before & after: carriage house bathroom


A quick and easy bathroom renovation to get the carriage house in shape for guests! The previous owners had built a panel to cover plumbing, but had ended it before the hole for the plumbing ended, filling it in with cardboard. Nice. Really.

We replaced the light fixtures, getting rid of one (there’s a reasonably non-offensive smooth dome central ceiling light with fan), replaced the mirror and had my brother make a beadboard panel to match the beadboard detail in the rest of the house. After painting everything white, we picked up new blinds, a towel rack, toilet paper holder, and hooks from IKEA. Super fast and what a huge difference! From creepy little room to calm sea-sidey oasis.

We still need a little shelf and a makeup mirror, and we’ll probably think of more things as we go, but it’s good for now!

Light: West Elm

Paint: Benjamin Moore Steam

Blinds: IKEA LINDMON in Natural (we guessed at the size. SO LUCKY.)

Towel Rack: IKEA SÄVERN

Toilet Paper Holder: IKEA SÄVERN

Hooks: IKEA SÄVERN & MOLGER

Waste Basket: Simple Human

Mirror: Antique

9 Comments

  1. Nice! This is my favorite sort of before-and-after: significant but DIYable improvements that aren’t so dramatic that the ‘after’ is unrecognizable from the ‘before.’

  2. It’s really amusing to me that in the before pictures the toilet seat is up, and that it’s down in all the after pictures. Voila! Transformed!
    Seriously though, it looks so much nicer in the after pictures, it’s amazing what a few well-thought-out changes can do.

  3. i LOVE the white walls. i never understand why people like to paint their walls colors, even pale ones. just the paint alone makes it cleaner and fresher.

    i love the white towels too! i got mine from the horror that is costco, of all places. overstock is good for that sort of thing too, i love my wooden bath mat thingie and i think i got it from there.

    are those rough hewn wood beams?

  4. I hate pale yellow paint SO MUCH! I’m pretty sure all yellow paint is mixed in the bowels of hell. The white is such a vast vast vast improvement! It even makes that peek of celadon tile in the shower look nice.

  5. Gorgeous as usual — I love how the all-over paint scheme highlights the ceiling beams. I also love that little bench under the window! Our house has overly-fancy molding, it makes me scared to attempt anything involving matching the baseboards, ha.

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