With a mandated stay at home order in place, what else was there to do besides projects?! Instead of sitting at home watching HGTV shows I decided to start on a project that I had put off far to long, my main bathroom. I have to admit I was overwhelmed with excitement with the thought of having a fresh,clean bathroom. In this post I am going to tell you exactly how I completed my bathroom facelift in just a week.

This is the main bathroom that guests use. Every time people would go in their I would cringe with embarrassment so I knew something had to be done! I wasn't quite sure where to start with this bathroom. I knew I didn't have a lot to spend on it so I started researching the best options of how to pull it all together. The first place I started was thinking about if there was a theme that I would like to base the room off of. This is also the main bathroom that my two daughters use and somewhere along the way we picked up an ocean  or seashore theme. I believe this was partly since my oldest loves the the teal color and it just worked! Since this is the girls bathroom I wanted to make sure they had a say so we stuck with the same ocean theme. During this time we were in quarantine so I wanted to avoid going to any store as much as possible so I started on Pinterest and Amazon.
Usually I end up conferring with my husband about jobs like this, (hello! He is a carpenter!),  but I decided that this time my oldest daughter and I were going to do it on our own!  I may have cut a couple of corners and done things in a little different manner then my husband would. So with that in mind here it goes...

There is no order that things have to be done in. It is really a matter of preference. Of course it does make sense that some things go in a particular order. Here is how I decided to do it:

 Step 1: I chose to paint the tile backsplash first.
I would have loved to replace the tile with a beautiful blue tile but wasn't sure I was up to doing that kind of project all on my own. So I searched for a ceramic paint that would cover the ugly brown tiles. I came up with Rustoleum's Tub and Tile paint. I believe they offer it in a couple of extra colors but I just stuck with basic white since I knew I would have white walls.
Warning: When they say you need a well ventilated area this is no joke! I had windows open and thought that would be good enough but this stuff is strong smelling! I would get a start a fan to blow the smell outdoors if at all possible. Because I was not properly prepared, our whole family ended up having to sleep in my son's room downstairs for the night and it was still strong. The smell lasted for several days following. It may be a good idea to do this on a day when you can be out of the house or better yet make a camping night with the family in the backyard!

First, I taped all around the vanity and the wall and placed plastic over the vanity because I know that when I paint it gets messy! Next, I cleaned the tiles really well using Melaleuca Ecosense Mela-magic Mutli-purpose Household Cleaner.
  This is an environmentally friendly oil cleaner made with tea tree oil and smells great!!! (I use it on floors, counters, and pretty much anything that I need to clean filth off of.
I then mixed the  Rustoleum 2-part epoxy formula. I used a brush making sure to cover the entire tile as well as the grout areas using a paint brush. I chose to use a paintbrush since it was such a small area but you can use a roller as well. I then let it dry an hour or so and did another coat.
The one problem that I did run into was that I didn't realize that the prior owners had already painted several of the tiles so when I applied the epoxy it actually started to peel the other paint off of the tile leaving chunks on my smooth surface. However, I was able to pick the paint chips off and continue. It was just mostly annoying. I think I ended up doing 3 coats just to make sure it would cover the tile completely.  I waited until I removed the tape after painting the wall to caulk around the base and the wall. I just used a water resistant tub and tile caulk that I purchased from Home Depot drive-up.
I then moved on to the next part of my project, the walls.

Step 2: The solid painted walls.
My daughter and I next masked off all around the room. We started above and around the door and light fixture. Then above the tub area. We decided to start with the lightest color white. Because we were painting the ceiling and one wall white (design to come later), we didn't need to mask the other walls because the blue would cover the white. We first cut in using an angled brush around all of the taped areas. When we were finished with that we started with the ceiling using a roller with an extended handle. We then moved on to the wall. After we let the paint dry for a couple of hours we did a second coat. The second coat was a lot faster and my daughter did the cutting in while I used the roller. We let that dry and came back to it the next day. The next day we prepped for the blue paint color. We chose a paint color I found on Amazon (Remember we are in quarantine). The paint is: Prestige Paints Interior Paint and Primer In One, 1-Gallon, Satin, Comparable Match of Benjamin Moore Spirit In The Sky.
I had never used this paint but I loved the color and the paint went on amazing. It has a built in primer so it went on nice. I did choose to do a second coat.
We masked the ceiling and down the corners of the wall so it would be easier to have a straight line. Even with masking it is very hard to keep the straight line so be careful when cutting in on corners and ceiling. Don't get a lot of paint on your brush at one time. (I'm sure there is a better way, as my husband would tell me, but this is what I thought to do!) We then repeated the same process. Again we let it dry about 2 hours and then did another coat. The color came out rich and beautiful!

Step 3: The next step was the accent wall.
I researched Pinterest and found a geometric herringbone pattern that I liked. I found a piece of cardboard to use as a template (as shown below). I cut several different angles and tested them out on another piece of cardboard until I found the one that I liked best. Next, using a level I drew little hash marks with a pencil so I could cover them to mark where I would line the cardboard template up so that my rows would be even (well, mostly even).  Using a small paint brush, I started at the furthest end of the bathroom and somehow it worked out that all of my rows came out even but looking back I wish that I would have started in the middle and gone out from there. Good thing I got lucky! I thought this task would take about a couple of hours and it actually ended up taking almost an entire day. There was a little more to it then I thought. And yes, there were moments of panic thinking, "What did I do! I should have just left it a white wall!". But in the end it worked out beautifully and I love my accent wall!

Step 4: Painting the vanity cabinet.
OK. This was the part that I was most nervous but also the most excited about because I despised the ugly cabinet. I knew this change would do so much for the transformation of the bathroom. Again from Amazon I chose to use Nuvo Hearthstone All-in-One Cabinet Makeover Kit, Warm Greige
by NUVO. They have great colors and they come in a kit so you know you will have everything you need to get started. The kit comes with a nice angled brush and a cigar 4 inch roller handle with 2 rollers.
It says that you don't need to remove the doors but heeding my husbands and my daughters advice; I opted to remove the doors, drawers,  and the hardware. 
I did not want to have to paint the inside of the cabinet so I masked around the inside. I also taped the wall next to the cabinet and I kept the counter and floor covered in plastic.
I then followed the directions from the box. It says to first start using the brush around the door and drawer openings as well as the edges of the doors and fronts and edges of drawers. Since I only have 2 doors on this vanity it was a pretty quick task. For the bigger areas I used the roller making sure to watch for drips. Since I had plenty of paint, I then decided that I would do my other two bathrooms in the house that had the same cabinets so as the paint was drying I moved on to the other two. The first coat is made to go on lightly and should not be caked so don't worry if there is some streaking. I waited at least 3 hours and did a second coat. It was actually a really simple process.  I then did a third coat the next day since I still had paint left to make sure there was full coverage.
I did get kind of sloppy and didn't watch for drips on the other bathrooms so I had to go back and fix them but that was the most time consuming part!

Step 5: Vinyl Floor tiles.
The next to last step was to place the peel and stick vinyl floor tiles. Again, I wouldn't normally opt for vinyl but since I was budgeting and doing the project all by myself I wanted to make it as easy as possible so I found these on Amazon: FloorPops Medina Peel & Stick Floor tile, Grey.
Thinking I just had to peel and stick sounded easy and kind of fun! I started by finding the middle of the room and laying out the pattern I wanted. This time I did start from the middle of the doorway and work out from there on either side. However, again I wished I would have started from the true middle of the room and arrayed them out from their but it turned out I just had some smaller pieces by the bathtub. No big deal. It says on the box that one you stick them in place you can not move them or they will not stick again. I thought for sure that as long as I stuck it back down again quickly it would for sure still stick but nope. Once you peel the back off and stick it, that is it it will not stick again... I found this out the hard way and barely had enough to cover my floor but luckily I just barely made it!
The other most difficult part about doing the vinyl peel and stick was cutting the pieces around the places that are not just straight lines, like the toilet. In order to cut around the toilet I again made a template. This time I made it out of a large piece of  brown paper from a roll or if you don't have access to that you can use poster board or tape 8x11 copy paper together. I then did the best I could to trace around the toilet. Believe me, I had to re-cut several pieces because I did not quite get the right shape but the template definitely got me closer then I would have cut it! After I filled in around the toilet with caulking it was flawless! The rest of the straight line cutting went really smoothly. I used a ruler to measure and drew a line with a dry erase marker on the tile then cut using a box cutter. The nice thing was that I did not even have to cut all the way through the tile I could go over the cut a couple of times and then just bend it and it would snap in a straight line. This project also took me a little bit longer then I had anticipated but in the end it was one of the biggest changes and I love it!

One of the last steps I needed to do was to caulk around the toilet and bathtub. This just made it look clean and new.
Now the fun begins with adding the final touches with decorations and trinkets. As I said earlier, I was on a pretty tight budget and did not want to spend a lot of extra money if any at all. Most of the items that I used were things I had already had collected through the years. Every fall and spring a nearby town has a flea market with really reasonably priced antiques. I love to scope this out to find cool items there. Some of the greenery I found at the Dollar Store and Target and I always check the Target dollar bins (this is where I found the rug).

The day came when we were finally done! What an awesome feeling to say that I completed a project in less than a week on my own (well, with the help of my daughter but without my husbands help). I had my fair share of panic and exhaustion and maybe even a couple of tears but we worked through it and I can say I am proud of how it turned out. Of course, there are always things you think maybe you would do different the next time but overall I felt pretty good about how it all turned out and I can't wait for my next project!