Baby's Mini Bathroom Update

So many stripes

When I was pregnant with Harrison, I finally got around to doing a mini-bathroom update to our guest bathroom. I did this in January 2024 knowing that we’d be living out of this bathroom while our own primary suite was being renovated in the spring.

It took me a long time to decide to start this project, primarily because of two things I had no idea how to deal with. The first was the vanity. And before you ask me why on earth I’d remove it, this vanity is pure MDF (not wood) and had a Made in China sticker inside the door. It definitely was not original to the house. Whoever installed this, did so at the same time this drain line was put in, and they actually built the drain around the vanity. You can see in the images below that someone used a hole saw to cut through the bottom and shelf of the vanity and the threaded this pipe through. The pipe was fully glued together, so there was no unscrewing it for the sake of removal, and it’s such a tight fit! I had no idea how the heck I was going to get it off and ultimately, I hit the waterline with my hand saw as I was trying to remove it. Luckily we were quick at turning the water off and no real damage was done. It also meant we got new waterlines put in before I installed the new vanity, which was definitely a bonus.

The second thing I was unsure of was the flooring. I know this wasn’t original to the house. The floor plan of the upstairs has changed a lot from it’s time as a boarding house! I haven’t found any great resources on how to restore tile, and I wasn’t up for any heavy sanding or removal while I was pregnant. The easiest solution for a temporary fix I could come up with was using these laminate tiles from Wall Pops. These were super easy to install even with how uneven the floor is—sure there are still gaps and I had to add some extra glue in a few areas, but again this is a temporary solution.

I am really glad that it no longer feels like you’re stepping out onto a dirty floor when you get out of the shower.

*Note I had already replaced the toilet, sconces, and vanity mirror a few years prior.

The other reason I wanted to do a temporary fix is because eventually, we will replace the tub in here. It’s really messily caulked in and I’d like to do something different with the tile as well.

For now sprucing up this bathroom included painting wall stripes and replacing the vanity:

For the stripes, I taped for 4-inch white and blue stripes. My lines aren’t particularly crisp, but now I know that if you want perfectly straight lines, you should paint over all of the tape with your white paint first, and then apply the second color on top. this makes it so that none of your colored paint can slip beneath the tape. I’ve seen other hacks like using a damp sponge on the tape before painting or caulking the edge, but in my opinion painting is the fastest and easiest way of achieving a perfect line.

For the vanity, I purchased this dresser off Facebook Marketplace—it even came with a key for the drawers, which is great for baby proofing! I cut the drawers to work with my new plumbing and then reassembled everything in the bathroom.

I do have two regrets with this part of the project. The first is that I didn’t give myself enough room in the drawer cut-outs so they don’t slide particularly smoothly. The second is that I used a 1-inch hole saw to cut the hole for the faucet (it is what the directions suggested), but the faucet was only 0.75 in in diameter. This means that my faucet is wobbly and I need to add a mounting plate to it, which I still haven’t done.

Check out the before and afters below:

I added a towel rack on the big empty wall in the bathroom, thinking it would be great for storing baby bath toys. I deeply regret mounting this bracket here—it’s in perfect striking distance of one’s head when standing up from the toilet. In our future renovation it will definitely get removed, along with most everything else except the toilet and lights.