Bathroom Redo Part 1

We've been in our house for five years now.  Our guest bath, which is also my kiddos main bath, needed some help.  It was builders basic boring.  Beige paint, medium brown cabinet, cheap fixtures, you get the picture.  I made it my summer project give it a facelift.

My first idea was to add a faux board and batten treatment to the walls.  I saw lots of great tutorials from the The Nester blog.  I followed the basic instructions.  Most of them said you wouldn't even notice the wall didn't have a "board" and recommended you just paint the moulding and wall the same color.  I have a bit of texture to my walls, kinda an orange peel look, and honestly I can tell... It looks fine, but I plan on doing the treatment in my hallway too and when I do, I'll purchase the 1/8" wall board to attach to the walls first before I start with the moulding.  Just a personal preference, but I thought I'd give you my two cents...

Here are the before shots

Pretty standard - beige, beige, beige...

I had helped my parents paint their bedroom and they had a gallon of leftover paint which they gave to me - yippee!  I love the color.  It's been in my garage for over a year but I knew that was my starting point with color.

Here are some pics of the faux board and batten treatment.

I added a chair rail and painted above the rail.  I had a little "helper" painter who painted randomly below the rail for me.

I had to take the toilet tank off to paint the wall and adhere the lattices.  My Dad showed me how to take it off.  Never thought that would be a skill I'd learn, but hey, you never know!

I choose to go with lattice strips and cut an old piece of moulding to act as my spacer.  I measured the walls and tried to come up with a spacing that would be pleasant to the eye; not too many and not too few.  I adhered the chair rail and lattices with my nail gun.  After that, I filled all the holes with wood putty and caulked all the lattice and moulding seams before painting them.  I'm not gonna lie, that took a LONG time.  And I decided I'm caulking challenged because I had it all over me!  Little tip, cut a tiny hole in your caulking tube and wipe off any excess caulk before it dries because you can't sand it.

Next up was to paint the cabinets.

They were worn out and ready for a little face lift.  I sanded them, painted two coats of a tinted primer, two coats of paint and a wipe-on poly to seal them.  I also lighted sanded them between coats.  It was a couple day process, but it's been complete for a couple months and they are wearing extremely well.

Here's a shot of them all painted with their jewelry (hardware) on.  The paint is Sherwin Williams Peppercorn.   The drawer pulls are from Lowes.

In Part 2, I'll show you how I framed the mirror, share a link to a tutorial on tabbed towels, and all the other little goodies.