The end of 2023 was this slight race to the finish line of major projects in our home. We were hosting the enire weekend of Christmas and since most of our home projects took longer than expected we had to spend much of November and December doing projects and having professionals in and out here. We did a little less DIY here I think we wanted things done “right” and a lot of the projects were above our skill level. With that said though there are just some projects you have to save money on and some that are just worth the extra headache to not pay a professional all that money to do it when you are completely capable. For that the powder room makeover was one I convinced hubby we can do ourselves! It def took longer a few weeks worth but…when we hung that last piece of art up on the wall and realized we just did that (mostly hubby I painted and helped with tile and of course decorating and sourcing-he did all the hard stuff) we were so thrilled with the outcome.

For us this space was as outdated as they come! Not a pretty outdated either. We have one bathroom in our house that we kept in it’s original state for now and that one is charming…but this…this had to go! Not to mention it smells terrible…idk why but it was stinky!

BEFORE

I never went in here in all the months we were here I called it the contractor bathroom (maybe that’s why it was stinky…lol) but I avoided this bathroom as much as possible. It was our only bathroom on the main floor though so that meant running up and down the stairs every time to use one of our upstairs bathrooms. For a while we only had a 3rd floor bathroom working…that was fun!

The bathroom I would say is not original to the house. We believe this one was done in the 60’s or 70’s. We can tell it was an addition at some point the way the window is…it matches with the window outside of this room so we think this was added at a later time. It went from 1960’s brown to cottage-y cute! A little DIY and perfectly picked touches to make a small space really bring all the charm is what helped this room come together.

We had to cover the tiles. We went with the leftover tile from my son’s bathroom makeover and lets say this was not easy. To create the border and the uenveness of the flooring and walls…It took longer than we had expected. But..we got it done! We Just went right overtop with the other tile using tile cement to adhere. 

Covering up the existing wall tile. We did demo the one wall because you can almost not fit on the toilet seat it was that squished in here. That saved us about 5″ on the one side of the toilet which is a good amount of room believe it or not. The rest we left and if you have ever seen or demo’d old wall tiles the amount of cement they used is absolutely insane. It does not come off! We learned this early in Anthony’s bath too and had our contractor go right overtop of the tile with headboard…well we did the same here just with vertical shiplap (sold at Home Depot).

I will say this was the longest part and the part that I let hubby do. We had some weird angles with the one wall demo’d the existing door molding, and window. But we pulled it off and it really brought the entire room all that English cottage charm we were hoping for. Not to mention hide that not-so-cute tile.

PAINT! This was one of the prettiest neutrals I’ve ever painted with. We used Behr Sentimental beige. 

We did call the professionals in to hook up the toilet and sink especially since the new toilets are different then old ones. We had to buy some pretty and fancy plumbing to connect the supply lines. They were in the floor so we found (listed below) these ones and the drain (with an extender) to make this corner sink work. Seriously one of my favorite purchases for this new house I order this sink so much!

Lastly, some vintage art, mirrors and this little tiny powder room became and English Cottage powder room in just a few weeks. Or should I call it English Watercloset (someone corrected me on social media about that) Any-who you know what I mean and this space really packs a punch of character. 

I hope this is helpful for any future bathroom projects you have around the corner. Removing much of the demo work really saved us time and money. And when all else fails decorate with vintage and its so much better.

If you haven’t checked out my vintage marketplace website yet, vintage-keepers.com I created this site almost 2 years ago. We have the most amazing vendors and shops offering the best of the best in vintage! 

Shop the Look!