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bathroom remodel pictures, Mel

Mel’s Under The Sea Bathroom

By Mavis Butterfield on - 42 Comments

This is a Guest Post by the super amazing One Hundred Dollars a Month reader Mel {she’s the one who made A Freezer Meal Menu Plan for Four Month’s Worth of Meals, and then made a Big List of Freezer Meal Recipes and Freezer Meal Cooking Tips.}

Mel has also shared about her Mini Sewing Room Makeover, her DIY Polymer Clay Christmas Ornament Ideas and Tutorial, how she made all those AWESOME gift bags.

Mel also told us about her recipe for DIY Lemonade Concentrate} and her Super Simple Summer Tomato Pasta. And if that wasn’t enough, she has also talked about her Experience Joining a CSA and Eating More Vegetables and making Apple Cider {with a press!}.

I think at this point, we pretty much all wish we lived next door to Mel. I know I do! 😉

Here is her latest post:

As part of preparing for our baby due in July, I decided to update the bathroom between what will become the nursery and what is already our guest room. We don’t have many guests, so this bathroom will be primarily for our son, but it will still serve guests as needed.

The picture above is what the bathroom looked like before. As you can see, it’s in decent shape, but it’s a little plain by kid standards, so I wanted to shoot for something more playful.

I vividly remember two rooster prints that used to hang in my own childhood bathroom, so I wanted our kid to maybe have some similar memories.

Some of the paint was also just very poorly done (I’m pretty sure they primed some places but never painted), so I wanted to touch that up along the way, and there were some real functional issues (no place for a hand towel, not much storage, no shower curtain bar, and no place to hang bath towels) I wanted to address as well.

As I said, we don’t have many guests, so I’ve been able to get away with ignoring those problems in the past.

I really don’t know how I landed on the theme of Under the Sea, but it just seemed like something that would be fun and also pretty easy to execute and maintain (there is no shortage of fish or ocean-themed shower curtains, for example).

The most obvious color scheme for such a theme is obviously blue, so I started by painting the walls blue with white trim. This room has no windows and faces into an interior hallway, so I went with a very light blue (Swimming by Sherwin Williams) and a very bright white trim (Pure White by Sherwin Williams).

The blue is a little hard to capture due to the lack of natural light, but the picture below with the decals is probably closest.

While painting itself was relatively easy, the people who built our house liked to use unpaintable caulk (and smear it across walls and door frames), so I ended up having to seal those spots (after discovering them by painting and having the paint peel) with an oil-based primer (VERY difficult to find in Maryland) and then repaint.

So far, the paint seems to be holding now, but I haven’t ruled out further paint repairs in the future.

After painting, I added these fun fish and coral reef decals. Since it’s such a small room, I only put decals around the bottom edge of the wall to try to keep it from feeling like too much.

Will little toddler fingers eventually peel these off the wall? Perhaps. But they are removable, so any toddler-related mayhem shouldn’t damage the walls.

For towel hooks, I drew inspiration from Mavis and got whale tail hooks and a whimsical matching print to hang in between.

The hooks run above the coral reef decals, and there is just enough room behind the door that I could fit four towel hooks across the wall, which should be plenty and also creates some nice symmetry with the print (well, the symmetry might be more pronounced if I didn’t have to sit in the sink to take this picture).

We also installed a new shower curtain rod (this one firmly attached to the wall instead of the old tension rod) and a new shower curtain.

I think the shower curtain rod is actually supposed to curve away from the tub, but we found having it curve inward gave a little more elbow room since the toilet is so close to the tub, so we did it that way.

Next, we tackled the hand towel. There is no good place to hang a hand towel that is actually in reach of the sink. The sink cabinet itself is particle board, so we can’t really attach anything to it directly. And the little bit of wall next to the sink on the right has both a light switch and an outlet, so a towel would block one or the other of those on that side.

There also is not enough clearance for the medicine cabinet door to open with a towel hanging there (the cabinet is almost flush with the wall). I’ve also never been able to find a freestanding towel bar I liked.

As a result, I had to find a way to attach a hand towel bar to the wall on the left of the sink and still try to keep it within reach, so this is what I came up with.

For storage, we installed this shelf over the toilet (along with a sea turtle decal). The shelf seemed way too large at first, but for some reason it seemed like the perfect size once I loaded it up with stuff (sort of like it receded a little).

I can always switch it out for something smaller, but for now it will hold some extra toilet paper and a plastic bin full of washcloths (once those finally ship…grrr).

Finally, we rounded out the necessities with a baby tub (I’m short, so I went with the raised kind), a kneeling pad, and a matching arm rest.

I still need to switch out the shower sprayer for the kind that detaches and hang up one or two cute hooded towels for baby, but I’m waiting on those to ship as well. For now though, I’m pretty pleased with how everything came together!

~Mel

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Comments

  1. Meg C says

    Mel, looks great! Your son will love it!
    Can you please share the link to your hand towel bar/solution? I have a similar bathroom & have been struggling with the hand towel placement/access too! My current solution is not the right one but your solution looks like the answer!
    Thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  3. Brianna says

    Looks great. I had a whale themed bathroom for my kids too. You forgot the bath toys. I found that a lot of the squishy style ones would get water stuck in them and then mold would grow inside, so stay away from those squirting ones. My kids were happy with plastic cups, a few non water collecting ones, and the rubber ducky they make that says if the water is too hot. When he is out of the baby tub consider getting a cover for the tub spout or putting a washcloth over it during bath time, we had an awful black eye and stitches needed from my son hitting it at 9 months. Also, leave your cell phone and distractions out of the bathroom always. I know it should be common sense, but it is crazy how quickly they can slip under. I had a friend with a vey unfortunate incident because of her being distracted and so I always left mine in a basket on the changing table after undressing my kids for bath time. Just my two cents.

    Reply

    • Mel says

      I actually bought the rubber ducky thermometer! It’s probably a little unnecessary as a thermometer, but I figured it was less likely to hold water like the hollow kind. I ordered some other bath toys and a spout cover, but they are now back ordered, so I might cancel the order until the baby is old enough to use/need them. And yes, good reminder about phones and distractions. We already have a no phones in the bathrooms policy just because I think bathrooms and phones don’t mix, but we’ll double down on that for safety. It was honestly a little weird taking my phone in there just to get photos!

      Reply

  4. Katelyn says

    This is adorable! The only thing I would suggest is adding another hook lower to the floor so your son can (eventually) hang his own towel. You could just use a command hook so you don’t end up with a weird mid-way hole in the wall forever.

    Best wishes for a happy rest of your pregnancy and easy labor!

    Reply

    • Mel says

      Thanks, Katelyn!

      And yes, I’m still on the fence about lower hooks! I unfortunately haven’t found that Command Hooks actually hold towels well (they were one of the many, many hand towel solutions I tried), and I’m thinking bath time will probably be supervised until he’s old enough to reach the hooks with a kiddie stool (the tub we got actually converts to a stool). So, I’m going to see how it goes (and whether or not he takes after me in the height department) before adding another hook.

      Reply

  5. Holley says

    Oh Mel, it’s perfect!!! He will love it as he grows! I had a similar bathroom for my children, it was Nemo themed since we are big Disney nerds! I LOVE your blue color way better than the one we used! Blues are so hard to pick out! Do you have a baby registry? You should link it here and if some of us want to send a little gift we can!!!! I hope your pregnancy is going smoothly and you enjoy every minute!!!

    Reply

    • Mel says

      I considered something more Disney-oriented (Moana, Little Mermaid, or Nemo)! It’s so sweet to think of a registry, but we won’t be having a baby shower, so we didn’t register. I appreciate all the well wishes though!

      Reply

  7. Kim says

    So glad God isn’t having supply chain problems in creating precious babies. 🙂 Congrats and have a barrel of fun with your baby boy. Let the adventure begin.

    Reply

  8. J in OH-IO says

    Mel,
    This is such a fun theme and I really like all the nice touches you have added- especially the whale tail towel hooks! Congratulations and best wishes to you and your family! Hope all your items in the supply chain arrive on time. I second what Kim stated “Let the adventure begin!” Thank you so much for showing us your Under the Sea bathroom! You have great guest posts!

    Reply

  9. Patti says

    It looks wonderful! What a fun bathroom. We have run into the caulk issue in several of our homes, especially kitchen renovations in our last 2 homes. It’s frustrating!

    Reply

    • Mel says

      Thanks! And yes, unpaintable caulk is such a nightmare! It’s actually not the worst thing they did in this bathroom (they hung the medicine cabinet almost right up against the light fixture, so I nearly break the bulbs when replacing them), but it’s definitely up there!

      Reply

  11. Psuchic06 says

    Love the bathroom! It is fun without being “kiddy”. I appreciate the whimsy as an adult & I can only imagine a kid dreaming about under sea adventures!

    Lovely job! Glad you got to be the guest blogger!

    Reply

    • Mel says

      Thanks! It definitely makes the other bathrooms look dull by comparison. I might need to add some whimsy to those as well. 😉

      Reply

  12. Sue S. says

    Very cute but I would advise tucking the shower curtain, or liner if you have one, inside the tub so the water doesn’t run the wrong way with that rod in the opposite direction.

    Reply

    • Mel says

      Good thought! There is a liner tucked into the tub, but flipping the shower curtain rod actually moves the curtain into the tub more than away, so that part shouldn’t affect it.

      Reply

  13. Nancy S says

    Mel, the bathroom make over looks awesome and will something that your son will love. I pray that you have a quick safe delivery.

    Reply

  15. Carla M Edwards says

    Very clever and cute ideas, Mel. They all came together to make a magical bathroom. Enjoy your baby boy. He will change your world for the better (eventually when he starts sleeping better).

    Reply

    • Mel says

      Thanks, Carla! We already don’t sleep through the night (elderly dog, various woodland creatures, etc.), so I’m hoping a few more nighttime wakings won’t phase us. 😉

      Reply

    • Mel says

      Thanks, Tia!

      And yeah, for some reason reversing the shower rod made no difference from inside the tub, but it seemed to create so much space on the outside!

      Reply

  17. Kimberly Vassar says

    Mel, your bathroom is just wonderful. Great job on being creative. Enjoy your baby boy! The time goes by so quickly.

    Reply

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