Our Master Bathroom Refresh

Ahhh, the master bathroom. It’s meant to be a calming retreat; a place to relax and unwind. For me, a place where I’m meant to “feel comfortable” needs to feel comfortable. When we moved in, our master bathroom was a really nicely laid out space with great selections, but ultimately it felt a little clinical. Four white walls, all chrome everything - it just wasn’t really my style. It wasn’t really anyone’s style if I’m being honest. So about a year and a half after we moved in, we finally decided to tackle it.

Now, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve most definitely seen this space before. It was our biggest undertaking yet and is for sure my most recognizable project on the ‘gram. Every time I post a compilation about everything we’ve done in the space, I receive hundreds of comments and direct messages about the particulars about one element of the project or another.

And I promise - I’m getting to that. But this post is going to be more of an overview, showing you the vision for the space and all the individual projects we took on in snapshots, then I will be sure to come back and do more detailed tutorials on all of those little details (though I’ve posted video tutorials on most of the projects on my Instagram if you want to check there.)

Here’s a before & after reminder of this space - taken from my last post where I show before & afters of all the spaces in our home.

As you can see (hopefully), my vision involved creating a cohesive mood for this space. One question I ask my clients who sign up for a design consult with me is how I want their space to feel - forget trying to put a name on their design style/aesthetic, but instead describe their imagined space. In this space, I knew I wanted to feel relaxed, sophisticated, and comfortable. And I think I pretty much hit the nail on the head - for ME. Maybe this space elicits different feelings for you and that’s completely fine.

With that ”mood” in mind, I set out to create a mood board, collecting design elements that made me feel that certain feeling, but that also felt cohesive together. A mood board is a really simple thing to do and a great way to get a sense of if the different elements you’re considering in a space actually go well together - usually if something doesn’t fit, it will stick out like a sore thumb.

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Part 1: The Wall - New Mirrors, Roman Clay, Shelving & Lights

This whole project began with those mirrors. I simply wanted to take down the large builder grade mirror and add two individual mirrors - I knew that this would allow for some extra storage, freeing up valuable counter space in our bathroom. And from there, it kind of spiralled. My husband heard this saying once that the four most dangerous words any homeowner (read: man) can hear are, “While we’re at it…” and that’s pretty much the definition of this project - haha.

TIP: HOW TO REMOVE A LARGE BUILDER-GRADE MIRROR

To remove a large builder grade mirror from your home, you just need to follow a few simple steps! Our mirror was glued into place and did not have any clips holding it. To start, we criss-crossed a bunch of tape all over the face of the mirror - in this project we used packing tape but I’ve also used wide masking tape in the past. Then, working our way around the edges, we carefully stuck a flat-head screwdriver behind the mirror and tapped it down gently with a hammer. We did this in several spots and started to feel the mirror come loose. Then we were able to stick the screwdriver down further and begin to pry the mirror away. It popped off quite easily and with no breakage at all. My husband now uses it in the basement to check himself out while he works out (and that was how I convinced him to help me take it off).

Once we removed the mirror, we were left with some large glue marks and I set to work patching them up. As I was doing this, it kind of dawned on me that I had been wanting to do a Roman Clay wall for a long time, and this was the perfect opportunity - and would save me all the patching. I simply picked up some drywall compound and paint, and we were rolling! We finished the whole wall in a few hours.

Here’s a picture of the wall at the end of that day - a completely different view from a mere 6 hours before! More detailed tutorial of the Roman Clay wall coming soon!

To finish off this wall, we added some simple shelving - literally a stained plywood board on top of some brackets - and changed out the light fixtures! (These light fixtures and most of the fixtures in our home are from Light House Co. You can use my code BAILEYATHOME to save 10% on your order).

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Part 2: The Wood Spiral - Feature Wall & Medicine Cabinet

Once we got that wall done, I spiralled again, in two ways. (1) I realized that the open shelving didn’t afford me THAT much more storage, so I wanted to add a storage cabinet over the toilet which was now blank wall space. I also began to think that the plain pine wood wall we had previously installed no longer “fit” and it needed to be stained. So we tackled those two things next.

The stain colour used here is Early American by Behr. We had also changed out that light fixture previously, and you’ll notice I got some new moodier art prints for the space. When we installed the wood wall, we also installed that little shelf ledge that is probably one of my best strokes of genius that is barely ever noticed - haha.

Once I got the slim cabinet for above the toilet from Ikea (called the Godmorgon cabinet), I really hated the stark white against the roman clay wall — white was the only colour in stock at the time. So I came up with the idea to clad the cabinet front with wood and stain it to match the wood wall. I initially wanted the whole cabinet to be fluted with the small trim pieces you see around the outside. But that was going to be WAY too expensive. I came up with the idea to put diagonal pieces of scrap plywood in the middle and I’m actually so glad it turned out this way. I love the unique design of this door. Now that I’m looking at it, I also really want to add plywood around the outside of the cabinet sooo add that to the to-do list!

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Part 3: All Black Everything

One other element you’ve probably noticed in some of these before and after photos is that the colour of our fixtures changed! While I wish we had the budget to replace them all, we simply didn’t, so instead we opted to spray paint them! I will have a full breakdown on this on the blog soon, but essentially we cleaned each fixture SUPER well, then sanded them down with some metal sandpaper, and spray painted with Rustoleum Universal Matte Farmhouse Black spray paint.

We also spray painted our shower which I’ll show you next. My HONEST review of this nine months later is that I would ABSOLUTELY do it again on the bathtub & shower fixtures. They’re holding up pretty much perfectly. However, on our sink fixtures, I can see that they will need to be replaced. On my faucet there is some chipping happening when I clean it, and I think it’s just because I use so many products in that sink (face washes & masks), and I splash on the fixture every single day which causes some buildup. Of course, we use products in the shower, but I don’t feel like I’m throwing shampoo at the fixture the way I’m forced to throw face wash at my sink fixture. Nevertheless, it’s bought us a year or two of time to save up for black replacements.

For the shower, we first spray painted the surround in the exact same way that we had spray painted the other fixtures. The prep work is what is killer on these projects — everything you’re not spraying with spray paint obviously needs to be covered so it’s super time consuming! The shower looked great with the new black surround, but I wanted to take it a step further and add this window pane detailing to the shower:

The most common question I get when I post a picture like this is, “Where’d you buy the shower door?” And I gotta say, it’s a pretty great feeling to reply, ”We made it!” To achieve this look we added some PVC moulding to the shower glass. Again, full tutorial to come.

That’s pretty much all she wrote! There are a few sentimental details in this bathroom that just weren’t going to change - one being that horseshoe towel rack (my brother-in-law made it for us as a wedding gift with actual used horseshoes from his ranch) and another being the evergreen script sign (it’s a word from our wedding song, and of course just means something to the effect of “forever young”).

I’ll leave you with a few more pictures here at the bottom as I sign off. Drop a comment to let me know which tutorial from this space you want to see on the blog first!

Thanks so much for taking the time to read. Don’t forget to subscribe to get alerted of new posts & exciting upcoming projects and make sure you’re following along on Instagram (or hey, I’ve actually gotten on the TikTok bandwagon too!)

xoxo

Bailey

(guess we’re sticking with that sign-off)