Guest Post: One Woman, One Weekend – An Intensive Bathroom Makeover

Two rooms I have not put much thought to in our new house are the full bathrooms. I did tackle the two-piece powder-room on the main floor during my marathon of painting – it got new lighting, new paint, and new art. However the full bathrooms are a daunting task. They are not what I would call dream bathrooms, and we are not quite ready to completely gut them, so what I’m really looking for is a quick makeover. Enter my friend Helen. She so graciously offered to write an inspiration guest post on making over your bathroom in one weekend. Did I mention she had great timing? I’m in need of some inspiration.

One Woman, One Weekend – An Intensive Bathroom Makeover
Does your bathroom look a little tired? I know mine does! But good quality bathroom suites are built to last and it’s such a waste to refit an entire suite after a couple of years because you’re bored with the look – expensive too! So I got to thinking this week about quick and easy ways to improve the look of my bathroom without ripping out all of my sanitaryware and starting again.

My first idea is actually a bit of a cheat. I feel that a shiny new set of basin and bath taps can really freshen up a bathroom. I’m a bit of an auction site and garage sale trawler, though… so when I say ‘shiny new’, chances are I mean old and quirky. I just love my vintage finds!

Now, I think of myself as someone who can turn her hand to most things around the home… but probably fitting vintage taps to my existing bathroom suite is where I draw the line – I don’t want to flood the place. So, if I get to use the help of a plumber, I can do this one as part of my intensive bathroom makeover weekend.

A couple of my other ideas are around personalising my bathroom storage. Like many people, I have some wooden bathroom furniture – a vanity unit and a wall cabinet. They look a bit too pristine for my tastes (they were there when I bought the place), so my aim would be to make them look a little more weathered.

Some light sanding can produce an amazing aged look – you just take the paint off the edges and corners where it would naturally wear away then, because you’ve uncovered some of the wood, give the whole piece a coat of beeswax to protect it against splashes.

Fitting new handles (vintage new, not new new) is also a really quick way to change the appearance of a piece of bathroom furniture. The only thing to watch with this is that you get some handles that will fit over the marks made by your old handles, otherwise you could end up with a look that’s a touch more distressed than you intended.

Then, once I’ve aged my bathroom furniture, I’ve got a grand plan to create a beautiful feature wall in my bathroom.

Using stencils and paint, I plan (one day) to create a beautiful, big, bold pattern across one whole wall of my bathroom (behind the bathtub). To pull the look of the bathroom together, I’ll then be decorating a couple of plain wooden storage boxes the same way and keeping them on a shelf on the opposite wall.

I hope that this, together with my new, aged furniture and gorgeous antique brass taps, will make my bathroom truly mine at last!

Helen Davies is a keen blogger and freelance content writer for Better Bathrooms, who sell good looking contemporary and traditional bathroom suites.