A DIY powder room design. AKA “And We’ll Never be Royals”.

DIY powder room design…

Bathroom design, powder room design…they are some of our favorite things.

You know what’s NOT one of our favorite things? Purple. They say purple is the color of royalty. And Lorde may have said it best…”we’ll never be royals.” Good jam, right?

There’s another line in that song about “trippin in the bathroom.” And that’s pretty much what happened here too because this was our “royal” powder room when we moved out here to our house in the country…

Complete with broken vinyl roller shade, and luxurious linoleum, anyone who thought this lavender loo was staying “as is” was STRAIGHT trippin.

Here’s a little video synopsis of the powder room design and transformation:

Powder room design and renovation process…here goes!

THIS “royal” needed a flush…

So after just two weeks living in our new pad, I decided on a new powder room design, and I started ripping the old one apart. As Lorde said “we crave a different kind of buzz”…well, this was mine. Destruction of the purple-people-eating-privy!

Ahhh, the sweet sights of progress! In our home, that’s seeing something like seeing a new powder room design take shape, and getting the child labor force going on installing cement board.

A love of DIY is engrained at a very young age here.

Down go the Carrara marble subway tiles.

The powder room design really took off once I found the pedestal sink. For weeks, I’d been scouring Craigslist for a vintage pedestal, and when I saw this one, I knew I had a winner.

This baby is a 1930’s-1940’s cast iron sink. It was absolutely stunning. Had a bit of rust, and needed to be re-plumbed, but for $80, I think I got a GREAT deal.

My father came along with me to pick it up…he wasn’t so impressed, to put it mildly. Sure, it had issues, but that’s universal, right? And, after all, we aren’t royals…we can deal with a little rust.

OK, so maybe more than a little rust.

We had the sink professionally refinished. Set us back about $200, which, when all was said and done, was about what we would have paid for a new sink. And in my opinion, this one was just so much cooler.

Now, there is no more rust, and we were even able to save the original faucet and “waste” stopper.

The walls are done in a burlap grasscloth. We used the leftovers we had saved from our family room in the last house.

A couple of shots of the completed floor tile…

which we laid in a herringbone pattern.

Not the easiest DIY tile installation, but once you get the pattern down, it’s not so bad.

The powder room is situated in a hallway that did not offer much in the way of natural light. And in a ten-foot distance, there were FOUR swinging doors, which in a house with three kids was a recipe for a lot of noggin bumps and bruises.

And it felt like kind of a dark maze. To help make the hall feel wider and brighter,

we took out the old door, and added a pocket door and transom window. These changes made a big difference in the bathroom, as well as the hallway.

Beadboard was added around the perimeter of the room, and of course, because of my ongoing chandelier fetish, the room got one of those as well as a couple of pretty sconces.

All in all, we may not be royal here at the Heathered Nest, but we feel like we kind of gave this room the royal treatment on a peasant-ish budget. And we’re thrilled to say that this little pint-sized powder room has been a big hit in the print world! It was published in USA Today’s HOME magazine,

as well as Cottages & Bungalows and This Old House magazines!

If you’re curious, YES, that is Miss Mustard Seed taking photos, in OUR john 🙂

And now our wash-room work-over is complete. So, come on over Lorde…promise you won’t be trippin in this bathroom now. We’re just stylin’ and profilin’ up in here.

Pssst…before you go, I sure would love to hang out with you again really soon! Sign up now and get a FREE copy of “Builder-Grade To Beautiful: 10 Totally Transformative Home Decorating Solutions, All Under $100!” Click here to enter your email or on the image below. Your copy will be sent right away!