Surprise! Bathroom Reno! (Current and Future Plans)

So, I've been holding out on you. I've been so busy getting our living room together (with more updates to come in the near future!) that I didn't even mention that my boyfriend is currently downstairs destroying the world's ugliest bathroom!

Here's what started with:

Yikes! This bathroom is tinnnnnnnyyyyyyyyy and awkwardly laid out (see: super off-center window). The shower is enclosed on both sides and no matter how much I'd scrub, it never felt clean. The floor tile was a lllllooooovely hunter green and cracked in many places. The vanity was functional but clearly DIY-painted and ugly. Not pictured, to the left of the shower (so in the lower left corner of this picture) was built-in shelving that was overly, unusably deep and narrow. All in all, the bathroom was just really not working for the three people that use it daily.

So currently it looks more like this:

Cameo credits to my handsome boyfriend, who has done virtually all of the work here. Since these photos were taken, he's completely demo'd the room down to studs, ripped out all flooring, installed the new shower fixture, and installed water-appropriate drywall. Lots more to go, but I'm so proud of the progress he's already made!


Our the goal is eventually to get the bathroom to look like this:

Latest Bathroom Ideas by mjchirpich-1 featuring an oval basket

Points of conversation:

• Floor: We are installing this ceramic wood-look tile, which happens to nearly perfectly match the laminate flooring we installed in the rest of the basement and will hopefully help the bathroom seem more continuous with the rest of the basement. 
• Shower: The shower itself will be a glass enclosure with the big square slate tiles for most of it and a detail of the thin tiles, only we're only going to use them as single rows of thin tiles rather than the whole 12x12 tile.
• Storage: We're all pretty minimalistic people, so we don't need tons of storage for our toiletries. Our plan is to use this Ikea Hemnes vanity (we only need the base since I picked up the sink itself at Ikea's scratch 'n dent section), and we'll pair it with our new favorite Ikea Vittsjo bookcase to store all of our toiletries. An Ikea hack is in our future--I want to build a wooden box with a door for the second-from-the-top section of the bookshelf, as I've tried to ghetto-rig together on Polyvore as shown above. Then we'll store toilet paper in a basket on the top of the bookcase, cottonballs, Qtips, etc, in closed containers on the shelves, with open storage for pretty new towels.
• Lighting: We're still trying to decide on vanity lighting. We both want something pretty simple and unfussy, so this 3-light option may do the trick. I hate that every bathroom lighting option I've seen just screeeeeeeams 'builder grade bathroom,' though. Still on the lookout for something more interesting.
• Mirror: We haven't decided on a mirror either but would ideally like to find an old wooden frame and have our existing mirror cut to fit into that to warm up the space a bit. Alternatively, I kind of like this porthole mirror from Target, but the boy doesn't like that it's round (???) and may be too nautical. It may also be a super ugly finish, but I haven't been able to see one in person.
• Decor: I'm planning to use my favorite prints from one of my favorite artists, Claire Elsaesser, which I've already been using and loving even in our old ugly bathroom. I'd like to add some fun hooks for towels, like these from Anthropologie (although I'd probably get plain black or white ones and DIY the stripes myself--$18/hook is crazy-talk!). Add in some pretty green towels, or maybe some Turkish towels from Etsy, and I'd call it good :)

I'm excited to see how this all comes together and will of course post updates along the way. For previous iterations of my plans for this room (I've been plotting its demise and rebirth for over a year!), see here and here!