Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Working with What You Have

Beautiful Bathrooms:



Images from HGTV.com

Some of us have them, and some of us (like me) don't


When we moved into our house we knew we wanted to redo either the kitchen or the bathroom. We decided to go with the kitchen since we'd get a lot more use out of it. Since we've only lived here 3 years we haven't been able to much with the bathroom.


I've mentioned it a few times on my blog but have never really shown it; mainly because it's kind of embrassing. I don't even show it to people who come over to the house. But, here it is in all it's 70's retro glory.




Fabulous Flowers!

So there it is. Now you know the truth- our "Master Bath" is not only incredibly small it's also pretty ugly.

Since we don't have the time or money for a full reno and with our house on the market it was time to make something out of nothing and make the space a little more liveable. I focused on this space behind the toilet- (affectionately known as the "Pit of Despair")




To make this space more functional I decided to create some shelves to hold towels and bathroom necessities. The space (or hole however you want to put it) already had these tracks and shelf mounts in it. What happened to the original shelves, I have no clue.


So I went to Home Depot and bought a piece of plexiglass for about $9. I measured the space and measured and cut the pieces to size with a plexiglass cutter.





Not a perfect cut but it works... with everything installed it looks pretty good.




So with little money and minimal effort I now have a functional space to keep towels, soap, ect. I don't know why I hadn't done this before!


Have you ever had a project you put off, but were so happy when you finally finished it? Do you have an element, room, area of your home you're not particularly keen on?

10 comments:

beth said...

I'm not very happy with our bathrooms, either. We live in a new house, and they are very "builder standard". I have done some things to "work with what we have," though. We painted the standard cabinets white, installed wood knobs and painted them blue, I removed the cabinet doors under the kid's bathroom sinks and put in blue and white polka dot sink skirts, and we took out the builder tile and installed hexagon tiles in each of the bathrooms. So the bathrooms look better than when we moved in, and have more character now, but we still have a lot of work to do until I will be completely happy with them. But we are having fun making our house our home!
Thanks so much for visiting my blog and for taking the time to comment!
I hope you have a wonderful day!
Beth.

Ange said...

Rachelle,
That looks so much better! Don't you hate when you finally do a project because you're selling your house and then you wonder, how come I didn't do this before? Both our bathrooms are kind of scary and I don't really have funds for a remodel either but you've inspired me to go see what I can do today! Thanks!

Alicia@ eco friendly homemaking said...

Wow that was such a great idea. It looks so nice and functional!

Scrap-Happy Mama said...

It looks great! What a great idea!

liz @ bon temps beignet said...

daaaang girl, that looks so good. At first I was thinking 'what a weird little nook' but it seems so useful now. I've never shown our 'master bath' to blogland either. It's a total joke of a 'master' at only 5feet long by 8 feet wide (that's the total square footage) We started demo so it's just a shell of a room right now. We plan to knock down some walls and extend it into the backyard....someday!

Anonymous said...

You're onto something! I don't much like our bathrooms either. But on the other hand, don't have a plan and am concerned that the cost will quickly spiral out of control. So we're living in a master bath covered in atrocious gold wallpaper.

Ann from On Sutton Place said...

My master bath is very similar to yours. I admire you for posting about it because I can't even bring myself to take pictures of mine! I hope to make a few changes this summer...nothing huge but hopefully it will look better. I'm pretty good at working with what I have...I've been doing it a long time! ~Ann

Yvonne@StyleBurb said...

Hi Rachelle, I would have made the same choice as you and remodeled the kitchen before tackling the bathroom...in fact we did! You are so creative to take that little area and turn it into something functional and pretty! Thanks for the sweet comments on my bathroom redo. We lived with something very outdated for 13 years!

Lisa said...

Great idea! I definitely feel your pain in having to work with what you have for the time being while you focus on other things. A simple fix like this helps you tolerate the 70's a little more!

Karen said...

Little details like that are attractive to buyers. Who doesn't love extra storage, right?!!