Post 30: Half Bath Finishing Up

In case you needed a reminder, here's where we left off last time with our half bath "remodel".

This time, we are finishing up the room and getting ready for our big reveal!

Phase 4: Finishing Up

Patching Holes and Seams

To get us ready for paint, Alan used caulk to fill in the seams where the paneling came together and then we went back and patched all of the nail holes with caulk or wood putty.

Once this all dried, we took sandpaper and sanded over each area so that the paint would look smooth over the holes.

Painting

Since the molding was stained wood, I used sander/deglosser over all of it before I started painting.  I just poured some on an old rag and wiped the molding down -- simple as that!

Then, I got to work taping and prepping the room for a coat of paint.

To help everything "stick" to the molding, I painted a coat of Kilz 2 over the wood trim.  

Once this dried, I used semi-gloss paint and primer in Sherwin Williams Alabaster (in Behr) to paint the baseboards and the molding around the door.

Next, I taped the baseboard and around the door and cut in the walls with the same paint in satin.  I finished up by going back with a roller brush to get the large parts of the walls and ceiling.

The mirror I had (a Goodwill purchase) wasn't quite what I wanted for the space, so I used some of the semi-gloss paint to make it blend right in!

Here's a glimpse of our progress so far...  I'm so excited!!!  Okay... I know it's pretty simple right now, but wait until you see the finished room!

Shelves

Alan built some really great farmhouse-y shelves to add some storage to the bathroom.  This was an interesting project for me because he showed me how to use a planer.

Alan's work was getting rid of some lumber and instead of throwing it away, they let Alan take it home.  He decided that these would make perfect shelves for our half bath.

Using his table saw, Alan trimmed three boards to a ten-inch width.    

After this, he set up his planer.  A planer is a machine that removes the rough/excess surface from a board.  Alan explained that one pass did the work of an hour or more of sanding.  It looks like this:

Once the boards were planed, Alan sanded them a little bit to make them really smooth.  Then he applied stain and polyurethane.

We chose to mount the shelves with L-brackets.  I really liked this look from 7th House on the Left, but we priced the plumbing parts we would need and decided the L-brackets would be much more cost-effective.  

I spray painted the brackets bronze to match the rest of our hardware in the house.

Next, it was time to mount the shelves.  Originally, we thought we wanted three shelves, but when we started measuring where they would hang, we decided two would look less crowded and give us more vertical space to store things.

Alan used a stud finder to figure out where to hang the brackets and then we mounted the shelves.

So, to recap, in our half bath, we have 

• removed our furdown
• added (and updated) a mirror
• improved the lighting in the room
• installed paneling over our stubborn wallpaper
• brightened the room with paint
• and built shelving for more storage and a farmhouse look.

Click here to check out our big reveal!!