Before and After: The Blush Bathroom Reveal

It’s been a while since I first showed you a sneak peek at the blush bathroom. Since then, you’ve gotten a better look at it in our home tour on Design Sponge but I want to show you where we started. Who doesn’t love a good before and after?

When we were shopping for an old home, one of the things on my dream home list was a bathroom with its original bits. I dreamed of original tile, original hardware, an original sink. We were lucky enough to find all of these in one bathroom in our home. The only challenge was letting those original elements of classic charm shine without overpowering them with design choices.

Here is the bathroom in the listing image. With so much pattern, so many CHOICES, your eye doesn’t know where to go and you could easily miss the charm. You’ll also note that the listing photographer attempted to crop out the wallpaper border.

But not me. Take it in, admire it. Here is the bathroom after we moved in and removed the skirt from the pedestal sink, the shades from the sconces, the scrunchies from the shower curtain rings, the wall shelf and the window treatments.

Can you find the lightswitch? Neither could most of our guests.

Once we removed the wallpaper (some of which was held together at the seams with scotch tape with sharpie on top to keep the pattern intact) we found that though most of the plaster was in good shape, one corner was in trouble. In the corner by the window, some of the plaster had cracked and separated from its backing.

The wallpaper removal was easy but left a lot of paste. It took me several sessions scrubbing the walls to remove all the paste. In the middle, I resolved to give up, hire someone to finish it, most likely (definitely) cried, but got back up on that ladder and finished it.

I am pretty good at patching holes and imperfections in plaster, but these larger areas made me feel out of my depth. We hired a plaster repair person to come and patch things up but I ended up spending some time repatching, smoothing and sanding to get a nice surface for painting.

Wow, right?

The walls are painted Behr’s Cockleshell. West Elm’s Arc Mid-Century Sconces in Brass add a classic but updated look with their brass finish and white shades. The wooden cart is from IKEA as well as the window shades which fit our old casement windows perfectly. The folded towels are from Serena and Lily (I wrote more about these lovely towels in a post about bathroom details) and the shower curtain is from West Elm.

The print is ‘Passion’ by Camilla Engman framed in an old IKEA frame I spray painted matte black. The original medicine cabinet with its lightly foxed mirror is my favorite. I replaced the knob (which was a fleur de lis, of course) with a simple glass knob.

We are so lucky to have had such fantastic bones and original details to work with. The tile is in impressive shape with only a few broken tiles and some charming glaze crackles. While there are still a few things I’d like to update, including a new faucet set and curtain rod, this cheery bathroom makes our home feel so classy and finished.