Half Bath Revamp

We're hosting Dylan's birthday party at our house later this month. It will also be the first time most of our friends have seen our new home (between holidays and working and whatever - the last 9 months have flown by!). I told Trent there was one room I absolutely wanted to get done before then - the first floor half bath.

It's small which meant not a lot of work. The main goal was to paint the walls. The entire house has a nice neutral beige, but with a flat finish. It's held up pretty well in most rooms, but a certain child had splashed soap on the walls of the half bath and it was covered with stains. And there was the issue of the black spots on the mirror frame.

To really appreciate the new look, here's what the bathroom looked like during our inspection walk through:

The wooden toilet seat was the first thing to go. Trent replaced it and repaired the tank parts during our first hours of owning the house (along with those of the other 2 toilets - oh, yes, this house was hurting for love). I spray painted the chrome towel ring & toilet paper holder with oil rubbed bronze paint a couple months later. Then, it pretty much hit the back burner until now.

Saturday Dylan & I painted. Yes, I let our almost 4 year old loose in the bathroom with a paint roller. I even left him alone in there a couple times while I grabbed something. And he did awesome! He pretty much painted all the walls up to 4 feet. Looks like we have a new DIY helper in the family.

I knocked out the rest with a little help from Trent along the ceiling where, even with a ladder, I just couldn't reach. On Sunday we picked up a fresh can of bronze spray paint, a board and 4 brackets for new shelving. I selected a 4 foot long board and had it cut in half at Lowes to help speed us up plus pull out one less tool.

Once the boards were stained (I used leftover stain from our shelves in the last house), we set up to spray paint. We spray painted the brackets, the existing chrome light fixture and the mirror frame with the bronze paint.

Click to enlarge

After everything had dried, we quickly rehung the original light fixture and mirror. Then I tackled the shelves. I screwed the brackets to them first and, with Trent's help, positioned them on the wall to mark where to drill holes. I used screw in anchors instead of the ones that came with the brackets. I highly recommend them. If you change your layout later they are easier to remove and do far less damage to the walls. Once that was done I added a few decorative pieces from our old bathroom. Still may change it up some. We'll see. For now, I'm taking a few days to enjoy all our hard work!

Cost breakdown overall: about $100
Toilet repairs 
Rust-Oleum Oil-Rubbed Bronze spray paint $16 (two cans - 1 in November and 1 now)
1 gallon Behr Raffia Cream, eggshell finish $20
1x4x8 board $16 (I goofed and grabbed the wrong one - thought I had gotten the $8 one)
Brackets $21