Having a beautiful guest bathroom is important if you like to entertain.  My guest bathroom was out of date and downright embarrassing.  The builder of our house was either color blind, or a complete idiot that didn’t know that red floor tile and cobalt blue tile on the vanity looks ridiculous.  The bathroom vanity was made of the same poor quality cabinetry that the builder had installed in our kitchen.  It was in a bit better condition, but still, it had to go.

Our guest bath was a great size with an oversized vanity and a toilet.  In fact, the vanity was so oversized, you felt a bit squeezed back in the corner when you were on the toilet.  Too awkward for my taste My plan for the remodel was to tone down the size of the vanity a little bit and make the whole room more appealing.

My husband and I are both bargain hunters, so when we find a bargain, we buy it, sometimes not even knowing what we will use it for.  The bargain I based this bathroom on was porcelain tile.  We got 10 boxes of 18 inch slate look, porcelain tile at a resale store for $10.  The tile was beautiful, so it became the basis of my design and color scheme.

I laid the tile on the diagonal to give the illusion of space.  The vanity was custom made by a craftsman who made it from reclaimed barn wood.  If you’re not noticing a pattern here, the scoop is, I love to recycle, up cycle, in general make something not so fabulous, fabulous! The sink and waterfall faucet are both copper, keeping with my rustic wood and copper theme from the kitchen.  We painted the room a light slate blue that is almost gray which ties in to the colors in the porcelain tile and continues the rustic theme we have going throughout the house.   We replaced the toilet mainly because we recently replaced the toilet in an upstairs bathroom with an elongated toilet and found that it was too large for that space, so we switched those out.

We used reclaimed wood to reframe the existing mirror and we repurposed a light fixture from the ReStore which we bought for $5.  Now we have a completely new guest bath and it cost us just over fifteen hundred dollars.  Our biggest expense was the hand crafted vanity and copper sink.  I also splurged on the cabinet pulls which are buffalo on the doors and canoes on the drawers.

Check out my pictures and let me know what you think.  I know not everyone will love our “Montana Style” but we love it!

Jean Marie Stanberry

Author of “Laying Low In Hollywood”, “One World United”, “The Illusion of Order”, “Blood, Sweat and Fears” and coming February 14, 2015  “Heartless-A Star is Dead”

jeanstanberry.com   @jeanstanberry

y