Powder Room Renovation
As you can see from this picture, the room is tiny, too tiny we thought to accommodate more than a toilet, sink, and a small storage cabinet.
This photo was taken shortly after demolition. During the demo, we saw evidence this bathroom was carved out of the butler’s pantry and was not original to the house, which means there is just one original bathroom in the house (on the second floor). We’ve since confirmed this via someone who visited this house before the bathroom was added.
The walls in this room were a hodgepodge mess. Mike and I have some ingenuity when it comes to finding workarounds to issues like this, and we determined it would be far easier to panel this room than it would be to patch and repair the plaster and drywall. Our initial plan was a jewel-box look, with the room being painted entirely hot pink with gold trim.
In keeping with a jewel-box look, we decided to install tin on the ceiling. Tin is beautiful and would allow us to avoid repairing plaster on the ceiling.
The original wood floors had too many cuts and hole to salvage and have an appearance in keeping with the polished look we wanted in this room. So, we decided at the outset this floor would be a stone of some sort.
We didn’t start rebuilding the bathroom until February of 2018, when we broke away from work on the kitchen to finish this room. We were weary of not having a downstairs bathroom and also needed to get construction debris and materials out of the way. Here, Mike has started framing out the walls in preparation for the wood panels.
This photo was taken of our downstairs bathroom on December 26, 2016, the night before we demo’d this room along with the kitchen and butler’s pantry. We knew from the outset we would not put another shower in this bathroom, but would instead use it as a two-piece powder room.
Here, Mike has pre-cut openings for the sconce and the fan.
Once Mike finished the paneling, the ceiling was next to address. The gold tin we used is by American Tin Ceilings. Mike’s installed a few of these ceilings, and he always lays them out on AutoCad before beginning installation. When installing, he starts from the center and works his way out.
At the time I began priming the walls, we decided to paint the walls black with gold trim rather than hot pink. I used a dark-tone primer I had leftover from the kitchen which has a reddish tone. Both Mike and I were drawn to the red tones in this room, so you can see in this picture some test spots for a saturated red called Timeless Ruby (Behr).
I’ve finished a second coat of the red paint, which needed to be finished before Mike tacked on the trim pieces which we sprayed gold before installing so I wouldn’t need to spend days cutting in tedious details. When using Behr paint, I always get the Marquee line, and here the coverage was great with two coats.
The flooring we chose was Carrara marble in a herringbone pattern.
In this April 13, 2018 photo, we have a finished floor and gold trim insets on the paneling.
This is one of the original doors in the house, and I believe it came from the entrance to the maid’s staircase. Because the door already was painted (white), I had no qualms about painting it again.
We opted for a two-leg pedestal sink and a high-tank toilet. The mirrors are vintage.
The paintings and sketches in this room are all original works we found at galleries and antique stores (and some family hand-me-downs).
The final result.