New project announcement! If you missed this post, we recently bought a new house and moved to a ranch style home in North Austin. Every room needs updating and we are starting with the hall bath and two secondary bedrooms. So, for the Spring 2022 One Room Challenge, I’ll be sharing our clean and fresh hall bathroom renovation progress, start to finish.
We chose to start with these rooms because they will serve as our kids’ bedrooms and shared bathroom and we want to get them settled as soon as possible. Also, these are the smallest rooms in the house and require the least amount of reconfiguring. Our mentality is to start small and work our way up to the bigger projects with a few wins under our belt.
Read on for my inspiration, the before photos, and the design plan. And you can check out our last One Room Challenge here!
Inspirations
We decided early on to use inexpensive white subway tile for the tub surround. This helped me to have a starting point for the design. I started searching Pinterest for bathrooms with a white tub and white subway tile (or other similar white tile) to see what pairings I liked.
Something about this blue floor tile and white subway tile surround really caught my eye. This will be primary our kids’ bath, along with our guest bath, so I wanted there to be a playful element to the design. I like how the blue brings in some much needed color, and the geometric shape of the tile is a fun twist on the usual rectangular pattern.
Then I found this photo of a mostly white bath with blue floor tile and my decision was pretty much solidified. I also noticed the warm wood tone used here to keep the room from feeling stark.
And lastly, I was drawn to Studio McGee’s ability to mix metal finishes for a timeless and elegant look. When looking into faucets, I found I was unable to commit to gold or black finishes for fear of tiring of them over time. But, I want to bring in some gold accents to this bathroom, so finding inspiration with chrome and gold metals mixed seamlessly gives me confidence to do it in my own bath.
The ‘Before’ Tour
This bathroom is a typical 5’x8′ bathroom with a tub/shower combo, toilet, and single sink vanity. Functionally, it has all the necessary parts to make a bathroom work, but aesthetically, it’s lacking.
Our house was built in 1977 and I’m pretty sure this bathroom hasn’t been touched since then. There’s a lot of beige, making it feel a bit dingy.
The brown marbled counters just don’t do it for me. I suppose this would be considered ‘builder-grade’ for 1977. But see what I mean about this space lacking any detail?
We decided to keep the bathtub, its in decent shape and we would rather not mess with the drain plumbing. But everything else in this bath is getting a facelift.
Hall Bath Mood Board
After I found the inspiration photos above, I started to search for materials for the bathroom. A mood board helps to see all my picks in one place to ensure they’ll work cohesively.
Andrew plans to build a custom vanity and we will be self-performing the tile work (stay tuned for those stories). Demo is already complete on the bathroom and the tile work has started, but there is much more to be done! I’ll be sharing a lot of the bathroom progress on my instagram account as well, so follow along @elleandjaydesign.
Each week, over the next 8 weeks, I will share updates on our One Room Challenge progress of this hall bathroom. You can also gain tons of inspiration by following along with other participants in the ORC too! Check out the ORC blog for featured designers and guest participants like me.
