How to Decorate a Boring Bathroom

 I hope you are enjoying your Labor Day weekend! I'm probably eating veggie hamburgers with whole wheat bread and drinking water while you read this, so enjoy some BBQ for me! As you know I recently moved, and left a one bedroom apartment for a two bedroom condo. So, I now have two bathrooms and bedrooms to decorate! Yay! Today, I want to share my bathroom redecoration with you. For most of you who've ever lived in an apartment, you know the "boring bathroom syndrome", where the walls are beige and the cabinets are brown. It's a very clean look, but not an exciting one. I've always struggled with how to decorate them, because well...they are bathrooms. It's a very function-oriented space and it's hard for me to think beyond towels and a shower curtain. However, after scouring Pinterest I decided to treat my bathroom like any other room and actually decorate it. I love the results!

 

My budget for this effort was pretty small (aka. non existent), so I made a huge effort not to buy anything. For instance, I bought these floral watercolor prints at a festival in Arizona and have been lugging them from state to state over the last four years. This year I put my foot down and wth a little double sided tape, they were up on the wall!

 See that little pink hook on the mirror? This is one of my favorite finds! I always try to get out of using a hammer and nails, so when I came across QuickStick on the web, I immediately reached out to them and offered to do a review. They make repositionable hooks, wall anchors and baskets in Fuchsia, Tiffany Blue and White. I found that they stick really well to mirrors, metal and tile (just remember to follow the directions and wipe the surface with alcohol first, otherwise you'll make them un-sticky.) They are also supposed to stick to some paints. I tried them on a glossy and eggshell finish and they didn't work for me, but I would definitely try them on a flat finish if I had one! 

Update: After publication, I learned that eggshell paint is notoriously bad for adhesion and a smoother paint (such as a flat finish) is better.

Coffee cup, makeup organizer and chest are all things I bought a few years ago.

This soap dispenser is the one item I bought that I didn't technically need, but it was so cute, and it was only $11 at Marshalls.

This basket is another product from Quick Stick that I stuck on my shower wall. Note: I would only use it for storing light things like soap, combs, razors, etc, because when I added a full bottle of Nair, it couldn't support the weight of all three. 

Update: After publishing this article, I learned that placing the backers over grout lines, as I did, weakens the hold. If used on an even surface, the basket should support 10lbs.

 

This blue vase was a flea market find. (Love it!)

 

I also bought this blue jewelry box to store my daily makeup in. It's got a tiny crack in the back, so Home Goods had it marked down to $5!

This little white table is another experiment that turned out well. This is actually a sofa table that I bought from the Container Store last year. I wanted a little extra counter space and this was perfect. I highly encourage you to think outside the box when looking for storage items for your bathroom. Adding some items that are clearly not "bathroom furniture" or are purely decorative makes the space seem more luxurious.

These are the little Quick Stick hooks used on an eggshell finish wall. I don't know if it was the semi-glossy surface, or the weight of my necklaces, but they wound up falling. 

 I'm working on my bedroom now and plan to do a post on that soon. Talk to you tomorrow! :)

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