Master Bathroom Renovation, the Pictures.

Our new view from the master bedroom.

Restained vanities (Minwax Dark Walnut), new counters (American Standard Newbern from Home Depot) with new faucets (Glacier Bay from Home Depot), new towels (Target Home Blue Crab bath sheets and Target Home Trout Stream hand towels). The mirror is the same one we had before, but we raised it up about 4 inches to acommodate the higher vanities. 

The refinished light fixtures = love. In the corner here you can see our toothbrush holder, which is an old Ball jar. We have a ton of these, all from back before the 1950s. My grandparents live on a very old property in nothern LA and one year Grandpa found hundreds of old glass containers buried at the far end of their back yard. He saved them in a shed, and when he died my Grandma wanted to clean the shed so she asked us to take whatever we wanted. We have a few dozen really cool and unique old glass jars and containers, and I loved how this one fit in here.

The ceiling, door, and trim were all painted Behr Bright White in high gloss. I love bright white high gloss.

This is where the shower wall meets the door. We decided to tile all the way over to the door just in case water gets outside of the curtain. Better waterproof than sorry. You'll also notice I didn't do the best job every painting those door hinges. I like this picture because it's a good close up of the grout and the accent tile AND the paint color. The grout was my husband's choice and I threw a FIT about it because it's GRAY and I wanted WHITE. And it was the hugest pain in the entire bathroom, in part beause it was epoxy grout which is notoriously difficult to work with and in part because gray on white meant we had to be meticulous or mistakes would show.

When all was said and done, I still wished we'd bought white but I actually don't hate the gray. It brings a little more life into the shower and ties into the new faucets, light fixtures, and other accessories. The color is Delorean Gray from Custom Building Products at Home Depot. The link looks a lot darker and bluer than it does in real life. It's a pretty true mid-gray in person.

Those accent tiles are their own story. Originally we bought the small green tiles with the idea of making a row of them and then doing some equally-spaced square tiles above, tilted on an angle so they are diamonds and not squares. We picked up about 10 of the tiles you see above, which were actually square before I 'customized' them by cutting them into subway tile shape. The tiles were on clearance, and we bought the 10 the store had expecting it to be enough and then it took several weeks to get to the place where we wanted to start the accents. Once we had the row of small green tiles in place, I nixed placing the squares on an angle. Honestly? It felt very sparse and outdated to me. I wanted something more one-of-a-kind.

I ended up sitting on it for a few more weeks as we slowly added a few rows of white at a time. When I couldn't sit on it any longer, I knew I had to make a decision. I spent several hours measuring out spacing and taping tiles to the Hardiebacker with painters tape to see if I liked the look. I hated every combination I could create with those square tiles, but I LOVED the tiles. So I decided I needed MORE and then I could do something different with them. We went to 3 Home Depots with no luck. At the last one, a really nice lady offered to ask her manager if we could buy the samples that were grouted to a sample board and hung on the wall. Assuming we could remove all the tiles on there and they would be useful, we'd have 9 more tiles. She took my number but I never thought I'd hear from her again.

Two days later, she called. She couldn't sell me the floor sample, but she had located 14 more tiles someone had returned, now on clearance for $0.74 each. Did I want them? I did, but after inspecting them a bit and discovering some had been placed and grouted, then removed from the grout and cleaned to return (and thus had some damage) we ended up with 11 of them.

I took them home and started playing around with configurations and landed on the one above. I cut each tile in half (face down is the best way, as it reduced chipping) and laid them out and it was a perfect fit in terms of the number of tiles we had exactly matching what was needed.

Once I had the tiles all in place, I hated the two horizontal accent lines. I sat on this for over a month not wanting to grout it into place because grout would make it feel permanent and I was sure I was going to hate it.

And then one day, I looked in the bathroom and fell in love. I love the colors. I love that it's totally 'us'. I love that there is no bathroom in the world exactly like ours. I was sold.

And above we have Exhibit 2 of the My Husband Is Right Sometimes Too. I came home from work one day to find this shower curtain laying across our bed, attached to that new shower curtain rod (both from Target) and I was annoyed. I had this image in my mind of a white, bright shower curtain and here was THIS thing with stripes...and a few true blue stripes at that. Our bathroom is decidedly NOT true blue. I immediately revolted, moaning about how it was sure to not match and it was too blue and why did HE get to pick it out and and and...he told me as gently as possible that he loved it and wanted me to see it in place before judging. SURE it would be a horrible fit, I smugly agreed.

And he was right. Would it have been MY first pick? No. Not even now, knowing it looks good in there. But is marriage about ME getting MY first pick all the time? No. Only MOST of the time. ;)

The shower curtain is Target Home Aquamarine, and the floor rugs are Target Home in Trout Stream.

And then there is the wall color. The wall color was tricky in that we had green and blue and white and gray happening in here and figuring out the best match was tough. We had a bajillion samples and then one day the whole family went to Home Depot and looked together. My husband found a few he liked and we were comparing them to some tile samples we had from home and feeling like any of them COULD work, but none of them were super exciting.

I had grabbed a Martha Stewart Metallics collection sample or two before, loving the silver and pearl colors. Darrick wasn't too into either of those, but I found myself gravitating to that section again and suddenly grabbed a new color and added it to the mix of samples we were debating. It was an immediate winner for us both so we bought it and never looked back.

The color is Martha Stewart Metallics Tide Pool, and it's heaven on earth. The trick with this paint is that you have to follow their directions and not give up after one coat. Because after one coat, it was streaky and really green in most lights, though it photographed decidedly bright turqoise.

After a second coat, however, it looks amazing! You have to use a lot of paint (this bathroom is maybe 12'x12' and we used nearly a full gallon) and be patient and meticulous, but it's 100 billion majillion times worth the effort. As you could see above, it picks up some of those blues in the accent tiles in the shower. It also goes well with the green tiles, which have a bit of a mother-of-pearl sheen themselves in some lights. And it changes quite a bit depending on your angle and the type and brightness of light in the room, from definitively blue to aqua to teal to a sea glass color. The sheen is subtle (think a pearl finish rather than a reflective metallic) which I think is perfect on textured bathroom walls in a smallish room. All in all, I am in LOVE with this paint.

So there you have it. The master bathroom renovation in pictures and lots of words. I have plans to put all the details and costs together, more for my own curiosity than anything else. Ballpark, given the amount of work we did ourselves and how much we managed to reuse rather than replace, I think we spent about $1800-2000 from start to finish: ripping down to studs and subfloors and building back up again. No matter what we spent, however, the fact is simple: we LOVE this bathroom and it was a major accomplishment for us all around!