So this is what has been keeping me tied up for months. When we moved here almost 3 years ago this bathroom went to the bottom of our priority list. Well raising twins and living life didn’t really leave much time for this project. So after I finished my busy season I vowed I was going to start on this project. I started right before Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and had this grand idea of finishing it that weekend. Well we decided to go out of town…hey you gotta live a little. Needless to say it took me quite a while to finish this project as most of it was done while my twins {tornadoes} had their rest time. I have been dying to show the pictures and explain this project but I was waiting on a weekend where my husband could drill the holes in the cabinets for the hardware. I am a big wussy when it comes to that and the thought of drilling a hole through a cabinet door that I just slaved to paint for weeks horrified me. So after 3 trips to Lowes in the last two days to get the right length of screws for the drawer pulls it is finally done. Well besides the mirror but I might have to show you the pics next year if I wait to find time to finish that.
I did grab a few before pictures so you can see the dungeon that we called our master bathroom before. I remembered to take these as I was sanding down the cabinets so never mind the mess of all the drawer contents everywhere and everything under my sinks a disheveled mess. Here goes!
You can see what the cabinets used to look like here. They were a maple cabinet that I haven’t liked from the day we moved in this house.
Poor excuse for a towel rack. We put this one up temporarily as the one the builder installed was very cheap. Also, you can see the lonely water closet.
Why we hung this GINORMOUS print above the bath is beyond me but hey it filled a space.
So on to the reveal….we did multiple projects in here. The first one was to paint the cabinets. I sanded them down with a medium grit paper and then primed them with Zinser’s oil based primer. Seriously if you need a primer use Zinser! It is the best product on the market. I primed the cabinets and frame twice and then moved on to painting. I pained the cabinets Benjamin Moore’s Dove White (oil based). The reason for the oil based on the cabinets is because you want it to last and oil based paint is less likely to chip or wear. It takes more time to dry and cure but it is worth it. I will say painting this cabinets was not a quick job. It took a while and you had to be very precise. The thing I did use that was a lifesaver was an additive called Penetrol. This was amazing…it eliminated brush strokes and literally created a smooth finish similar to a glaze. Amazing stuff.
I love me some antique white cabinets! This was probably the hardest job in the bathroom and most time consuming. The hardware came from Target!
Onto the board and batten…I seriously think I read every tutorial out in blog world before I attempted this project. I took a little from each one and we did it! So here is the down and dirty on the board and batten. The first thing I did was go to Home Depot and get a piece of mdf. I took it to the guy in the lumber dept. and asked him to cut it into 2 inch slats for the battens and 3.5 inch slats for the board up top. If you do this you won’t have to have a table saw and attempt to cut these all straight. They will do it for you! Yay Home Depot! We did a few things on this…first thing was my husband mitered the bottom of the mdf boards at an angle so that we didn’t have to replace the existing baseboard. Then we cut all of the slats at 63 inches tall. Seriously every blog said a different height I just took the board and went up and looked to where it looked right to me. Then we placed the battens 11-13 inches apart. I say this range because for some walls it is different. The key is to get it to look pleasing to your eye. No one will be in there measuring but your eye sure will catch it if it’s not. We marked lines on the walls until it looked good to us and then nailed the boards up. Then we nailed our top board across. The top ledge was just a 1.5 inch molding strip we found at Lowes. Since this was our bathroom we didn’t want the ledge to stick out too much and close the space up. Then I went to work priming {Zinser} and painting the molding.
I love the look of this. It is exactly the coastal feel I was going for in this room. The towels are hung on robe hooks that I found at my favorite store Target. The frames I picked up at Ikea and printed out black and white pictures of my babies at the beach. The white starfish were purchased on our trip to Edisto Island last summer.
The water closet it painted the same as the top of the room which is Valspar’s Brown Buzz. This is really more of a coastal light green but looks more brown in some of these pictures.
The shower with a sign I picked up at TJ Maxx last summer.
Sand dollars mounted above the doorway to our master bedroom.
Just some fun accessories. I didn’t want to go overboard I wanted to keep it simple and clean. The towels and candlesticks are also from TJ Maxx.
I have been photographing Samuel since he was 4 months old. He has grown up so quickly. More to come of this cutie…
Precious little Olivia at 11 days old was such a doll. Just a sneak peek…more of this beauty to come on the blog.
