Our 1st Floor Powder Room

As I was going back through some of my older posts I realized that I never properly shared an update on the 1st floor powder room, which is probably the room in the house most likely to elicit a gasp when people see it. It's so much fun for me to see people's reactions to my design choices, and I definitely went for it in this room.

Unfortunately it's a bit tricky to photograph (at least for me) so the shots I have aren't great, but I was happy to find that I had at least one before photograph that shows a little of the transformation. 

The lighting is terrible, but if anything that helps the before look better: 

The window was basically hidden behind the really dated cafe curtains and blind, and the walls were done in a really bad burgundy faux finish. 

The pedestal sink doesn't look so bad in the photo, but it wasn't level and thus leaned off to the right quite a bit. The toilet isn't pictured, but believe me when I say it needed to be replaced. Big time.

The floor, however, was really good:

It's marble, and the herringbone pattern the tiny tiles were laid in is timeless. I really liked the floor and decided almost on the spot I wanted to work with it rather than tear it out. It did require a professional to come refinish and clean it, but ultimately it was worth it to keep this amazing (and, I believe, original to the house) floor.

Powder rooms are a perfect place to take some design risks and make a big statement. I knew I wanted to use wallpaper in this room and do something very special, nothing too boring or safe here.

I considered a lot (like alot, alot) of different options and probably ordered 10-12 samples, which I would hang up on the wall in here and stare at. I had always loved the iconic Scalamandre zebras, but you typically see that rendered in red a la:

A phenomenal look, to be sure, but not really in keeping with my color scheme of greys, greens, and blues. I should mention here, I don't necessarily think you have to use all the same colors in every room of your house. It can look fabulous to switch it up from room to room. But, in this house I wanted to maintain more cohesion and reusing the same colors in different shades and combinations was how I achieved that.

Anyway, I was thrilled when I found that the wallpaper was available in both blue and green, but after hours of staring at them both, I ultimately decided green was the winner. The color is super hard to photograph actually. It looks considerably darker in these photos than in real life, where it's a nice, bright green.

This one is a little closer to the true color:

We replaced the sink with an apothecary-style unit from Signature Hardware with chrome base and white porcelain basin. The faucet is a Rohl bridge faucet, in a more traditional style than the more modern one we put in our kitchen. The toilet is the same Kohler model we used throughout our home.

The sconces are simple silver with black linen shades, and I think I bought them either from One Kings Lane or Joss and Main.

The cafe curtains came down and I replaced them with a clean, bright white shade that goes top/down and bottom/up as I really like having the bottom of the window covered for privacy, but the top open so the light can come in. I talked quite a bit about window coverings for the house in this post.

You can also see in the above photo the millwork we added to the wall here. This entire wall was actually torn out and re-built due to some structural matters we had to correct. 

I think the tone-on-tone millwork looks really modern, but I always reserve the right to paint it out in the more traditional white down the road. For now, it's painted in Benjamin Moore's Martha's Vineyard, which is a color I think I'll remember for my entire life given how many different greens we tried to find a match for the wallpaper. This one is dead-on. 

One of the really nice things about this room is the huge storage closet that's in it, where we keep a lot of cleaning supplies and things we want easy access to for adults but not for the kiddo. I have recently organized and cleaned it out, but I don't think anyone needs to see the inside of my closet :)

The last thing I'd love to find for this room is a fun little faux zebra hide rug, which I think would be the ultimate finishing touch. If and when I find one, you can be sure I'll instagram about it. 

Until then, thanks for reading!