When we first moved in, this first floor guest bathroom was covered in a red wallpaper with white and pink cherry blossoms. Pretty? Sure it is, but it’s not my style, so I proceeded to remove it without a plan of action. For design clients I would have has a firm plan in place… for our personal projects, that is not always the case. I just knew my goal in the house was to neutralize colors and personalize each space to feel like it was our home, until the real remodeling and redecorating began.

One tidbit of information: This bathroom, and the one on the second floor directly over it, used to be where a second fireplace and chimney was in the home. I first realized this when I found an old drawing of the house and the second chimney is missing. The second clue came from the floor in the attic. Short boards fill where the chimney used to be.

The Before Pictures

I kept putting this DIY project off, knowing the wallpaper was going to be hard to remove. And OMG was it ever! I pulled everything out of my bag of tricks, including water and vinegar, and the wallpaper still came off in tiny pieces. This was not my first rodeo with wallpaper removal, but after this it might be my last! :-)

After the last piece of red paper and black backing came off, and after I washed down the wall of any left over glue and residue, I let out a big sigh of relief and said “let the fun begin!”. I love to paint! I am one of those weirdos that find painting relaxing, so I was looking forward to pulling out my brushes and roller.

For those wondering what the red stripe of paint is. That red stripe was placed under each seam in the wallpaper so that if the seam opened a bit after drying, you would not see white walls.

The Paint Color

I went back and forth on which blue to use. In the past I have used Newburyport Blue from Benjamin Moore, but I wanted something a bit different. Sometimes it takes a leap of faith since for this color, I stood in front of the paint samples and pulled this color chip and had them make it up. No hesitation… No sampling… No regret.

The color is Blue Fedora by Valspar, BUT I used Ace Hardware’s paint, Clark + Kensington, for the first time and loved the flow and coverage. On a side note, I have not used Valspar, so I can not compare them.

The trim is Simply White by Benjamin Moore

Other than the wallpaper, this quick makeover was simple and accomplished with just a few steps. As I mentioned before, I had no plan for this room and just let it happen. I first found the paint color, a few days later I found the shower curtain, mirror, and silver seaweed picture at Homegoods, and then added the blind I had purchased previously for our upstairs bathroom. Once I saw the old window treatment against the blue and white, it had to go and I ended up moving it to the upstairs bathroom, which is identical in size and style to this bathroom.

The last thing we will do to this space is change out the hollow core doors to solid doors. For some reason four doors in the house are hollow and we want to match some of the old doors as close as possible.