makeover fun!

Happy valentine's day! It has been lovely in Chicago: we were treated with above freezing temperatures (even into the 40s!) and sun, which feels absolutely glorious after the crazy blizzard and sub zero temps. The whole city is thawing out, the huge snow mounds are melting away, patches of grass are breaking through, frozen layer on top of the lake has vanished. Feels like spring!!

It was a good weekend, highly productive along with fun times including dinner at a favorite spot Saturday and our Valentine's home-made pizza tradition last night (with goat cheese - extra fancy!). But most romantic of all was the completion of our crazy master bathroom makeover project! We decided to jazz it up somewhat on a whim… call it cabin fever. The "before" was decent enough - on the small side, but it came with an enormous luxurious shower that won us over. The rest of the room being just a boring beige square didn't exactly contribute to any luxury feelings though.

Here's the before:

[great shower, but otherwise kinda boring]

We had the bedroom painted a deep blue before we moved in, and I had it in my mind for awhile to paint the bathroom a lighter blue shade. After seeing some pretty bathroom pics of blue walls and white beadboard, we decided to jump in and see what we could do.

We looked at a bunch of paint colors, and finally picked a sample. Going with a sample first turned out to be a good idea, because when we got it on the wall, it came out like a really bright pastel, which was not what we wanted.

So we went back and ended up with "Misty Surf", a blue that's slightly darker, and with a hint of gray in it. A moodier blue, if you will… which seems to mesh better with our personalities :) The brand we went with was Olympic because of the low VOC paint - no fumes! Seriously a good call since it was too cold to open the windows for ventilation. With the paint selection complete, we took lots of measurements of the walls and did some calculations to figure out how many beadboard panels and trim pieces we needed.

First step: remove the current baseboards.

Then, time for painting.

While we waited for the primer/paint to dry, Steve tackled the challenge of cutting all the beadboard and trim to the correct sizes. This meant lots of careful measurements as well as googling some videos to be sure that he did the corners correctly. Also, doing all of this in a small condo meant being creative with the setup.

[note: we quickly moved this setup out of the bathroom, since it's not a good idea to get sawdust everywhere with wet paint on the walls!]

Then it was a matter of attaching panels/trim to the walls (with wood adhesive and trim nails), constantly checking that everything was lined up and level.

Finally, we painted the beadboard a glossy white. And, voilà: a bright shiny new bathroom!

Isn't it pretty? I find much more cheerful than the previous version. I'm glad we tackled this project! It certainly kept us busy for the past 2 weekends - but was definitely worth it.