Anyone that knows me, knows I love pink.  It’s my sig-nah-cha color!  (Said in my best Shelby from Steel Magnolia’s voice.)  However.  There are limits to my love of the delicate hue, and the bathrooms in this house exceeded those limits…by a lot.  Both bathrooms were floor to ceiling pink; pink tile floors, pink tile walls, pink toilets, sinks and tubs, pink tile on the countertops, pink vanities and pink wallpaper on the walls.  You apparently can have too much of a good thing.

We contemplated completely gutting the bathrooms down to the studs, but our checkbooks and time line had other plans.  Not to mention the tile they used back then was built to last.  Two inches thick with concrete and metal mesh meant to withstand the apocalypse would make even a professional contractor sigh at the thought of removing it all.  The quotes we got were going to run us at least $3000 just to demo.  So we put on our thinking caps and came up with a plan to save us money and our sanity.

Luckily, the tile work was in excellent shape.  It was just ugly.  We therefore elected to paint over it using a DIY method I’d tried before when refinishing a clawfoot tub. We used it in both bathrooms and covered up the pink tile on the walls with a clean, bright white finish.  We also used it on the tubs to spare the expense of replacing something that wasn’t broken.   The mosaic tile countertops did have to come off and required a Herculean effort just to demo and haul off.  I can’t imagine doing that to the walls AND the floors.  We replaced the mosaic tile countertops with laminate designed to emulate marble from the same place we ordered our kitchen countertops and opted to paint the existing vanities and update the hardware.  Nothing was standard (of course!) so it was just easier to keep the existing without having to custom order a replacement.  We replaced the toilets and gave everything a fresh coat of paint.  The floors were the same vinyl planks we used in the kitchen and den.  They went down right on top of the old pink tile.  I purchased the vessel sinks and faucets online for a fraction of what the big box stores wanted.  We saved a ton of money by doing it ourselves and using what we could from the existing layouts.  It’s a great way to make big changes on a small budget!!

Before and Afters:

We removed the doors from the upper cabinets and left them open for storage.  I used hydrangea baskets to store extra towels and toilet paper.  The artwork is the actual patent for a toilet paper roll.  I downloaded it off the internet and framed it.

Master Bathroom.  More Pepto!

We elected to do a single vessel sink instead of two just to have more counterspace.  We left the existing plumbing intact to have that option in the future tho.