The Powder Project: Phase 1 Renovation

One of our first goals when we landed the beach house was to update this bath. Even with my obsessive HGTV viewing, I never thought we'd have to take on a bathroom with the issues this one had. Selling feature: Recently remodeled ...Translation: A contractor painted over poorly stripped wallpaper and as a bonus, slapped new fixtures on dysfunctional plumbing. And the cleanup debris?...wased down the drain. Where's Mike Holmes or those hunky Property Brothers when you need 'em?

Plumbing bills and weeks of scrapping and sanding to avoid replacing walls, we moved onto the reno.  First the shower.  30 years of rust and bodily film hugged the tub like tar, but ripping it out meant big demolition. This cleanup was pretty disgusting, and none of the retail cleaners worked.  With an infomercial screaming "just one wipe, clean and bright" in my head, I ordered this product I read about online--expensive, but 2+ hours later we were in Kohler heaven!  THIS TUB NOW SPARKLES *!*  Although I get no advertising perks from this, I highly recommend R.O.G. plus gloves and a respirator unless you like the buzz!  

We went from this:  

to this, saving the cost of a new shower:

Onward to the mellow yellow vanity, complete with 70's birch cabinet.  We were going for that Bohemian-beach-in-Tibet feel and already had a mirror and sort-of matching flea find that I painted up as inspiration.  But what to do about the vanity--nice solid wood but so dated.  More research led up to Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations which is a product I've used several times since for furniture painting, it's that's good.  We used the "light'' kit:

 

Time to add tile, and read that you can tile right over Formica, but didn't want to chance it so used the original vanity topper as a template and added concrete backer board.  (We will be giving tile over formica a go shortly and will post about it soon.)  sealing new subway tile surrounds and moldings to match the vanities, plus adding more bling:

Some befores and afters...

Red glass tile was hand made for this countertop

Next up:  Barn wood wall rehab...   ❤CM