Below, you’ll find links to all seven blog posts detailing the planning, product choices, and execution – a practical toolkit for bringing your half bath vision to life!

The Dreaming and Planning:

First Step – Wk 1 – Determining your goals for your makeover — starting with functionality and then adding style including general color palette 

Next Step  – Wk 2 – Refining and finalizing design choices — from flooring to wallpaper, to furniture pieces and specific paint colors

Third Step – Wk 3 — Planning and scheduling before installation — Planning aids for total project management to streamline the process, saving time, energy and money.

These are foundational steps, the core of good project management. Do NOT skip them. 

Installation:

Wk 4 — Easy Way to Make Custom Stacked Wood Molding — Streamlined, modern wall molding is just a jig away.

Wk 5 — DIY Guide to Chair Rail and Picture Frame Molding — Step by Step how to add a unique chair rail and custom box frames.

Wk 6 — Half Bath Walls: Best Advice for Paper, Lights, Mirror! — How to pick the best options for your space and style.

Wk 7 – DIY a Simple Bathroom Vanity Table for Vessel Sink — All about sink, faucet with a diy vanity.

And don’t panic. You will NOT be without your half bath for eight long weeks!!! The Challenge is eight weeks, but the half bath is our daughter’s in DC and we live in KC. So the actual transformation took the one week we were on site.

With proper planning and using my free printable planning and scheduling aids, you should be able to shorten the time of the actual installation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Our Pictorial Starting Point — BLAND! Bland! bland!

Can we just pause and moment and take it all in? Can you believe how far this sad, bland half bath came in one week!!!!

Talk about an injection of personality!

Shelves above the toilet for extra hand towels and rolls of tissue.

We also replaced the pedestal sink with an open vanity table to hold a new vessel sink. This allows for one space below the sink vs. two 1/2 spaces that aren’t big enough for the requested potty chair to tuck into.

This tiny half bath (just 13 1/2- square feet of floor space) is certainly space and proportion-challenged!

So we had to design cautiously and choose elements judiciously to fool the eye into believing there is more space.

Starting with the walls — because quite honestly that just about all there is!

We needed to break the too-tall walls down a bit. A dark wallpaper above a box frame wall treatment was a great start. We then added a unique chair rail to expand the room horizontally and bring in some natural wood tones that would travel around the room stretching it even further.

You can read about all these decisions and how they work together to expand the room in the Week 2 and Week 5 blog posts.

Week 4 and Week 5 are step by step installation tutorials that really break down the process for the box frame moulding with a custom stacked trim molding and the chair rail with wood block inserts. Everything you would need to do something similar in your home.

Week 6 was all about the decisions on the paper, lights and mirror that were intentionally made to make the room feel larger and function better. Of course these same principles will apply to your poorly-proportioned rooms too!

This wallpaper by Love vs. Design is beyond any that I have ever hung before (and that’s quite a lot).

They had a vast library of patterns to choose from and you get to select from over 200 colors.

Then samples can be ordered to test the colors ion your home.

After the kids received the six samples they ordered, they quickly changed to this darker background to really connect with their cherished artwork on the dining room wall. Did you notice it in the header and first pictures in this post?

That artwork is their ketubah. Which comes from Jon’s Jewish heritage. It is the marriage “contract” they wrote together of what they dream their married life will be. Typically they are produced as pieces of art, signed and witnessed at their wedding and then hung in a prominent place in their home.

This gorgeous piece of art.was signed by Katie and Jon, and witnessed by their four parents and their officiates, and has been hanging over their dining room table since then.

The kids chose

Those lights! Can we pause a moment here?

They are modern and clean-lined, yet curved and gentle and somehow classic. And I love that the bulbs are hidden in the frosted globes. Often times an exposed bulb can be rather harsh, especially this close up.

They are from Lights.com and are truly quality and style in one!

We found the perfect mirror — its simplicity, its size and its shape were all spot on — and at a great price!!!

Then week 7 was all about the vanity and countertop build along with that gorgeous sink, faucet and pop up drain.

Moving to the opposite wall,, it was time to add our diy custom shelves.

I wanted to make them something special and unique — is it too trite to say, Just like them?

I knew they needed to be clean-lined, yet interesting. No heavy brackets showing.

As you may know, I have been honored to collaborate with Amerock before. They offer quality pieces with great style and I was hoping for something I could use in a unique way.

They don’t have shelf brackets in their line, and honestly I’ve been a bit bored with the shelf brackets available in the general market.

Last Christmas I used their Monument robe hooks on a mantel slipcover to hold a Christmas stocking rod.

I knew it had those hooks had the clean-lines the kids would like. So I reinterpreted how the same Monument robe hooks could be used as shelf brackets.

I ran it by Katie. She was still scratching her head and really couldn’t see it, but gave me the thumbs up to give it a try, anyway.

Aren’t they awesome!!! I’m so happy with how they turned out.

Be sure to check in again next week as I’ll be posting a full step-by-step tutorial so you can make your very own!

This is the perfect time for me to pause and ask if you are a subscriber. If not, now is a great time, then the shelf tutorial will come straight to your in box. One less thing to remember . . . You’re welcome 😉!

With a number of great options to choose from, Katie and Jon decided on the Arrondi group from Amerock for the towel ring and toilet paper holder.

It references many aspects of the lights without being a complete match, exactly how Katie likes things.

I love a mixed metal look, but not so much in as small a room as this tiny half bath and where there ar so many elements involved.

We were going after a coordinated, but not match-matchy look. And I think we achieved it.

We have metal finishes from four different brands in 13 1/2-sq ft! So we did need to make sure that the aged golds worked together.

Golds can be fussy — Some are clearly on the warm side of gold, leaning into almost orange. Others are on the cool side with green or silver undertones. And most are called either brushed or aged, which are often the same thing.

PRO TIP: Make sure all your elements are from either the cool side or the warm side. Order items early and put them together with plenty of time to trade one out if need be.

They do not need to match exactly! In fact, it’s more interesting when they don’t. It looks a bit more collected, or curated with a layered feel.

For reference, we used Champagne Bronze from Amerock, Aged Brass from Lights.com, Matte Brushed Gold from Vigo and Gold from PrimePlus (the mirror).

This was our plan that I introduced in Week 1!

And here’s how we ended!

Just a couple of departures:

1. The background of the wallpaper went darker when they had the samples i their hands and compared it to the artwork right outside the half bath.
2. The color of paint, below the paper! I have two admit, that took me by great surprise. When we arrived, there were five swatches on the wall and none of them were the cream we had talked about all along. And when I see it with the feature wall right outside the powder room, I think it’s great!
3. The lights had to be turned up due where the electrician positioned the boxes and with the depth of the simple mirror frame. But in the long run shooting the light up brightens the dark wallpaper and it’s quite dramatic!
4. And we were vacillating between gold or black mirror and faucet. Once they switched to the darker wallpaper, they decided on all gold to keep things bright and not introduce another “independent” element.

I am so grateful to the One Room Challenge and ORC sponsor, Apartment Therapy, for providing such a positive, empowering, get-it-done environment,

Don’t forget to check out all the other projects from this Spring ORC,

I loved the experience of making over this half bath for our growing young family! Katie and I are project gals, and so happy that The Hubs has grown into helping outing encouraging our projects.

My goal was to not only transform this space but also empower you and inspire you to transform yours. Remember, the eight blog posts linked above serve as a detailed roadmap, guiding you through every step from planning to installation. Don’t hesitate to break out of any self-doubt and makeover the room of your dreams!

PLUS: I am always here when you have questions, or just want a second opinion. Don’t hesitate to shoot me an email or contact me through the comments below.

One last parting shot of how well this has bath play off the adjoining dining room.

The Hardest Part