The new casa – we fell in love with a lot of things about it. There was so much we felt good about leaving just the way it was aside from, perhaps, a fresh coat of paint. The front bathroom, though – the bathroom that would be assigned to our little girlies, however, I believe my exact words upon walking through for the first time were, “Well, this is unfortunate.”

All that dark brown paint. The unfinished tile job on the bathtub. The raw edged, gold spray painted mirror frame. The rusty medicine cabinet. The dated brass light fixture. The countertop sprinkled with gold, glittery stuff. The cabinetry that smells like, well, 1960-something.

It is, right? Un.for.chew.nut.

As is true of all things involving money and time in our life [and probably yours, too], we have to take this bad boy in phases.

Phase 1: I knew I wanted to to keep the feel of the girls bathroom from the Roxbury house. Remember how fun and girly and whimsical it was? I also knew I wanted to make it feel somewhat like this little bit of inspiriation:

So, first thing’s first –

Paint those awful brown walls a much happier color. Originally, I thought I wanted to go with yellow. In fact, Josh painted the whole thing the butteriest yellow you ever did see one very late night before we moved in. I hated it. I bought three more shades of yellow samples and tried ’em. Also, awful. Yellow is hard! So, I changed the game plan and dove straight into Mint Frappe by Valspar.

Needless to say, Joshy assigned me with the repainting task and I gladly accepted. My other contributions to the room included: the painting of the bead board and shelf.

Then there was the business of a shower curtain. I had a really pretty shower curtain in the old bathroom but it just wasn’t working in this space. It needed something warmer. So, I grabbed some canvas fabric I had from the old house, measured out what I would need to go from floor to ceiling, sewed a nice hem in those bad boys, used some leftover pretty, pink, polka dot fabric for the curtain rod pocket on the back, added some burlap at the top for added stability to the ruffles and a little visual interest. I used some bubble gum pink grosgrain ribbon that was left over from my bow making escapades as tie backs and voila – a framed bathtub with no shower curtain because my girlies take baths and there’s a guest bathroom downstairs!

Secret: There are tiny little nails everywhere holding up the tie backs and the ruffles at the top because I didn’t have enough fabric to really stabilize that ruffle. It ain’t perfect, but no one will ever notice the difference!

The towel hangers: I knew I wanted two hooks by the bathtub so that the girls towels would be easily accessible, but I also knew we needed something to hang the hand towel and my pretty towels from. We priced several of your run of the mill towel racks and found that they were generally around $40. Umm, no. So, we started cruising around Pinterest and found a rope connected through to eye hooks. Perfect! The trickiest part was choosing a method to keep the ends from fraying. I wound up applying a couple of thick coats of Modge Podge. So far, it’s holding up quite nicely. The hooks by the bathtub came from the Hob Lob.

Everything else was stuff I already had. The bunting was from my mom’s 50th birthday bash. The Burt’s Bee’s goodies were from Marilee’s baby showers. Everything else came from the bathroom closet!

Joshy installed the bead board and the shelf; made a new frame for the mirror, distressed the wood and then white washed it; spray painted the dated light fixture white; and installed a new basic, white medicine cabinet.

Overall, I think we spent around $150 on the update.

Still on the list is the replacement of the entire sink area…yeesh…and the completion of the shoddy tile job! But that’s a long ways down the road. For now, I’m very pleased with how it turned out!

Coming soon – Adelle’s and Marilee’s rooms.