While we aren't able to fully gut our primary bathroom, there's something to be said for making a space reflect your personality and function better for you, on a budget and without replacing major items- in this case: the vanity, flooring, or tile. That said, I’m in the habit of re-doing rooms on the fly. A little here, a little there. And while there are advantages to moving slowly, there are disadvantages too, like not making progress, dividing focus (and budget!), and having to pivot as new additions don’t work with past progress. So I’ve committed to doing a things a bit differently going forward. Things like listing our goals, collecting inspiration, and making a mood board. Let's start with the bathroom. Here's how we plan to update our bathroom while keeping all the major fixtures in place.

The last time you saw it, it looked like this. Keep reading to see what changes we plan to make for our phase 1 makeover!

Bathroom Goals:

Organization

Our bathroom needs some organization. Cabinets quickly become black holes for clutter and purging and organizing is major on the list. I’m not sure what this looks like yet but it may mean adding some shelves in the closet as well as some organizational bins/drawers in the cabinets. The closet currently boasts wire shelving that’s not cutting it. I’d also like to add hooks- pretty ones of course- for towels and robes.

Shower

Let’s address the shower. It’s not all that attractive. The tile isn’t terrible but we don’t have a window in the bathroom and the shower is really difficult to keep clean and worse- look clean even after I’ve scrubbed it. Add to that our toiletries (#nonicheproblems) and it’s just not fun to look at. I’m considering adding linen curtains to the space- kind of like an elevated shower curtain. That could be really pretty right?

Heidi Caillier's vacation home via House Beautiful

Lighting

We’ve started the process by adding canned lights but we need to finish. This week we patched a hole and grabbed a temporary sconce because lemme tell you- finding the right one has proven to be a challenge. But I refuse to give up OR settle! If this one was smaller, I would have ordered it like yesterday. I adore it! I love the sconces in this bathroom below but I'm not sure ours can handle a shade that large.

Style

As is always the case, I’d like to add some style. I want it to feel pretty and simple, with a little drama and personality. We’re on the right track with the moody (but light) paint color and large mirrors, although I can’t promise they’ll stay if I need to swap them to address the sconce situation. I’d like to paint the doors to match the walls (and trim?), add art- I picked up some fun Juniper Prints during their sale-, the curtain and sconce mentioned above, a runner, and fresh hardware. The bathroom below was my initial inspiration. 

A few other notes:

For now, the vanity stays. I’m calling this phase 1. We’ll live with it for a bit and see if we want to invest the time and money into doing something more dramatic. A new vanity/flooring/tile isn’t in the budget but I think the changes I’ve noted above will go a long way in making the space reflect us and function better for us while we decide if we want to save up for a full renovation. There’s also a chance we’ll add a wall treatment or wallpaper. However, I learned in the kids’ bath that if you create a wall treatment around a vanity, it makes it very difficult to remove the vanity in the future. In the meantime, a gallery wall will help elevate the boring drywall (see below- all the heart eyes).

Do you make over your rooms in phases or go from zero to 100? Next week I'll share a mood board!