Before/After: Bathrooms
"Like everything else, Preppiness begins in the home." - Lisa Birnbach
The summer serenity cottage is not about marble baths, or an at-home spa. The summer serenity cottage is about the simplicity of Great Lakes camping, and the practicality of peace and quiet. Preppy values.
The summer serenity cottage has two almost identical bathrooms: one upstairs and one downstairs. The upstairs bathroom is not situated as a grand ensuite master bathroom, and the downstairs bathroom is not set up to be a chic guest bath or powder room.
And that's ok!
"Summer serenity cottage" is what I am affectionately calling the house that I am renting this summer, thanks to some verbiage suggestions from my mother! I am renting the cottage to escape the ridiculously bad roof job inflicted upon my regular place in a downtown Chicago neighborhood, which has caused intolerable noise and vibration in what was once an urban haven. When sleep became impossible at my regular place, and working from home became impossible, and running away to a hotel over and over was clearly unsustainable, it was time to get off-site.
The "cottage" is on Chicago's far north side, in what used to be countryside beyond the city limits. The moment I walked in, I felt I was in a cottage in Michigan or Wisconsin. The house was built in 1906, and has not been much updated since then; this has pros and cons as you can imagine, and as you have seen in this blog if you have been reading it. (My regular place was built in 1903 and completely updated in the 1990s and ongoing, which also has pros and cons.)
While the plumbing in the 1906 house was evidently updated at some point, possibly in the 1950s which is when I estimate the kitchen was updated, this is still an old house without contemporary upgrades or updates. The bathrooms are not luxury spas, but are more camping-style: get in, get out : )
The age of the house is part of its charm!
So, rather than try to make the non-contemporary though functional bathrooms into something they are not, my goal was to create a clean environment with a simple attractiveness, aligned with my overall decorating theme for this project of Great Lakes nautical style.
In thinking about the bathrooms, I thought of a preppy summer camp in Wisconsin that I attended as a child before I knew what preppy was or that I was preppy. I thought of a Thanksgiving weekend in college spent on an aunt and uncle-in-law's boat with a few of their friends; we slept and showered on the boat and had a marvelous time, and I discovered I love sleeping on boats just as I love being awake on them.
So here we go!
Before
The upstairs bathroom came with a filthy shower curtain, which the owner said just needed to be washed. I thought it needed to be burnt. I did neither, but, wearing gardening gloves, bundled it into a trash bag and stashed it in the closet where I stashed similar items (e.g. doormats, curtains). I'm grateful to be renting this house, and grateful to the owner for letting me rent it. I was as surprised to see a filthy shower curtain as you are, and grateful to have found new cotton ones that I washed to softness and that fit my decor theme!
After my cleaning service cleaned the bathrooms, they were still quite dirty. The cleaning professional they sent did a quick once-over but missed cleaning the shower rods and radiators, among other things, even though she was a very sweet young lady and even though I booked what was called the Super Deep Clean. (I miss having that one amazing cleaning lady, you know, who always comprehended what needed to be done, analyzed the best way to do it, and then did it, thoroughly and professionally, just as every professional aims to do, no matter the profession.)
So, trusty Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products in hand, yours truly scrubbed these bathrooms clean, which took some time.
Here is the upstairs bathroom, before removal of the filthy shower curtain:
Downstairs bathroom, before:
After
Here's what I did with the upstairs bathroom, including adding two identical new (striped! cotton!) shower curtains, since the bathtub doesn't meet both walls but stands partially out into the room (as you can see in the Before photos), almost like an old-fashioned claw-foot tub but without the claw feet.
I added uniform white light bulbs to the vanity strip, though one of the sockets doesn't work and nor does the electrical outlet in this bathroom -- so if I were a man there would be no electric shaving but old school only.
I also added some art to harmonize with the treetop and nature theme I've brought into the upstairs, since treetops and nature what you see -- and hear: birdsong! -- from the upstairs windows of the cottage, and touches of pink for femininity:
Since I decorated my bedroom upstairs in green and white to harmonize with the beautiful treetop elevation, and with touches of blue to express the blue-and-white overall color scheme I chose for the cottage, I carried this green-and-white-with-bits-of-blue theme into the upstairs bathroom, and into the adjacent walk-in closet that I created from a spare room and will show you soon!
Here's what I did with the downstairs bathroom, in which I stayed true to my overall blue-and-white color scheme and nautical / beach house concept, with a few extra little bits of color:
I brought the towels from my regular place, tossed some flowers into a deli container that I recycled from its butternut squash soup beginnings and to which I added ribbon -- I might do a whole post on decorating with ribbon -- and added some nautical touches including a $1 yard sale dock picture. Of course, all of the textiles in both bathrooms are made of cotton -- natural fibers only for us true preps! : ) -- and that's where we are!
[Update] I hung a nautical-themed element on the outside of the guest bathroom door as a door marker so that guests -- and I -- would know at a glance which door in a row of 3 (guest room, cat room, guest bathroom) is indeed the guest bathroom. I also hung a nautical mixed media piece by yours truly to carry the themes through!
I also added an additional piece of art to finish the upstairs bathroom: a delightful collage made from newsprint by local artist Catherine Elizabeth, in line with the blue-and-white-and-green conversation.
Sweet Jorji the cat likes the bathrooms too, including her cotton bath mats!
Your friend in decorating,
Valerie
Feel free to say hi via email as well: valerie.beck@post.harvard.edu.
Thank you!
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