Downstairs Bath Renovation: Painting and Small Updates

Well, we've made some small progress since my last update. Nothing too major, but things are starting to finally look more finished. And since it looks like our next three weekends are booked solid, we won't be making much more progress anytime soon, so I might as well share where we are now.

The biggest thing of note is we finally have paint!

It only took me buying 9 paint samples to narrow down the color choice.

Except see those two swatches in the middle (Rosemary Green on the left and Stem Green on the right)? Yeah, I just ended up buying quarts of each and mixing them together in my own paint can. I really wanted to split the difference between the two, but the only person who was "authorized" to do custom Ben Moore colors wouldn't be working until Monday, so I just took matters into my own hands. And I have no idea how the color will look on your screen, since looking at color swatches on my own computer is pretty useless. But in real life it is a nice bright sage-y avocado green. With all of the white tile and beadboard, we definitely wanted something bright and somewhat bold, without going too dark, since it is a small room.

In other news, once we got the walls painted, we could install our sconces, which we'd already done the electrical for (far left below). We're holding off on putting in the ceramic shades for now though, so we don't have to worry about bumping into them, and also because my husband is still working on installing new light switches that are white to match everything else in the room.

One thing we've yet to figure out is the plantation shutters for the window. Since we had to bump out the window wall 1/2 of an inch to cover our tub gap, the moulding that connects our window trim to the window frame needs to be replaced with a bigger size. And so we're in the process of researching our shutter options (going to have to be custom ordered because the window is a non-standard size), so we will know what we are doing with the window moulding, and can install it and paint it all at once. So the window (and door too, haven't painted that yet either) will eventually be the same white as the rest of the moulding, it's just more efficient to wait and paint it all at once.

This weekend, we also bought ourselves a new toy, which was on sale for $70 off. I'd been wanting a miter saw forever, and when the need arose, we finally bought one even though we don't even have a workbench yet to store it on.

It really came in handy for installing our chair rail trim. See the nice bevel cut to transition the chair rail to the tile?

And it was really useful to build our custom mirror frame as well. We are integrating the mirror into the chair rail, like mocked up below. Still have to get the mirror itself custom cut, and build up the back side, so everything will be flush with the wall, and accommodate the bottom part of the mirror resting on the beadboard.

And here's a wider view of the mirror placement, the taped off rectangle below it is where the vanity will go.

I got the rest of the beadboard and trim painted this past weekend with semi gloss, but I still have to seal it with a couple of coats of polyurethane, just for some extra protection from shower splashes. Did you know that beadboard takes forever to paint? Yeah, neither did I. Those little grooves are a pain!

But it's definitely coming along. And once we bring in the vanity, install the shower faucets, and caulk pretty much everything, it's going to be so close!

Heck, if you look at the other end of the room, and you pretend the window and door have been painted white, it looks nearly done.

Now, we just need to find a good place to order custom shutters from, so I can continue with my trim painting!

Have you ever took it upon yourself to custom mix your own paint colors?