Loo La La!

We have two loos in our house: a full bath upstairs and a half bath downstairs. We haven’t shared any pictures of either one on the blog so far for 2 reasons:

1. We have a one room at a time rule (even though technically we’re working on 2 rooms and a hallways right now).
2. They’re so ugly that your eyeballs would pack up their bags and run away from home. We don’t want that on our conscience.

Still, we’re getting super close to finishing up our guest bedroom / Smurf room / hallway projects — we can practically smell the paint fumes already! — so there’s been a lot of talk about the other rooms we still have to work on. Especially the hideous porch-turned-laundry room and half-bath connected to our kitchen. Those two rooms combined are the bane of our existence right now, and our heads are swimming with ideas.

Here’s what the porch and bathroom floor plan looked like when we moved in:

And here’s a before of the laundry room:

As for the bathroom, imagine the ugliest, most shoddily-put-together bathroom you can think of. Well, ours is a step or two below that. Cheap linoleum tile. Boring, standard Lowe’s sink and cabinet. Oddly shaped single-pane window. Hideous green paneled walls. …with popcorn texture. In short: booooo! hiss!!

We seriously considered the slash-and-burn method of dealing with it, but we’re not sure setting fire to a part of your own house counts as DIY or renovating. And it definitely doesn’t count as sane or normal, so we’re going to skip the arson and and go with a new floorplan instead. Here’s what we have in mind:

• The porch currently leads out to the back yard. This is one of 4 ways to get in and out of our house. It’s a bit excessive. We’re going to seal up the doorway to the outside because we need the wall space more than we need an exit.
• We’re going to seal up the doorway to the bathroom and convert the laundry room door into an open doorway (love those!). This will give us more room for kitchen counters.
• We’re going to re-open the doorway connecting the laundry room to the bathroom. You can see it in laundry room photo above — it’s the crusty white thing behind the dryer.
• One of us (ahem) really wants pocket doors for the bathroom. It’s in the whining discussion stages right now.
• We’re going to put a bathtub or shower in the bathroom. That’s right: we’re turning our half bath into a full bath. Raising property value, y’all!
• We’re going to put a sink in the laundry room area, right outside the bathroom door. Yes, this means we’ll have to go outside the bathroom to wash your hands. We’re hoping this won’t be awkward for guests. Help us out, people — would it make you uncomfortable to have a sink right outside the bathroom rather than inside?

Another thing we’ve been talking about is having white floors in the laundry room / bathroom. The whole house is going to have black floors, but we’re going for a low-key beachy vibe. Something like this:

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White paneled walls, light floors and the perfect blend of modern and antique. It’s half California, half Paris. Le swoon! And then there’s this bit of gorgeousness:

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That tub made us melt. We’re in love with the way they mixed stark white with deep black. Same with this bathroom:

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But then again, there’s something to be said for the classic white-on-white:

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If I had a bathtub that warm and inviting, I would never get out. I’d be one giant prune 24 hours a day. A tub like that isn’t made for bathing — it’s made for soaking. Luxuriating. With bath salts as opposed to the Mr. Bubble we’re so accustomed to. We’d have to become the kind of people who keep bath salts in giant apothecary jars on our window sills. And buy fancy soaps that look too pretty to actually use. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

While we’re in love with the whole claw foot tub idea (and found several on Craigslist for under $100), we’re also thinking about doing something totally insane and unconventional. Keep an open mind and feast your eyes on this:

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That, my friends, is a bathtub made from a horse trough. And we’re kind of madly in love with that idea. It can also be set up as a shower:

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We love how they raised that shower up with blocks. It looks almost Japanese. And Bradley thinks it feels more complete with legs rather than just setting the tub on the ground. The look is a little bit country and a little bit rock & roll. But with a galvanized tub, we were thinking it might be a little too much on the country side for us. And that’s when we found this:

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Ooh la la, that bathtub. When we saw it, we fanned our faces to keep from having a fainting spell. It’s super modern and super old-fashioned at the same time. We love how it’s black and white instead of galvanized. And can we please talk about the wood back rest? Mercy. In a very white bathroom with touches of black, we think it would look super elegant and totally swoon-worthy.

Our idea so far is to visit a farm supply store and buy a galvanized horse trough. We’d paint the outside and inside so the tub won’t rust, and we could make a really comfy back rest to help facilitate our hours-long soaking. And — best part — we could do all of this for under $200. A horse trough costs about $100. Paint and wood definitely won’t cost us $100, but we like to pad our estimates…just in case.

Right now, we’re in our daydream phases. Who knows? Our plan might changes a hundred times. We won’t get to these two rooms until after our next project: the master bedroom. So geeked about getting that one started. There’s something about sealing up doors and making new doorless entryways that gets us all worked up!

So what do you think? Does a painted galvanized tub sound like a good idea? How about that sink outside the bathroom? Do you prefer bath salts or Mr. Bubble? We’re dying to know!

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