Picker Chicks After Hours: Bathroom Update

Like most small business owners, we devote the majority of our time and efforts to our business: we pick, we paint, we stage, we serve our customers. But when we have a little time, we try to practice what we preach, and #reinvintage our personal furniture and furnishings. This mini-series will show you how we updated a 12-year-old master bathroom.

Backstory: as with most things, Sherri and I have a lot in common, but we don't always do things the same way. We both live in homes built about 12 years ago. She and her husband built theirs; we bought ours in 2011. Our homes are about the same size, but hers is a traditional style while mine is a modern farmhouse. Hers is in a lovely neighborhood with a pool, while mine sits out in the country and I have views of sheep, cows, horses, goats and chickens all around us.

We painted a few rooms before moving in, but not the bathrooms. Here's the "before" views of this large room. And we're keeping it (mostly) real, so you're going to see glimpses of real-life messes along the way.

The only updates we made to this bathroom when we moved in were to replace a ceiling fan (yes, in the bathroom) with that chandelier, and replace a fiberglass shower surround with tile. (Sidenote: a quick shout-out to Lee Evans of ATI Kitchen and Bath for the shower transformation.) By sheer coincidence, he was also the "tile guy" when this house was built for its previous owners.

The entire home was painted in warm Tuscan colors - mostly tan and gold. This wall color is a warm tan, but that's about to change....hopefully for the better. Paint can make a huge difference in a space, and that's where we'll start.

Sherri and I are both updating our homes room by room, and we've both gravitated to the same grays and gray/blue/greens including Sherwin Williams "Sea Salt", which she's eyeing for her dining room. I chose it for the bathroom and next week, we'll show you how it turned out.

I'd strongly encourage anyone who loves it to get a chip and a small sample to test on your walls before having them mix up a gallon or two. As you can see on this color chip, it looks pretty green, but it can also lean more blue in areas with more natural lighting. Paint can profoundly transform a space, and that's where we'll start before moving on to other updates in this bathroom. We'll keep a running tally of the cost, so you can get a pretty realistic idea of what it would cost to #reinvintage your own space.

Stay tuned for next week: we'll show you the freshly painted space and give you some tips and pointers for (almost) pain-free painting projects.
​~Terry

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