The Bathroom Update

No gut job! Less waste! Small bathroom update

The whole “renovation” started when our bathroom faucet started to leak in the fall of 2019. I’ve been slowly “updating” what I’ve got since 2009, such as painting the wall and the cabinets, putting peel and stick stickers on ugly tiles etc. I never had the guts to rip out what’s good enough, like the tiles, sink and the faucet.

Thanks to the leaks of the faucet, I finally got to justifiably change them! I used inspirations and goods from our travels to achieve the bathroom update.

• Sink is from Home Depot, the faucet is from Wayfair. (cat proof!)
• The peel and stick tile stickers are from Etsy.
• I bought the shade of the sconces in Japan. They are retro style metal shades, we flipped the sconce upside down to fit them.
• LED chrome dipped light bulbs are from eBay.

The Inspiration

So here is my inspiration! I have been a fan of Sarah Richardson for good decades and I loved this bathroom from Sarah’s House 2 since the original broadcast days.

First thing I did when I moved in was to paint the cabinet in very light blue, then the 12 inch thick stripes on the wall.

10 years later, I still love the inspiration photo and the thick stripes.

This is how it started in 2009

I finally addressed the fish tile situation a few years ago.

There are Hawaiian fishes behind those wall tile stickers. I bought tiles to replace those when we first moved in, but didn’t get to do the chipping off the fish tiles and replacing part because it’s too small of a job and handy Pete wasn’t confident enough to work on his first tile job (He likes to work with wood), 8 years later, there were some advancement in the technology, I bought those stickers and called it done lol.

I hated the white 8×8 floor tiles. But not enough to do a bathroom gut job because everything is operational and it’s too soon to land fill everything. In 2009, the bathroom (tiles, cabinets, countertops and etc.) was about 10 years old. The tub is as old as the building.

After testing out the wall stickers, I bought the floor stickers from the same seller on Etsy (Custom sizing). We traveled to Lisbon & Porto a few years ago and the patterned tiles are Portuguese influence. At this point, I’ve added shelves to house toilet papers under the counter top.

Then changed the shade of the sconce.

Those are my cheap and cheerful bathroom updates. TV and contractors always says gut it, but do you really have to? I don’t want to unnecessary landfill things, and if there are some alternate solutions, I am all for it.