Our new house has a powder room that was wallpapered within an inch of its life when we bought the house, so I decided it needed a makeover.   

The wallpaper was actually METALLIC and shined in the light. Which was cool, but the copper color wasn't really in my color scheme.

PLUS A SEASHELL SINK. OMG NO. Since my style isn't south Florida meets George Washington, it was on my list of crap to change as soon as we moved in.

Our new house has a color theme of navy, blue and turquoise with a touch of Hamptons/Nautical and a touch of Farmhouse.  Nothing too rustic and nothing to themey.. so this was my vision of the bathroom.

We toured a house when we were house hunting that had the most amazing bathroom with a single tiled 'accent' wall and I knew I wanted to do that behind the sink and toilet.

The walls got damaged pretty badly getting the wallpaper off, so I didn't want to paint.  I decided I would need to re-wallpaper. 

So here is the vision: 

Vanity: $447
Delta Faucet: $82 (I got a refurb on clearance)
Wallpaper: $324

I recently redid my master bathroom water closet, and one of the things the space needed was storage, so I added some simple shelves to the room.

There are a million ways to install shelves, but when you are going the completely width of the space, putting the supports on the side walls is definitely the easiest and the most budget friendly.

My shelves cost a whopping total of: $5

Thanks to Dunn Edwards for sponsoring this post

A few years ago, you may remember my master bathroom was completely made over.  I pulled out the horrific 'faux marble' and put in tumbled travertine and glass pencil tile.


I also replaced all the mirrors and replaced the counters, painted the vanity and added new cabinetry. 
But the one part of the bathroom that was untouched..  the water closet (which housed the toilet). It was a funny little room with an angled door.   I never really mentioned it in that series of posts, since it was sort of it's own room, and keeping it all builder white seemed good enough.

But now that is has been two years, I thought maybe it was about time to get that little room to match it's big brother.. and so it was WATER CLOSET MAKEOVER TIME and Dunn Edwards was going to help!

Once again it is time to head out to the workshop and get my hands dirty with some POWER TOOLS!  Yay!   The theme this month is ORGANIZING!

My contribution is this undercabinet organizer with pull out baskets.

I have a confession to make.  Remember when I redid my master bathroom and I installed a corner cabinet on the vanity? Remember I said I was going to install crown molding on that cabinet to finish the room?   Yeah.. you probably forgot about that since it was TWO YEARS AGO.

Well. I NEVER did it.  I was having a hard time figuring out how to miter the crown at the funky angles resulting from the weird cabinet shape.  And I only had EXACTLY 6 feet of matching crown from the cabinet company. I was paralyzed with fear of screwing it up.

If you are using toilets installed anytime in the last century (okay.. it sounds crazy when I say it that way.. but I mean “Pre-2000”) it is pretty likely that you are either using way more water than you have to, or are using outdated technology which conserves water but is not very efficient at flushing waste or frequently clogs.

The toilets in our house were 1988 monsters using almost 4 gallons per flush. (For perspective, todays standard of “low flow” is 1.28 gallons.) If you are using a toilet from the 70s, you could be using as much as seven gallons!  SEVEN GALLONS!!  That is the equivalent of flushing a modern toilet more than five times.  (Side note: if you are using toilet from the 70s.. it is probably pretty gross by now and you should change it anyhow!)

Today’s low-flow toilets are pretty amazing, considering that some of them use as little as 0.8 gallons of water and yet have astounding ability to flush a small pony down the drain (okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.. but they are much more powerful than their previous water saving counterparts.)

I’ve previously written about the pros of saving on your utility bills, and so this project was a no brainer.  And to make it even better, our utility district has a $50 rebate on any Water Sense toilet, so this project practically paid for itself.  (Most water districts do offer rebates, just check with your local company.)

In our upstairs bathrooms these are the toilets we had:

You can see how large the tank was in order to hold all the water.

It was just a huge WASTE even though they weren't in the most commonly used bathrooms.  I chose a new 1.28 gallon per flush American Standard model as a replacement.   I took a side by side photos with the new one (the ruler is for reference) to show you the difference in tank size when you covert to a water efficient model
You also will notice the tank is tapered, to give you more flushing power with less water.   Plus it takes up less space in your bathroom, which is never a bad thing right?

So how did I decide exactly which one was the best choice for me? 

When figuring out what kind of toilet you want to upgrade to, there are lots of things to keep in mind.

TOILET SELECTION:

Since my last post featured my mom’s new powder room ceiling, which was inspired by *MY* powder room’s beadboard ceiling, I thought that i was only appropriate that for Frlashback Friday this week, I feature my entire Powder Room Makeover.