Downstairs bathroom makeover

Our downstairs bathroom is...fine.  It is beige and screams 1994 with country accents, but as bathrooms go, it could be a lot worse.

It has solid oak cabinetry, beige tiles, a finicky toilet, and a cheery ruffled floral light fixture.

This is one of those bathrooms that brings to mind the "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" book.  If I replace the beige floor tiles, they extend into the hallway and around the corner throughout the kitchen.  I would not be replacing 20 square feet of tile, but rather about 220 sq ft of tile.  I'd also have to pull out the giant solid oak vanity, and while I don't mind that, that would leave me with the giant solid oak medicine cabinet, so I'd pull that out too, and since the light fixture is mounted in a giant solid oak box that is attached to the medicine cabinet....lets assume a new vanity, a fancy medicine cabinet, and a new light fixture plus installation, and then I have to pay the painter to come repair the wall and repaint where the giant solid oak cabinet/vanity was...cookies start to add up.

While the downstairs bath really just needs a new floor and vanity/mirror, I have an upstairs hall bath that needs to be gutted.  I'd like to do both the upstairs bath and the downstairs bath at the same time.  I am still gathering quotes, but the price to redo two bathrooms seems to be close to the price of a new car, so....lots of paint and shower curtains to the rescue in the meantime. 

When we moved in we had three persnickety toilets that clogged on a weekly basis, so we replaced all of them this spring when we had plumbing work done.  (We also replaced our stack pipe and installed two water sump pump backups, which is many thousands of dollars for essential items that do not make for pretty blog pictures.)  The old toilet was beige with an elongated bowl.  The new toilet is white with a round bowl.

Do you have strong thoughts on an elongated bowl vs a round bowl?  Let me give you a pro tip: pick out the toilet you want, online, while you are at home. Discuss whether you want a round or elongated bowl, and whether or not you are a family of tall people in need of a extra high toilet, or you are a family of mostly short people who prefer to be able to have their feet reach the ground when performing private ablutions.  When you go to Home Depot, read the box very carefully to ensure that you are picking out the toilet that you decided on at home. 

Otherwise, you might hump three toilets up to the front of the store, at great effort and difficulty, only to discover at the cash register that you have picked up three wrong toilets, and then someone might say that despite the aisle of a hundred toilets there are no other toilets available in the entire store, or even in the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA and thus you simply HAVE to buy these very wrong toilets at great $$$$$ expense to sit on for the next twenty years, even though your short family would not enjoy extra tall toilets with elongated bowls when they really wanted short people toilets with round bowls.  Seriously. Avoid this situation, as it might get loud and people will stare and someone will apologize later, even though in your marriage you generally fight once every decade.  I promise you,  that decade's fight will be about toilets.

When siting down to think about the temporary design for this bathroom, I  didn't have much thoughts on how to make it over, other than it is sort of pointless to fight this much beige (beige toilet, beige sink, beige floor tiles, beige shower tiles), so it would probably have to be black and white accents, or perhaps just white accents.  And then I saw this picture of a banana leaf shower curtain in a bathroom with a dark vanity, and thought, aha!

I cannot find the original source for that photo--I could swear I saw it in a portfolio, not selling a shower curtain.  I hunted around for banana leaf shower curtain, because that banana leaf fabric is to the trade, and there is a thriving business on etsy of making stuff from to the trade fabrics for One Million Dollars.  And for a hot minute I very nearly bought a $178 + shipping extra tall to the trade shower curtain.  And then my brain said of all the things in this house to spend $200 on, this ain't it, considering a Target shower curtain is $19.99. 

My sister sent me a link to a Tommy Bahama extra long shower curtain on Amazon for $74.99, which seemed like an acceptable compromise of more than $19.99 but less than $200, and I greatly appreciate the dramatic impact that it makes.   One caveat on the Tommy Bahama curtain, or one you get from etsy--this fabric is not made in a 72 inches wide bolt like a standard shower curtain, so it has a seam that is mostly matched up, but not exactly, if you are picky about that sort of thing.

We painted the room the same Westhighland White as the rest of the downstairs, the vanity and medicine cabinet black, added some art we already owned, some green towels, a shower curtain to hide the exceptionally beige shower with peeling grout, and voila, good enough for a while.

That light isn't working; I'll get right on that.  I have an entire first floor like this--90% finished except for a few details that make the whole thing look unfinished.  But if I wait for this light to get fixed to put up some pictures on the blog, it will be a few years.  The perfect is the enemy of the good or whatever. 

While we're on the topic of the lighting, I've never seen these weird boxes built onto the medicine cabinet to hold the lighting fixture.  I dislike them and the non-recessed cabinets.  I've tried to replace the ruffled shades but so far haven't been able to find a shade that fits. 

sources:  shower curtain / lady vader art / Home art (etsy, shop no longer exists but similar available in other shops) / green towel / shelf / basket (Target, discontinued)