Our cute little half bath gets a lot of use since it’s right off of our downstairs den / living room. It was in desperate need of an update from its builder’s grade plate glass mirror and whacky hookah-lounge-style pendant lights. It truly felt like you were ducking into a Turkish restaurant every time you went to use the bathroom. (Sadly, I don’t have pictures, but those pendant lights were actually fully enclosed lanterns before I removed the bottom halves!) It was so dark and gloomy! And for such a small room (just 42″ by 6 feet), that was just a sad state.

Here’s what it looked like before it got a makeover (but after I removed the original mirror and added a smaller oval one):

The mirror came off first, and I found some really hideous colorful floral wallpaper underneath. My sweet husband helped me pick out a new light fixture and we got the mirror from a family member for free.

The ceiling had some peeling paint around the AC vent from condensation damage. Covering it with tongue and groove pine planks was a perfect solution for both the peeling paint issue as well as the holes left after removing the lovely pendant lighting.

The planks were fairly easy to hang using a little electric nail gun. If I did it all over again, I might consider using some Liquid Nails to help the planks stick better in areas where the ceiling wasn’t perfectly flat. I made sure to stagger the ends of the planks so that none of the seams were next to each other. And luckily the bathroom is right off of the garage so I could easily run back and forth to make the cuts using my table saw.

I was planning to paint the newly planked ceiling a glossy white (like everything else I paint) but after one coat of primer, I was pretty much over it and decided that the see-through primer coat looked “beachy.” Theme selected… totally on purpose! (I lie… not at ALL on purpose. Total happy accident.)

In my near constant quest for perfection, I was also dead set on filling all the little nail holes. It’s amazing how a long drawn out unfinished project time makes you a little lazy helps you embrace life’s little imperfections. I figured no one cares about things like tiny nail holes when they are relaxing with a fruity drink in their beach-themed bathroom.

Don’t think too hard or long about that… the intended visual falls apart almost immediately. Who drinks an umbrella drink in a bathroom? That’s just weird.

Anyway, there’s lots more to look at now than the ceiling!

I had some FABULOUS (and free) paint from a bad mix job at the hardware store. When I returned to the store and showed them that the color was way off, they kindly mixed another can of what I actually wanted and told me they couldn’t take the “bad” color back so I might as well keep it. It’s by far the BEST “bad color” I’ve ever seen! It’s actually very close to the color in my bedroom, which is Behr “Watery.” Throw in a few seaside accents and a rope-y looking rug, and call it finito!

When I first started this project, I desperately wanted to get rid of the original 1960s vanity. I bought a pedestal sink off Craigslist and a shiny new faucet to go with it. It was then that I found out that you can’t just swap a pedestal sink in place of a vanity because the drain and water lines are roughed in differently…. so that’s another project for another day. For now, I’m learning to embrace the gold-flake formica in all its subtle, sparkling glory.

This project took a few months from start to finish because I worked on it in fits and starts with a dozen other projects in progress at the same time (as usual). I probably could have gotten it done in a weekend or two if I had been able to focus a little more! Major props to my friends and family who were brave enough to venture into this room during the long in between phase.

Thanks for reading… and happy beach-ifying!