus yellow with green so I snatched up 6 square feet.  

In order to make it feel fresh we added inexpensive white squares around the 6" stripe as filler.  

I had plans to add lots of white to the rest of the room,

 so I crossed my fingers it would look all right .  New grout helps too... 

#2 WALLS 

When you are stuck with colored tile you have a few choices when ripping it out is not an option... 

-Paint it with a paint designed for ceramic.

-Choose a color scheme that makes it feel fresh for the walls.  Pattern helps too by drawing your eye away from the tile.  Stick with one or two accent colors, don't go crazy.

-And breaking all the color with white makes it feel fresh.  You can do this with a white shower curtain, white towels or by painting your vanity white.

There is no hiding the fact that it is old tile, but you can put lipstick on a pig and call it Miss Piggy.

 Just saying.

The walls had a shimmery white vinyl wallpaper on them. That go ripped off the day we closed. The walls eventually got painted with green and white horizontal stripes to tie in the glass tile.

#3 LAMINATE CABINETS

Good sweet mother loving gold and grey hell, I really can't think of one nice thing to say about these cabinets and matching counter.  Just yuck...

 I had been dying to paint these!  Thank goodness for The House of Fifty article.  I told my husband I had a new pattern and we were going to have to sacrifice the laminate in the name of O'verlays.  He actually wanted to keep them as is since they were eventually going to be ripped out- IN A FEW YEARS!  Being  a designer, eyesores bother me more than most people.  If I can paint them away, I will. 

So I painted and O'verlay-ed.  

I cleaned the cabinets with TSP to remove grease and grime and then lightly sanded. 

 I rolled on 2 coats of XIM primer, that stuff is the bomb. It sticks to everything!

Here it is with one coat, squiggles still slightly visible but better... 

You can also use Rustoleum Countertop paint, except they don't have it in white. I used it when I did my kitchen counters and it is pretty awesome.  No priming needed.  It bonds to laminate.

I then painted them with 2 coats of white semi-gloss and faux painted the counters to look like white marble.  See the tutorial here.  

I added the "Grace" O'verlays to the cabinets using Liquid Nails Clear Silicone. 

(They will be available in the next few days on the site. We had February 1st as the original launch date, but the article came out early.) 

I also changed the hardware to antique brush brass knobs that were hand me downs to me from my in-laws...

I toyed with the idea of painting the sinks white using a kit, but I did this once before in an apartment I rented and it started to peel after 1 year around the drain. I also have 2 boys that love to play in the sink, so I sadly nixed that idea...

#4 MISCELLANEOUS

As far as vintage goes, I am all for it- except when it comes to a 50 year old toilet.  Bleach, etc.... It got replaced. I prefer a fresh start and to know that when I catch my 4 year old  fishing something out of the toilet the grossness is all in the family...

We also replace the ceiling vent.  You don't want to know what the inside of one of those looks like!   

10 pound dust bunnies amongst other things.

And lastly there is nothing like some good old elbow grease and Comet.

Hope that answers any questions! Let me know if missed any thing!