Twenty Dollar Kid's Bathroom Makeover

We have two bathrooms and one soon-to-be-a-bathroom-in-the-future bathroom. But the downstairs pink bathroom tub is in serious need of some TLC and is currently being used as a storage bin for my excess supply of diapers. So, we really only have one fully operational battle station... er... bathroom at the moment and that is the upstairs bathroom. Since the plan is for the addition to eventually become Stephen and my bathroom, that makes the upstairs bathroom the kid's bathroom. And what a scary bathroom it is...

The red and brown shower curtain is from our first apartment. It's awesome, fully lined, and has been hanging up in this bathroom since we moved in... Along with the dark blue plastic shower liner... Add in yellow tub, yellow sink, brass fixtures, and harvest gold shower tiles, and you have a seriously winning combination!

Not.

Anyways, I'm in the process of prettifying my bedroom and I required the lovely red and brown shower curtain to do that. So, now the uber-ugly upstairs kids bathroom is without a real shower curtain. Shucks.

The only thing that this bathroom has going for it is the fact that we replaced the really, really hideous greenish, yellow toilet with a lovely white toilet sometime last year. That's it.

The room itself is kind of oddly shaped, with the toilet, sink vanity, closet, and radiator in odd places. Even the vinyl floor is in dire need of replacing because whoever installed it installed it in two separate pieces. Genius.

Also, no matter how much you scrub, the vinyl always seems to look dirty.

The sink is yellow, the faucet is badly-needs-polishing brass, the laminate counter top is covered in light yellow striping, and the cabinet is super dated with... wait for it...

...rosebud knobs! SWEET!

The medicine cabinet and above sink light fixture leave a great deal to be desired...

And the ceiling light fixture is rusty.

All in all, it's not the best room in the house. It needs a huge renovation. New sink, new tiles... Someday. When we've finished with the addition, sandwich shoppe, and 50 other ongoing projects. Someday when money comes pouring out of our walled up chimneys.

But that doesn't mean we have to live with rosebud knobs in the meantime. Nobody ever has to live with rosebud knobs.

Enter the leftover nursery paint, Target, and the most adorable shower curtain ever. Hello, adorable shower curtain. Please come home with me.

Umm... Since when can you Facebook "like" Target items??

$25 is a bit much for a shower curtain in my opinion, but I didn't want to wait for it to go on clearance and I had some remnant Target gift cards I could use to bring it down to $20. Besides, it was 100% cotton, the yellow in it perfectly matched our tub, the green perfectly matched my leftover nursery paint, and it was appropriate for a kids bathroom without having giant rubber duckies all over it. It met all of my requirements. In fact, I was so sure that it would be perfect, that I painted the bathroom walls that very morning before even purchasing the curtain.

I had just enough Valspar Willow green paint leftover from the nursery to paint the whole bathroom. It was close. I had to skimp some on the second coat. I've never painted a room so quickly. I did it during Joseph's morning nap and I really wanted to finish before he woke up. Fortunately, plastic wrap is your friend when you don't have time to clean your rollers and brushes before they dry and your baby is hollering at the top of his lungs. Once Joseph was awake, I fed him, popped him into his car seat, and sped off to our local Target where they had the shower curtain in "limited availability" according to the website. On the way there, I kept chanting, "Please let it be there!" under my breath. You better believe that I did a little happy boogie when I found it in the shower curtain aisle. Yeah... I get slightly obsessive when I'm on a project.

It's always amazing how much of a difference curtains and paint can make!

Except for the shower curtain, I already owned everything else that I used to decorate the bathroom. There was even enough space to move my old vanity into the room.. I've had it since I was 14 and found it on the side of the road in Japan. Yes, I was trash picking even then... It used to be black, but I painted it blue when I was in college. It does a wonderful job of filling up the random blank wall space.

The floor is still nasty, the bathroom still has crazy yellow fixtures, but they are no longer as noticeable. Mission accomplished.

It's the adorable shower curtain. It draws the eye away from the eye sores.

And it even looks good with the harvest gold sunflower tiles. Shocking, since I didn't think anything would ever look good with those tiles.

If anyone has a suggestion on how to cover up those naked light bulbs for under $1, I'm all ears. I'll listen to anything... Even suggestions involving parchment paper.

Notice that the mirror and over sink light fixture are now teal... I had this little pint of mistinted teal paint sitting in my paint closet... It called to me.

It told me to paint the rusty gold light fixtures.

And the mirror... It even tried to convince me to paint the ugly faucet, but I exercised the use of my will power to overcome that particular temptation. It was hard.

Yes, all of the soap on the countertop matches the room... Why do you ask?

As for those cabinet knobs... Sayonara rosebuds, hello plain willow green paint! I was actually going to remove the cabinet doors entirely and hang a little brown curtain instead, but Stephen objected. He seems to think that a) it would be weird and b) he would end up kicking everything under the sink. My question was, "Why are you kicking the cabinet doors in the first place?"

Oh, kids bathroom... How do I love thee!

Thank you, adorable shower curtain, for inspiring me to spiffy up the place!

Did I mention that there are owls on the shower curtain?

And cute little squirrels too!

Joseph likes the new bathroom. He told me so! Just look at that face!

Now, I just have to hang some art up on the walls.  I've got a lot of fun ideas in that regard. I'll be sure to share when I'm done!