When we bought this house we loved almost everything about it, but Brian was worried about sharing one bathroom with our two adorable but filthy kids for the rest of our lives. The idea of them being teenagers and us all fighting over the privacy at 7:30am didn’t excite me, but I was less worried because I grew up sharing one bathroom with 3-4 siblings. You’d be absolutely shocked with what this lady can overlook and pretend to not see (or clean).
Bathrooms have never been a place of luxury for me, so why start now? But, we figured we’d ask our architect what the possibilities were as we were doing some renovations to the floor plan and he indeed came up with an option to make our lives a bit easier in the bathroom department.
As a reminder here is a drawing of the upstairs floor plan when we bought it:
As you can see – three bedrooms and one bath. Here was our proposed plan to change:
Bedroom 1 would be a suite and we’d steal from bedroom 2 and 3 to create a Jack and Jill bathroom for the two kids. Like so:
Here’s how it looked in real life. We would steal from Charlie’s room, like so:
And Birdie’s room would be stolen from as well making it pretty awkward but still so adorable since she has a wall of windows (which we are now realizing will turn that room into a sauna most of the year).
Here is how that really turned out to affect the look of the rooms. These are both the same angles as in the above pictures, but show how we bumped into Charlie and Elliot’s room a bit for the bathroom they will share.
Every single person that sees it is shocked how we managed fit it into the floor plan and how it looks like it has always been there. Birdie’s room is awkwardly shaped – but it was before, and in Charlie’s room the cut-out looks completely normal and created a lovely little niche with a closet. We’ll take photos with the doors open, I promise, but hopefully that gives you a sense of where things are.
I created a design plan. It was to be the whimsical, fun, playful version of the rest of the house – Modern English country, but for toddlers. The room has no windows and barely room for a mirror – so we got creative with materials and finishes. It needed to have a specific design direction (wallpaper) to make sure it didn’t fall quickly into boring-land. Kids hate boring-land. Thus our nightly new obsession with creating an obstacle course over LAVA throughout the entire first floor. The days of quietly sorting shapes are gone and instead we are crawling on our stomachs under the sofa on the way to the blocks that have to be carefully walked on, heading towards the finish line. Kids like excitement and clearly so do we. So this bathroom couldn’t be boring …
And yet it needed to fit the rest of the house and not be a loud jolt of energy between their two already really energetic bedrooms. Now that I think of it, happy energy + relaxing is really my MO anyway, and that is what I tried to bring to this little jack and jill.
The first mood board was this, above: Wallpaper | Shower and Tub Combination | Floor Tile | Faucet | Beadboard Paint
It was a good start but as things progressed so did the design plan:
Here is the updated mood board:
Shower Tile: We chose a handmade subway from Fireclay that has texture but is super simple. It is so pretty in person and I love the way that it turned out in that little area. Lucky for you they also have a HUGE giveaway going on right now with our friends at Rejuvenation to help you make over a room in your house. All the details HERE, but be sure to head over and check it out. Shower tile: $900 + Shipping. They gifted that tile, so I’m very happy that someone else will be the recipient of that special simplicity.
Shower and Tub Combination: We chose a polished brass with a living finish that is so lovely (and yes, we got our water softened to make sure it doesn’t corrode … amazing on our skin/hair and our purified water is so delicious I had forgotten what water tasted like). Shower and Tub Hardware: $578.20 c/o E-faucets. It’s what we have in our kitchen, too and it’s a high maintenance beauty but worth the extra effort to clean.
Tub: A tub that was affordable, in-stock and simple (I love George’s plumbing in Pasadena, by the by). Tub: $795 (not-gifted)
Floor Tile: A porcelain herringbone that added a lovely reflection and was pretty affordable (and always in stock). Floor tile: $492.86 (32 sq. feet + 20% overage) c/o Floor & Decor.
Vanity: We fell in love with this vanity when we did the vanity roundup because of its special traditional style and its (DID YOU SEE THIS???) built-in step ladder. My kids are so obsessed with it even though they still can’t see the mirror, nor do they know why they would want to. We had extra marble from our island so we topped it off with that. We are going to change out the hardware to brass but it is SO CUTE and totally functional for little kids who need the extra step. Vanity: $701.70 c/o Wayfair.
Faucet: The patina is already so pretty. The shape is perfect. I love these delicate ladies. Faucet: $615.30 c/o E-faucets.
Beadboard: Do you know what is the simplest thing you can do to make you house feel more high-end? Add moldings, pretty doors, and paneling. It’s relatively inexpensive (materials are cheap, labor can add up), so timeless and such a crowd pleaser. That beadboard was $240 (12 pieces. Each piece is sold in 16′. $1.25 per linear foot) + labor.
Beadboard Paint: We chose the white from the wallpaper and man it’s just seamless (yes… pun … intended). Paint: $50 (one gallon).
Toilet: A classic shaped toilet – a crowd pleaser. Toilet: $915 c/o E-faucets.
Ceiling Light: I LOVE this semi-flushmount. It’s simple but with some whimsy and the perfect scale for a smaller space. Light: $496 c/o Circa Lighting.
Wallpaper: The cutest, most whimsical and yet fitting wallpaper ever. It’s an english countryside toile, but in a really soft colorway… WITH SHEEP!!! I’m obsessed with this I can’t imagine the bathroom without it. Wallpaper c/o Farrow and Ball: $460 (installation was around $150 – $200 – all three bathrooms were $500 to install).
So there is a sneak peek and obviously we are shooting the reveal soon (waiting on the brass cleaner/wax and the styling). Meanwhile …
A lot of you really responded to the transparency of the exterior post RE the dolla dolla bills….Y’alls.
I don’t need to go too far into this ugly subject to get to the point – talking about money publicly is just as uncomfortable to me as it is to any of you. HOWEVER, I know that as a reader I would want to know the totals of a project like this because as a reader I’m wondering if I, too, could put in an extra bathroom. So as a blogger (and general person) who values transparency it’s my uncomfortable job to give said totals. The bathroom was part of a much larger renovation that will cost $180K (thank God for loans and credit cards and sponsors). My contractor said that he figured adding this bathroom would have been $27k on its own (NOT including materials). If you add up all those materials ($6500) on top of that figure it is indeed a lot for a tiny bathroom for tinier people who don’t know how to even wipe their own cracks…. They owe us.
Renovating a house costs a lot of money, it just does, because paying for proper labor in an expertise that requires experience is expensive. Hold on …. “Expertise That Requires Experience is Expensive” might need to be on a t-shirt or bumper sticker …. which I’ll sell … to pay for this bathroom. We don’t live in TV-renovation land, despite how fast we finished (I paid for overtime and weekend labor to meet our sponsor deadlines). We do get gifted a lot of materials because companies find value in the work that we do both in product placement on the blog/instagram/twitter/FB (with tagging/crediting) as well as the photos which they can use on their own social channels afterwards. I choose what companies/pieces are in my home, not the other way around (aka I LOVE all of these finishes and materials and would have bought them even if I didn’t have this option). HOWEVER, we will also be giving you a more budget friendly version of every room (in the future as well as this one) for the final reveal and will continue to do outside projects that are indeed budget friendly (I’m doing a flip soon where the budget is TIGHT and FAST – thats-what-he-said). This is also why we do pro-bono projects and will continue to use our media power for good in both makeover takeover and charity projects like we’ve done in the past.
Meanwhile, we are bathing those two toddlers in this bathroom and it is as amazing as bathing two toddlers can be – a total s*&@ show, but one that is way more fun in their own space. I didn’t live in the house with only one bathroom but I think it’s safe to say that Brian was probably right and that eventually we would have wanted them to have their own in which to smear poop on the walls. Plus now we run laps around the second story of the house – through the two bedrooms/hallway and new bathroom while wearing bathrobes (CAPES!!!). I think a new upstairs obstacle course is in our future….
Questions? Let er’ rip … (I’m shooting all day so I may not get back to them til’ tonight but I will after the kids are down).
