back to painting

I can't believe that I haven't had a paintbrush in my hand for weeks now! When we first moved in, I was constantly painting. Today I pulled my painting clothes out, and I finally finished up the bathroom (for now at least), which I've been working on in one way or another since early December! I painted it a few weeks after we moved in, but I've been in the process of painting the door and trim since then. As in, the door knob and trim have been taped off for two months, and I've been putting it off.

But now it's done! There is no house project more satisfying than taking dingy, yellowed trim, and painting it fresh, bright white! I painted the door (both sides), the trim around the door on the bathroom side, and started painting the trim in the hallway too. It's actually the first trim to be painted in the entire house. It's so nice to see how the wall colors look against freshly painted trim! Onto the bathroom....


Here is the bathroom when we first bought the house:

And here is the bathroom now:

There is still a lot I want to do, but here's what has been done so far....

We got a new faucet. The sink is original to the house, and I love it! It's in great shape too, considering it's been washing hands and faces since the 1940's!. The faucet that was in when we moved was probably from the 80's or 90's. It was ugly, dirty beyond a hope of actually getting it totally clean, and in rough shape. Our new faucet looks beautiful with the vintage sink.

Like I mentioned, I painted the bathroom back in early December. I chose a dark greyish brown from a color I picked out of the shower curtain.

 The shower curtain was actually the first thing I purchased for the house, a few weeks before we even closed! I had read a lot of recommendations in various blogs about decorating a bathroom with 1940's tile, and many of the suggestions were to go as neutral as possible with everything. Like, white shower curtain and everything else. This shower curtain obviously goes against those recommendations, but I think it is pretty, and the colors seem to ever so slightly update the bathroom.

 

 As I mentioned, here is the freshly painted door. I'm in love with the original 1940's doorknobs in the house, and they look even better now that the door is cleaned up.

In the short term, there is definitely more I want to do. We are in desperate need of a new light fixture and mirror. The exposed bulbs that are in there now are just awful. I can tell there used to be another piece to the fixture, and I'm really curious what it looked like.

I found this light fixture that I really like...

found here

And I really like this mirror, with a shelf on the bottom.

found here

We also really need a curtain or shade in here! We've been getting by with a white pillowcase hanging over the top portion of the window, so that definitely needs to change. I keep going back and forth with what I would like to have though (a cloth curtain, some sort of textured wooden or woven shade, a white wooden shade, something else?!??), hence the extended use of the pillowcase.

Another plan for the bathroom is to add a shelf above the door so that we have a place to store towels, and I'd like to also figure out a way to conceal the pipes under the sink.

More long term, I'd like to put down new tile floors, and potentially have the tiles reglazed as a way to save money on a huge tear out of the current tiles, which are in great shape. If we do that, I would really like to have the orange-y tiles re-glazed white, and leave the black accents along the top, bottom, and the narrow decorative strip in their original color.
This is kind of my inspiration with the tile color:

Source: goodhomeconstruction.blogspot.com.au via Jessica on Pinterest

I love the floors in this bathroom, and how they added beadboard to the front of the tub:

found here

Overall, no matter what we do, I want the bathroom to look like it makes sense in the house. I want to update it, but I also don't want a trendy 2013 bathroom in our 1940's house, especially in the big investments like new tile flooring. It will probably still be a while before this all happens, but it's really exciting to start thinking about!!