Studio Half Bathroom — FINISHED! (Before And After)

Here is how it turned out. The walls are a hand painted design. My original idea of using wallpaper didn’t work out, and in the end, I’m actually thankful. It took a lot longer to do the painted design, but I like it so much better!

It’s a tiny bathroom, but it really packs a punch now.

Before I show you more, I want to show one detail that I had to figure out. I painted the walls first, and then I painted the wainscoting. And after everything was painted, I needed to caulk between the top trim of the wainscoting and the striped wall. I decided it do it by placing a paint stick on top of the trim, and then placing the painters tape right along the top of the paint stick. This gave me a space of about 1/8 inch above the top trim of the wainscoting.

Once I had the tape around the whole room, I went back and caulked and then added two coats of paint.

I removed the tape while the second coat of paint was still wet, and it left this perfectly straight and crisp caulk/paint line between the wainscoting and striped wall.

With that detail out of the way, now let’s take a few minutes to travel way back in time and remember where all of this started out. This bathroom is located in my studio, which was originally our garage. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of what the garage looked like in the very beginning, but I do have this picture of it after my father-in-law and I put up some drywall. The door on the left goes to what is now our breakfast room (sitting room). The opening on the right went to a storage room at the back of our garage. The storage room was the whole width of the garage and about 7 feet deep.

And this is the side of the storage room that eventually became my studio bathroom. It originally housed the huge furnace, but we got rid of that the second year we were in this house.

So when we decided to turn the garage into my studio, that back storage room in the garage was turned into a back entry (which now leads to our carport) with the bathroom on the left and a smaller storage room on the right. In the picture below, you can see the area that was walled off to become the bathroom.

The first time I finished this bathroom, I did a crazy square spiral design on the walls. I loved it at the time, but after a few years, I grew tired of it.

The new design is definitely more me.

Here’s a look at the other side of the bathroom in its previous colors…

And here it is now with its amazing 35-color walls and new artwork.

Here’s a look at the previous design from the back entry. It’s funny to me how this previous design used a lot fewer colors, and yet, it’s just so jarring.

The new design has about 28 more colors in it than the previous design, and yet, this looks so much more pleasing to me. It’s bold and colorful, but it isn’t jarring (at least to me).

And here’s one more look at the previous design with the pocket door showing.

In the previous bathroom, I had a print hanging on the wall opposite the mirror that said, “Be the reason someone smiles today.” But I printed it backwards so that it was seen the correct way reflected in the mirror. My mom loved that, as did I, so she made me on to match the new colors of the bathroom.

Because of the two different fonts on this one, it’s a little harder to see in pictures. But when standing in the room, it’s quite easy to see reflected in the mirror.

I had considered painting the ceiling in the room a light pink. Now that I see the room finished, I’m so glad I left the ceiling white. I love how the white trim and ceiling above, and the white trim and waincoting below, really frame out the colorful walls and let them be the star of the show.

And while I love, love, LOVE the walls, I did feel like I needed something to break up all of the color and stripes, so I found this colorful floral downloadable artwork, had it printed, and then put it in a white frame with a large white mat. I think it’s a nice “break” in the wall design without hiding too much of the walls.

I really do think this is my favorite wall design I’ve ever done. In fact, I love it so much that I almost wish I had saved it for a much larger room or a more prominent area in our home. But then again, I know I love it a whole lot more than Matt does. 😀 So I guess it’s good that it’s tucked away in my studio bathroom.

And in reality, I can’t imagine taking the time to do this wall design in a much larger space. It took quite a while to do the upper walls in this tiny bathroom. Had I tried it in a larger space, I think I would have lost interest halfway through. 😀

Because I chose all of these color based off of the wallpaper I had originally designed for the room, and those colors came from the floral wallpaper mural in the studio, the colors of this bathroom coordinate perfectly with the rest of the studio. When I sit at my desk and take it all in, it all looks so good together.

I’m going to have to wait and show you pictures of the whole area at a later date. I was really hoping that I could get my studio put back in order and get it sparkly clean so that I could show you the whole area today, but I ran out of time. And after doing a wall design with 35 colors, most of which I mixed myself, plus all of my other tools and supplies strewn about, let’s just say that my studio has a bit of a post-tornado look to it. I’ll try to get it all cleared away and cleaned up soon so that I can show you the wider view pictures soon.

If any of you happen to be new here, I also wanted to explain why I have a kitchen sink and faucet in this tiny bathroom. Again, this is my studio bathroom, and I do all kinds of projects in my studio. As we were turning this area of the room into a bathroom, my original thought was to put a utility sink in here. I wanted a deep sink and a large faucet because I never know what I may need a sink for with all of the various projects I do. But in the end, instead of a utility sink, I decided to build my own sink base and then use a kitchen sink and a kitchen faucet instead. I thought that would be much prettier and give me more flexibility than a utility sink.

One of my favorite additions to this room is this cute little ceiling light that looks like a flower.

It’s made of a hard plastic, and it is durable enough to be cleaned with a damp cloth or a Swiffer duster.

But I’m very glad that I swapped out that previous wall light for this more streamlined design that doesn’t compete with the cute floral ceiling light. I think this one is perfect for the bathroom. But I overlooked the fact that this light requires a special shape of bulb. I got the light installed, and then realized that there’s no way regular lightbulbs will fit into those shades. So I had to order new elongated bulbs to fit.

And in hindsight, I kind of wish that I had gone with a set of four prints to go over the toilet instead of one large print. When I ordered the frame and the print, it didn’t even dawn on me that I’d have one large print next to a one large mirror. I think a series of four prints may have looked a little better. My mom suggested that I could actually cut this print into four pieces and frame them individually to achieve that look. I love that idea, and I may actually do that at some point. But for now, I decided to just stick with the one large print.

I wanted to get the whole wall, the flower ceiling light, and the vanity in one picture, so I set my camera to the wide angle setting and took this picture. I laughed so hard at how that wide angle setting distorted the shape of the toilet. 😀 But it’s the only way I could get everything into one picture.

So that’s it! This project is wrapped up, and my whole studio area is now completely finished. I’ll show y’all pictures of the whole area as soon as I can get the studio put back together and sparkly clean.

Sources:

Flower ceiling light: Amazon (affiliate link)
Floral printable artwork: Etsy (affiliate link)
Mirror: Amazon (affiliate link)
Wall Light: Amazon (affiliate link)
Elongated light bulbs: Amazon (affiliate link)
White 24″ x 30″ frame with mat: Amazon (affiliate link)
Faucet: Home Depot
Scalloped basket: Amazon (affiliate link)

Paint Colors:

Vanity: Sherwin Williams Broccoflower
Wainscoting: Behr Polar Bear
Floor: Benjamin Moore Classic Gray (color matched in Behr Porch & Patio Paint)

DIY Projects:

DIY vanity for kitchens sink
Striped wall design