Friday, August 10, 2012

Bathroom paint

One of the projects I'm hoping to get done before I go back to work in a couple weeks is painting the door, trim, and the vanity (one coat) in the bathroom upstairs.  I still need to figure out what counter/sink to go with in here, so the second coat of paint would go on after that was installed.  
I also want to rip off those ugly plastic towel bars on the door and replace them with chrome ones.  When you are trying to dress up a tired space, every little bit helps!  
And I'm thinking that I can dig out the anchors (from the old counter) from these wall tiles and fill in the holes with cream grout.  
I brought all my white paint chips upstairs and narrowed it down to three - a more creamy/tan white - Swiss Coffee, a whiter one - Vermont Cream, and a pinker white, Powdered Snow.  
I eliminated the Powdered Snow right away, so I was down to the other two.  
My goal here is to match the tile almost exactly, I know that putting a brighter paint on the trim will instantly make the tiles look dingy.  I was having a hard time choosing until I took this picture and the Swiss Coffee chip seemed to disappear on the tile.  
And just to be sure, I turned on the light in the bathroom and took one last picture to make sure it still looked good in 'unnatural' light.  
Still looks good to me.  I'm picking up a quart of Swiss Coffee and crossing my fingers!  Since I'm working with the original ceramic wall tile, I'm having a hard time picking a counter top and sink.  I don't want a speckled look, a solid black would be best.  I'm thinking just a new black laminate, or black solid surface - with a white drop in sink?  I already have this Kohler Memoirs faucet:
Ideally, I would like to rip out the vanity and put in a pedestal sink with a tall furniture-like storage unit to the right of it, but the outlets are in the cabinet and who knows what the floor tiles are like under there, so I have to work with it unless I want a gut job.  Any advice?

7 comments:

  1. Do you think the grout was originally white? I think paint will make a huge difference!!

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  2. I used Vermont Cream in a bedroom and it turned out really yellow tinged. I repainted with Swiss Coffee and now I love it!

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  3. Sara-

    Love your house, love your baby, love your blog.

    Also, wanted to leave a comment to let you know that I think it's really brave and laudable that you posted pics of this bathroom on your blog. It looks like a Real Bathroom (i.e. I have one almost identical in my house... but the tiles are GREEN).

    I think we get trapped in this blog-reality, where every room is exquisitely staged, exactingly styled, and renovated/DIY'd to perfection... which makes real-life reality seem like a big, fat dirty mess.

    Blog-land is an impossible standard, but I think a lot of blog readers (certainly me) get stuck thinking that our houses should look "bloggable" all the time, in every room.

    Soooo, long story short, just seeing that you, with your DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS kitchen/dressing room/baby's room/woman-cave/bedroom/etc, still have a problem room here and there, is a good thing for your readers (or at least for this reader).

    HUGE THANKS AND BIG PROPS for writing such a great blog!

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  4. Janice - I'm not sure if the grout was originally white or not, it's definitely old!

    Jessica - thank you so much for your nice comment, I definitely have spots in the house that are not blog worthy, and I think it's important to let everyone know that nobody's house is perfect. No one gets more discouraged than me when I see beautiful spaces, of course no one tells you that they spent 40k for their landscaping or 60k for their amazing kitchen, or 500k for their new home. I like to keep it real...speaking of, I need to finish the shelves in my kitchen and post the final cost! Yikes...

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  5. I used Swiss Coffee to paint our fireplace. I loved how it wasn't super bright and looked a bit aged (if that makes sense).

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  6. May I suggest an Absolute black granite with a white china undercount sink? Laminate is very reasonable but if it is not fabricated with a water resistant substrate it cold show water damage by swelling or delaminating. If you use black solid surface (ie: Corian) it will show scratches as light lines grayish/whiteish because of it being plastic.

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  7. yes, be careful of the vinyl under the sink as we ripped out our vanity (knowing that a 90% gut job was in our future) and we had a totally different vinyl underneath. We put in a pedastal on top of the different vinyl and then had to live with nasty, dirty, different vinyl for 2 years before we could re-do the floors with tiles and finish the rest of the bathroom. Have you priced out pre-cut pieces of granite at the Home Depot? I here they are super reasonable. You can also buy 24"x24" pieces of granite and rent a saw to cut them at home. Not sure how that compares to laminate
    Skye@rosecitybungalow1913

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Thanks so much for reading....your comments mean a lot to me!
Sara