Our First DIY Project: Half Bath Refresh
We started building our home in 2019 and moved in right before the pandemic hit in 2020. It’s the house of our dreams, other than a few things that need personalized or painted. We could have made the most of the lockdown and worked on some projects in our new home…but we didn’t. So, now these projects are one of the things keeping me busy during this job search.
The first project on the list is refreshing our half bath. I’ve always thought (or Joanna Gaines told me) that shiplap looks amazing and we decided to add it to this room. We also decided to paint it, since we still had the builder’s grade paint, along with changing out the mirror, light fixture and artwork. Luckily, my husband has some DIY projects under his belt from our last home so he helped with a lot of it.
If you’re looking for guidance from someone who doesn’t have much experience with these type of projects but somehow made it work, you’ve come to the right place. The final product is so much warmer and brighter and we love it! I’ll share the steps that made this refresh come to life. Overall, it took about 2 weeks, working on and off, to complete the project.
Here are the BEFORE pictures:
And the AFTER pictures:
These are the steps in the refresh. I’ll link all of our products in the next post!
Choose mirror + lighting. We searched online and ordered them early to make sure they arrived by the time we were ready to hang them.
Sand and tape the room. I watched a lot of “expert” painter videos on YouTube before starting this step. We purchased 3 different types of painters tape and I taped the entire room, top to bottom.
Paint. We used Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace for a nice neutral white.
Cut the shiplap. My hubby measured and cut the boards to the correct size. Unfortunately our walls aren’t exactly square so it took a few cuts to get it just right. He also had to cut out around the electrical box so he could hang our new light fixture.
Sand and paint the shiplap. Once they were cut, I sanded them with a sanding sponge and also a power sander for the harder to sand spots. They were already primed white but we did one additional coat of the Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace before hanging them.
Hang the shiplap. My hubby did all of the hanging work using his nail gun. He tried use as few nails as possible so we didn’t have to fill a lot of nail holes after the fact.
Fill nail holes with spackling + paint. We used a spackling recommended in one of the videos we watched and you couldn’t see the holes at all. Once it dried, we sanded it and did a final coat of paint.
Hang light fixture + mirror. My hubby hung the light fixture. That’s about as detailed as I can get about that. He’s no expert but the room didn’t catch on fire so that’s a good sign.
Find new wall art. After we received the mirror + the light fixture, I searched for art to match the wood color and found a great piece of art at Target.