Bathroom Shelves + A Tiny Tour

Another bathroom post!  Over the next few years our bathroom will be looking forward to a complete overhaul to open up a little more space and return it to something resembling it's original state.  In the meantime, we'll have to live with what we have.  But we can make a change or two while we wait, so here's one that actually made a big difference in the feel of the bathroom. 

When we moved in the bathroom featured this monstrosity of a home-made medicine cabinet right over the toilet:

It was big and bulky and taking up too much physical and visual space, so it had to go.  In some time off during the first weeks we lived here I went ahead and took the mirror down and exposed the open shelving behind it:

That opened the space up a little, but obviously it was not going to cut in for the long run.  Fortunately we just so happened to have a little bit of green paint that matches the ugly green tile almost perfectly.

The paint is Behr's Coriander Seed.  We had some left over from an accent wall in our first apartment in Portland. 

I never really thought of it as being an ugly color, so either it has gotten uglier with age or it's just something about the bathroom.  Anywho, the final product is a vast improvement (I still kind of like the color).

While we're in the bathroom, you might as well have a look around at the rest of it.  There is literally not much to it.

I don't know if you can tell, but the sink is not centered under the medicine cabinet (which is original to the house).  The sink must have been moved at some point.  It's just a bit inconvenient and not so pleasant aesthetically.

And then there's the shower.  It's a built-in tub and surround with a wall on the end and sliding glass doors.  Visually, it takes up a ton of space.  I think the bathroom will seem so much bigger when we can replace it with an free-standing tub and curtain.  And then there's this:

And this:

Aaand this:

Yes, that is indeed wallpaper OVER tile.  But I got curious one day and started pulling:

 And pulling:

The paper just started coming off without any trouble at all.  So now our bathroom looks like this:

I'm kinda digging the faded fish wallpaper for the time being.  Matt says the tile makes him happy when he's in the shower.  It's also kind of fun to see what the bathroom might have looked like at some time.  I guess we're stuck with it regardless; until we dig into the bathroom renovations, at least.

This post has gotten very long for such a small bathroom, but there will be bathroom inspiration photos to come!  If you can't wait you can keep up with our inspiration photos as we come across them on Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/twoseekhome/our-bathroom 

- Caroline