Black and White Bathroom

 "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."    Theodore Roosevelt

When my husband and I shopped for our house 14 years ago, we knew we wanted to be in an older neighborhood.  We love older homes for their character.  You get the hard wood floors, picture molding, plaster walls, big trees, and tile bathrooms.

Sometimes the tile in bathrooms of older homes is not what you would chose if you were starting from scratch, but as the economy would have it, we are not doing major renovations any time soon.  No, we just continue to do what we can ourselves and try to make the most of it.  That said, I have been busy.

Our house has two full bathrooms and that is it.  They both were due for a fresh coat of paint so I saw this as an opportunity for change.  Our downstairs bath is a hardworking one and really serves nothing more than a utilitarian purpose, get in , do your business, and get out (because someone might be waiting in line).

Wall Stencil

First of all, this bathroom has been through every color under the sun, and I even covered it with wallpaper once.  This time, I decided to let our black and white bathroom be just that, a black and white bathroom.  I found a stencil at AC Moore and went to town.

I used a sponge to apply the black craft paint which I am happy with.  The loose, slightly worn appearance is nice for our 70+ year old house.  The sponge has to be dampened before you use it so that it doesn't absorb too much paint at once.  Be sure to ring the sponge out well or you will have to do this.

Shower Curtain

If you have never visited Little Green Notebook, make that your next stop.  Her DIY projects leave me with my mouth hanging open and an urge to run to Home Depot in the middle of the night.  LGN is the inspiration behind my shower curtain.  One of her posts demonstrated how to make a stencil by using freezer paper and the computer which I tried for the first time on the Anthro chest of drawers.

My shower curtain is made from an old muslin sheet that I picked up years ago at a tag sale.  Those old muslin sheets are the best.  The width was perfect and so I left the selvage edges.  Next I attached about a four inch border at the bottom with black cotton sheeting fabric that I picked up at Walmart (washed a couple of times to avoid differential shrinkage).

 

For the stencil, I played around on paint.net until I found the font and design that I wanted.  The font is biondi and the design is wingdings 2 - abcd.  Easy.  Then I taped freezer paper to the screen to trace my stencil.

Once I had the font and size, I cut it out with an exacto.

OK, this part freaked me out.  Well, it freaked out my entire family, because everyone watched.  After making the shower curtain, I didn't want to ruin it by messing up the monogram.  The cool thing about freezer paper is that it can be ironed to stick to fabric temporarily which is perfect for this use.  After positioning the stencil, I ironed it into place.  Next I applied fabric paint with a sponge applicator.

 I gave the medicine cabinet about six coats of glossy black paint.

We took down a nasty wall cabinet that while it was nice for storage purposes, it took up visual space and just ...yuck.  We added this glass shelf.

To help with the space/storage issues is we added a towel bar to the back of the door.

  

This robe hook beside the tub comes in handy on those cold mornings. 

Finally, the ceiling in this room was rough in texture from years of neglect.  We covered it in textured paper and painted it white.  We actually did this several years ago and it has held up well.