Summer Bathroom Spruce Up
When I moved into my new home in Atlanta last year it was love at first sight. I was instantly swept away by the wraparound porch, the dark green shutters, the way the light cascaded through the open windows of the front room. Sure, the place needed some love – but I firmly believe that for a house really to become a home – a home that you can be proud of – you need to put some work into it.
The first thing we did was tear out all the wallpaper. There was this terrible red and blue striped pattern that I just couldn’t stand. We eradicated that within the first week and took to painting the entire house into a pale shade of yellow. I really wanted to enhance the feeling of warmth and light throughout the entire house, and the yellow really did that for me.
I grew up in the South – and summertime always meant walking barefoot in the grass, tall glasses of iced lemonade, and sleeping on the hardwood floors when the air conditioning wasn’t working and the heat was unbearable. Summer also meant trips to my grandmother’s house.
One of the main things I remember about that old house was the bathroom. It had cobalt blue tiling with yellow accents. It was duck themed – she always had little duck shaped soaps and the shower curtain was patterned with little duck silhouettes. She also had a ceramic duck family, with the mother leading her 4 ducklings across the tile countertop.
When I bought this house I knew that remodeling the downstairs bathroom was going to be my summer project, and I wanted to decorate it in the same blue and yellow tones as my grandmother’s bathroom. I also knew that I didn’t want to do it by myself – I simply didn’t have the knowledge or expertise, and my husband was taking care of the garden landscaping, and I didn’t want to overwhelm him. So instead, I hired an Atlanta tile installation company to take care of the more involved parts – like removing the abhorrent floor tiling and replacing the molding off-white cabinet.
When they were finished, the transformation was incredible. They replaced the cracked linoleum with the beautiful cobalt blue tile I had chosen. I had spent hours looking over samples – I never knew that there were that many shades of blue! Where the blue tile met the wall they lined it with a row of yellow decorative tiles that matched the ones they had installed around the base of the tub. It was exactly as I had pictured it.
As a replacement for the old cabinet, I found an antique mahogany base at an estate sale that I had fitted with a wash basin. The house had an old colonial feel to it, and although all the plumbing was modern, this elegant historic touch seemed to resonate with the rest of the house. All that was left were the final decorative touches.
Although I had loved my grandmother’s ducks, they never had really been my thing. Instead, I placed a potted Begonia on a small table in the corner (it matched my cabinet perfectly) and chose an artistically patterned shower curtain with curtains that matched.
My house still has a long way to go, but with each day it’s beginning to feel more and more like my own – something I will be proud to show my own grandchildren someday when they come to visit me each summer.
