BPOH: Seeing Red!

This week in Shannon's "Bloggy Parade Of Homes" is BATHROOMS!

We redid our bathroom really soon after moving in because, well, it was gross.

Here's a before picture. It's the only one I have, and I took it the day we first saw the house:

I originally didn't know what I wanted to do with the bathroom as far as colors went. I was on the Behr paint website and I was previewing colors for the bathroom, and they had a sample picture of a bathroom that was red & white. I fell in love, and mimicked it in my own home.

And, I have to say, I absolutely love it.

The pictures aren't the best because the (one and only) bathroom is smaller than a closet! I actually had to stand in the tub to get most of these pics! But hey, I think you can still get the idea of the decor.

We kept the sink, the toilet, and the floor, but everything else in there is new.

We took out the old medicine cabinet and hung a new one, but once I realized how much taller the new one was, I had to reroute the light fixture. So, I cut a hole about 8 inches higher than the original location, rerouted the electrical box and installed the new light fixture.

As you open the door (opens in and to the left), this is what you see:

I also installed all the towel bars and the shelf, and I actually built this little ditty in the wall all on my own. Here's what it looked like before:

And now after:

The hole in the wall was actually already there. But, there was a horribly ugly formica/melamine cabinet just shoved into the wall. I wish I had a picture of it - it was gross. At the very bottom of this pic you can see the baseboard heater. I need to tell you peeps, these were totally disgusting! All of them in the entire house were not only filthy, but there was one room upstairs where there was animal urine caked on one of them when we bought the house. So what's a girl to do? Well, I got a bucket of water and a big 'ole sponge, put on some rubber gloves, and I went to town cleaning them. After that, I wiped them all down with antibacterial Fantastic spray. I let them fully dry overnight, and then, I SPRAYPAINTED THEM! Yep - I put newspaper on the floor and just sprayed them. We hadn't painted or put the laminate floors down yet in any of the other rooms so I didn't have to tape off anything. They came out looking brand new!!! The only thing is, you can only get away with doing this when you can have all the windows open and wearing a ventilated mask - not one of the "10 in a pack" paper ones, a real painters ventilation mask. You'd choke without it. You don't realize how nasty the spray is because most likely the only time you've ever spraypainted anything, you did it outside. Well, when you do it inside, those fumes are totally nasty. However, I highly recommend it!Here's a funny thing though... Remember this pic of the kitchen cabinets?

Well, ya see those loooong, taaaaalll cabinets right smack dab in the middle of the picture? The ones on the top? Well, they don't open! Nope - they're nailed shut. This was particularly interesting to discover, especially since I was REALLY looking forward to having that as a pantry. But why am I mentioning the kitchen, in the bathroom BPOH week? Well, it's simple: The reason those cabinet doors don't open is because that's where the built-in box in the bathroom is! But like I said, there was a melamine box/shelf/thing in there. I took it out, and we actually stuck it outside on the deck and kept our foodstuffs in it while we were working on the house (it was February, plenty cold outside to keep the beverages chilled!).

Once I took it out, there was nothing but a big hole. I bought some good wood panels and framed it out. Then, I got some quarter round and cut that to proper length and screwed it into the sides, to use as shelf brackets. Then, I painted. There is a local guy near by who cuts glass and I had three shelves cut for $20 each. How can you beat that? The last thing I needed to do was frame it out with some moulding. I still haven't trimmed out the walls where the red meets the white, but we have a looong wait ahead of us so it'll give us something to do in the meantime!

Here's a shot from standing in the tub, before:

And now after:

Here's a close-up of the pic's on the walls. I bought them all at Homegoods, and althought they were made as a set, they were sold individually. I had to search through the entire art section to find all three. They were only $20 each too! I especially love them because they are prints of watercolors (which I love) and they are very bright (another thing I love), and, they're of Asian women playing piano and violin, both of which I play myself (and totally love)! The mats in the pics were the exact same color as the walls (they're taken on an angle so you don't get the flash in the glass!):







You might notice the "tile" on the inside of the shower in the above pic. Here's a close-up:



I added this pic because I can't tell you how many compliments I've gotten on the gorgeous white "tile". However, it's not tile at all - it's a plastic tub surround by Bathfitters. It's faked out quite a few people already. And the best thing about it is that there is no grout to turn color or get moldy, ever. It will always look new... and I'm lovin' it!

So, that is the conclusion of the "Heatherized" bathroom. Oh - I do have just one more picture for ya... lets play a short round of "Where's Waldo?"