One day while showering I noticed some chipping off the coating in our shower + tub, which revealed the most perfect blue vintage bathtub! That’s all I needed to start thinking about updating our bathroom - the one room we have neglected since we bought our house. We have one bathroom, so I needed to wait to do anything with the tub until spring, because we luckily have an outdoor shower that we use in the warmer months.

I of course did not take a before photo - but here is what the space looked like when we bought the house

While I was waiting for it to warm up, I took out the rectangular metal cabinets in our bathroom that were rusty and not the best storage. Then I of course had to patch the walls and paint - which ended up painting the whole room Benjamin Moore White Dove (because it is what I had) - it started to spiral.

We don’t have any storage in our bathroom and have wanted to take out the pedestal sink and add a vanity with storage. The knobs on our pedestal sink even broke a year before and I never replaced them and just lived with the broken knobs and used a wrench because I didn’t want to spend the money on replacing them - I’d rather put that money towards a new vanity! Haha. The space is super small and I found a 24” vanity on Wayfair on bought it on sale. It added a ton of storage that we did not have before - somewhere to store toilet paper!

 

Broken Sink and old medicine cabinet

Our old medicine cabinet needed to be replaced as well, and I found this Black Pill Shaped Medicine Cabinet on Amazon, I had to do some serious measuring to make sure it would even fit with the vanity and the faucet and light fixture. I just kept the same light fixture I had before, but I am thinking of painting the backplate (maybe red?) - if I were going to replace it I would get the Schoolhouse Alabax Medium Surface Mount in Auburn :)

When I finally started stripping the paint from the tub I used Citristrip which is supposed to be a less toxic paint stripper - but it was still super toxic smelling and took for-ev-er. I think it was also my time constraint of when I could do it (when my kid was not home because of the smell). It worked best when you globbed it on and I went through probably 2 big containers (maybe 3?) and a bunch of razor blades. It was also easier coming off the tub than it was the tile - and getting the grout lines was tough. I would NOT recommend this step unless you have the time. If not, this would be worth hiring out! 

The tub was in great condition, but the tile had lost of replacement tiles that did not match and when I took out the soap dish and towel rack - there were major holes and tiles broken off that I had to refill with resin and it was clear that I would need to paint the tile. At this point I left it as it was for the winter because it was getting cold again.

When it was getting warm again - I decided to leave the tub blue and paint the tile with Rust-o-leum tub and tile paint in white. There are ways you can add color which I would have loved to do, but no one had a clear answer of how to do it and I was on a time crunch. Talk about toxic - this stuff is super strong and took two kits to do our small shower, but it was worth it!

First Coat

Second Coat - with fixtures

I went with a white shower head from Sproos! I originally bought the white shower head when I thought I was painting the tile a color - if I had known I was going white on the tile I would have picked one of their other fun colors - they now have a green which they did not have before!

I loved the look of the white tub drain and overflow against the blue tub and did a black tub spout and handles for some contrast.

The shower curtain rod is from Signature Hardware and I had to get a pipe cutter to cut it down to size, but honestly, I really enjoyed the immediate gratification of cutting it!

 

The shower curtain is a collaboration from Dusen Dusen and Coming Soon - and it is my favorite thing in this bathroom! It has a terry cloth texture and is double sided (the colors inverted). They had the same one in yellow and green and they sold out when I needed to get a new shower curtain. I was on their waitlist for a year and saw that they came out with this red/pink one and I jumped on it! I love red and light blue together so it was a no brainer! I got the Quiet Town shower hooks in brass and I feel like it looks so fun and elevated!

While redoing the bathroom, I wanted to make a hook for our towels! I had so much fun making the Braided Hook - it looks great with the brass hooks and rod!

I found these towels from Hawkins New York and they are my kid's "favorite towels"- and he tells us every. single. time he uses them <3 I also love that they have the loop in the middle so you can see the full braid on the hook! :)

I love our little bathroom and how it feels more like us now - please let me know if you have any questions!