Wisconsin Magpie

When I left off in my last post, our downstairs bathroom looked something like this:

We had just tiled the shower — and it looked fabulous  — but the rest of the room was still stuck in a 1995 time warp. We wanted to update the room with modern materials but also make it look like it belonged in the vintage farmhouse that it actually resides in.

The first thing we had to address was the yellow textured wallpaper, which was covering a layer of blue plastic paneling. And the blue plastic paneling was covering a layer of very old, very cracked plaster. None of the layers was pretty.

We’ve swallowed enough plaster dust in DIYs past that the idea of demolishing the walls and hanging new drywall didn’t sound all that appealing.

We figured it would be easier — and less plaster-dusty — just to cover the old walls with another layer: this time, tongue-and-groove pine planking.

The boards we used were reversible, with narrow strips of beadboard on one side and wider planks on the other. We decided to use the narrow beadboard side vertically on the bottom of the walls and the wider planked side horizontally on the top.

This is the wall where the sink and the medicine cabinet normally hang. Jim took them down to install planks there. (The hole in the wall was already there; it had just been hidden behind the medicine cabinet. That’s where the vanity light hooks into the electrical system.)

On the shower wall  we decided to use the wider planks. Just because.

We covered all the raw edges with trim pieces.

After we had all the boards installed, we painted everything white — it took three coats to cover and to get paint into all the nooks and crannies. (Let me tell you, beadboard is nothing but nooks and crannies.) Then when we were finally done painting, we had to fill in the cracks between boards with caulk. (And there were lots of cracks.)

After painting and caulking, it was time to start re-assembling things.

As you may have noticed, this bathroom is really tiny. It’s about 6 feet wide by 6 feet deep — with the shower literally 3 feet from the door.

Our old sink was a compact 20 inches wide by 16 inches deep, which was the right size for the space — plus, it was still in pretty good shape — so we decided to keep it.

The pop-up drain assembly wasn’t functional anymore, but that was an easy fix. We replaced it with a brand new old-fashioned rubber stopper on a chain. I didn’t know they even made these any more, until Jim brought one home after one of his many runs to the hardware store.

Like the textured wallpaper, the old medicine cabinet (which had a built-in Hollywood-style lightbulb strip at the top) also had outstayed its welcome. I wanted to replace it with a vintage mirror and put a black barn light above it. Jim wasn’t feeling the vintage mirror. He thought a medicine cabinet would be more “practical.”

I may have treated him to one of my signature passive-aggressive eye rolls when he said that, but I let him get his way. Mostly so I could use it as leverage when it came time to choose a light fixture.

I’d been ogling black barn lights online for months before we started this project and had an entire Pinterest board full of them. I was willing to give in on the mirror, but the black barn light was non-negotiable.

Here’s the light fixture I ended up buying.

You may have noticed it’s an odd shade of black.

Home Depot was sold out of black barn lights on the day I went to buy one. They had this red one in stock, though, and I fell in love with it on the spot.

Apparently I’m fickle that way.

Jim actually liked the red barn light, too, so maybe I should have fought harder for the vintage mirror. Sigh.

Anyhoo, Home Depot sells this light fixture in their outdoor lighting department, not in their bathroom lighting department, but electric lights are electric lights. There’s no reason you can’t use an “outdoor light” in an indoor bathroom.

Our old chrome towel bars were still in good shape, so we re-hung them.

Then I turned my attention to the closet door that I had been passive-aggressively ignoring because I didn’t know what to do with it. My original plan had been to paint the door black to match the black barn light I was going to buy. But when the light fixture ended up being red, I had to reassess the situation. My gut said I should paint the door red now, but the cautious part of my brain said a red door might be crazy.

As I dithered about what to do with the the door, I decided to pull everything out of the closet to redo the inside.

The 1980s called. They wanted their shelf paper back.

The wood underneath the shelf paper was pretty rough — but I figured a good sanding and a coat (or three) of paint would make it look like new.

Here’s the inside of the closet after it was all painted.

And here’s the door, just as I was starting on the first coat of primer, which was followed by three coats of …

… red paint. Now that I look at it, I don’t know why I dithered.

We bought a new handle for the door to replace the little knob that had been there before.

We decided not to reinstall the upper cabinet door, which wasn’t so much a door as it was a piece of plywood with a handle on it. It didn’t match the lower door in style, and once I had the inside of the cabinet painted, I thought it would look better to leave the top two shelves open.

I looked all over for baskets that would be the right dimensions for the shelves. The best option I could find were these galvanized steel tubs that were on Walmart’s website. They were sold out online, though, so I had to go store to store looking for them. I found one at the Beaver Dam store. Then I struck out at the Monona store, the Sun Prairie store and the Portage store. Finally I found a second one in Baraboo (and it was the last one they had left). Apparently these were a popular item.

I had plenty of red paint left over, so I painted our old garbage can to match the door.

Here’s the whole room today. (Or at least as much of it as I could get in a picture.)

And, as a reminder, here’s what it used to look like.

We still have to redo the floor. We just placed an order for black cement tile. It’s supposed to come in in the beginning of October. This will be our first time laying floor tile. If it turns out OK, I might blog about it. If it doesn’t, let’s just pretend I never mentioned it.

Thanks for reading. As always, let me know what you think. Unless you think my red barn light sucks, in which case you’re already dead to me, so don’t bother.