bathroom redo

I'm slowly slowly working my way through my downstairs projects. I saved up enough to do something with our one downstairs half bath. My goal was to make it prettier for about $150 or less. Here's a picture from the day we closed on the house.  It's your builder basic bathroom.  

This project started about 4 months ago, when I was at Lowes and came across a mirror that was half off because of this little dent.  So easy to repair with furniture markers, which we already own.  Even though I didn't love the curved mirror, I hadn't planned on replacing it.  But for half off, it went in my cart and sat in the basement until I had more inspiration for the bathroom.

Next step was finding pictures to base the color scheme around.  I found 3 prints at Gordman's and had them color match one of them for my focal wall.  I've also been scouring places like TJ Maxx for some sort of storage solution since there we have a pedistool sink, meaning no storage.  What I found was not at all what I was looking for (a book rack), but I think it will work for right now.  We have quite a bit of tan paint left over from one of our houses, so the next step was painting the 3 walls and then the bathroom sat for a little bit while we figured out to get the mirror down since it was good and glued on. 

I looked at tons of websites to get an idea of how to get rid of the mirror.  We ended up having to buy a little wire saw from Amazon.  We taped the mirror in case it broke, and he pulled the saw back and forth behind the mirror until it cut through the glue.  It took a good chunk out of the wall!  But a little spackle and a day to dry did the trick.  It didn't look perfect, but since a new mirror was going to hang over it, it didn't really matter.

Then, I started painting the one orange wall.  Foil does a nice job helping get behind the toilet without getting tons of paint on the back of the toilet.  My goal was to use NO tape while painting this room.  My cutting in is getting pretty good, if I don't say so myself.  But getting into tight spaces to make very straight lines was definitely a little tough with this belly!

And here's the final product.  The new mirror with tan and orange wall.  New towels.

Still deciding if I need to put something over the toilet.

I really like these prints!  I color matched the middle orange flower for the wall color.

Hold reading material for our guests, extra towel, and I need to work on the top rack.

So here is my final breakdown:

mirror - $32
orange paint - sample $4, quart $14
toilet paper holder - $7
book holder - $25
pictures - $45
2 new hand towels - $7
trash can - $25 (seriously, I can't believe I spent that, but we have pricey taste)
tan paint - free because we owned it
furniture markers - free because we owned it

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total - $159

$9 over what I wanted to spend but I got a new mirror!  That's huge!  Did I mention that I did everything myself (ok, except the mirror).  Pretty proud of that.  Ok, onto the next project.