One Room Challenge | Bathroom | Week 2

Welcome back to week 2 of the One Room Challenge! I’m making over our half bathroom that also doubles as the laundry room. This is the bathroom all our guests use and I’m about to have a huge houseful for our son’s high school graduation, so I’m hustling to make this little room feel less utilitarian and a whole lot prettier before then!!!

To refresh your memory, I gave this room a quick paint job when we first moved in (as you can see that was an emergency situation), and it’s been fine but oh so blah. I’m finally circling back around to give it some love after I de-peachified the rest of our house.

 

The plan is to give this space a light, fresh, coastal feel with a blue and white palette, some new millwork and possibly a new marble tiled floor.

This week was all about demoing and googling and trying to figure out how to make my vision come to life!

 

Let me show you what I’m currently trying to finagle…….

On the opposite side of the room from our sink and toilet are these bi-fold doors……

behind which live our washer and dryer. (They used to be the same height, but then the washer died and the new one is either too tall on the pedestal drawer, or too short without it.)

Honestly I don’t care about the laundry area. Like at all.  I know I’m supposed to because I’m a home blogger and we make laundry rooms beautiful, that’s what we do, but nope, not me, all I want with this space is for it to be able to function well.

The previous owners had small dogs that apparently they liked to coral in this little half bathroom, so they made the door a dutch door (a bathroom door that opens on the top……hmmmm) and they also extended the bathroom, building the washer dryer space out into the garage and pushing the bi-fold doors back.

What we ended up with is a really large space outside of the bi-fold doors where the piles and piles of laundry stack up (three teenagers live here. The laundry never subsides!)

I would love to pull the bi-fold doors forward a couple of feet so laundry baskets of clothes can be BEHIND the doors, not in front of it. The bathroom would still be a fine size and we’d have plenty of room in the laundry area for the normal state of disaster that this entire space typically lives in.

Shouldn’t be too hard right?????? Right????? Please say right.

I removed the trim around the bi-fold doors to try and figure out how they were framed in there. Once I get the dry wall off around the doors, I hope to have a better idea of how to frame it out, move it and build it back in again. What have I done? Deep breathing…..

 

Then we have this little situation going on…..the linoleum floor is buckling at the seams. I’m planning on leaving it in the washer/dryer area and glueing down the ornery seams (or is it me that’s ornery after tripping over this 77088 times?), but removing the linoleum from the bathroom side of the room and installing beautiful tile in it’s place.

I mentioned last week that my hope of installing square board and batten to the walls is being foiled by the toilet, which abutts the wall (see what I did there? :)) 

I was hoping that when I replace the toilet I could move the position of the new one out a bit from the wall, but it turns out that is a headache and a half, involving moving the hole & pipe in the floor that the toilet sits on to accommodate the change. So onto Plan B, the likes of which I haven’t figured out quite yet.

 

On the upside, the sad little baseboards came off easily! I’ll replace these with a more substantial baseboard, as I’ve already done in the foyer and living room and plan to do throughout our house.

All the lumber is ready and waiting for the magic to happen!

The walls are painted my new favorite white (which looks like cream here, but is actually a great, true white without strong undertones).

We changed out the faucet (I’m cheating by mentioning this because that upgrade happened a while back, but forgive me because I need to feel like I’ve made some progress here!!)

Now that I’ve nailed down exactly what I’m going to do in this space, here’s the master to-do list. Hopefully next week I’ll have some big things knocked off this!!!!

Remove old baseboards

Remove bi-fold doors

Reframe bi-fold doors

Re-install bi-fold doors

Install board and batten or some kind of millwork

Caulk and paint walls

Finish painting vanity

Remove linoleum

Install tile 

 Install new cabinet knobs and hinges, towel ring and TP holder

Figure out window covering

Figure out lighting

Art & accessories

Thanks for checking in on my progress and if you’re also doing the ORC, good luck this week! Check out all the other projects being tackled this season at Calling It Home!