I’m finally getting around to sharing our bathroom update! It has been a crazy month around here: I left my job, where I worked from home full-time, to pursue opportunities here within our community. Making that decision was incredibly difficult, but after praying about it and talking it over with DP, I knew in my gut it was the right decision to make. When I resigned, I had no idea what I’d end up doing here in New Bern. I had to trust that God would lead me to the right opportunity in His time, and kept my spirits up while spending hours looking for jobs online.
When I couldn’t find anything fitting and didn’t hear back from the few jobs I did apply for, I decided to reach out to local businesses I’d like to learn more about and find out if they had any positions (even internships!) available. With interior design being my passion, I found a designer here in town and to my surprise, she called me back! After meeting with her and getting to know more about her business, I was thrilled to be offered a position. I’m now working as an intern throughout the summer and will start as an employee in August. I am incredibly excited about this opportunity and can’t wait to learn as much as possible about interior design through this hands-on experience.
Ok – time to talk about our bathroom now 
Aside from the office – which I had painted before our furniture was delivered when we moved in – the hall bathroom is the one room in the house that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. It has such beautiful features and just needed some TLC to make it shine.
In this “before” photo you can see the beautiful transom window, chair rail, and beadboard that really give the bathroom character.
When we moved in, we replaced the homeowner’s decor with ours. I completely forgot to take a “before” photo with our decor, but here’s a photo of our decor in our Corpus rental house.
I purchased this decor when I lived in the Bogard St. house in college, so it’s been around a while. Adding this decor to the bathroom helped, but it still felt very small and very dark. As much as I love the birds…they had to go 
.
Paint and new decor can make a HUGE difference! After much debate I chose SW Accessible Beige as the paint color. I would have loved to paint this room SW Sea Salt, but the bedroom across the hall is a shade of blue/grey and our bedroom is a blue/teal, so I needed something to neutralize this space the same way the brown had.
Sea Salt (left), Accessible Beige (right)
After selecting and having the paint color approved by our landlord, it was time to roll up our sleeves and get started! Thank goodness for DP because I could not reach the high parts! It took two coats and touch up to cover the brown, but the work was well worth it.
The lighter shade totally opened up this space and brought in a ton of natural light. Even though the photo below was taken at night (it took us two full days to get the job done!), you can see how much brighter the space is.
Then it was time for the fun part – decor! I mentioned earlier this year that I envisioned floating shelves for above the toilet. My handy dad – who built the farmhouse desk for the office – was just the man for the job. I went to my parents’ house to celebrate my birthday and he built the shelves for me as a birthday gift. I took them home and stained them Minwax Jacobean before hanging them. He also built two longer floating shelves for our master bath. That’s next on the to-stain-and-hang list!
Hanging them proved to be quite the endeavor, but once we got the hang of it, it was smooth sailing! Yet again, DP came to the rescue. Those things are heavy!
Once the shelves were hung (and didn’t fall…) we did a happy dance 
. I couldn’t wait to style these shelves and I shopped my house to find just what I needed. When it comes to bathrooms, clean and simple is always a safe way to go and I’m really happy with how these turned out.
So, here we go…the final product!
We received a monogrammed shower curtain as a wedding gift that I have been dying to use and it’s the perfect fit for this bathroom. The bathmats came from JC Penny, which I got for 30% off (score!), along with new white towels. All in all, we were able to update this bathroom for under $200 including the supplies for the floating shelves.
I’m so happy to have this project behind us! It feels like the perfect illustration of this season in life for us – new beginnings that feel big and bright.
Thanks for reading!
