Half Bath Redo

Today's entry is a complete redo (minus replacing the toilet) of the half bath.  I have never taken down wallpaper before and just a heads up....all of the bathrooms have wallpaper.  So by the time I'm finished with this house, I'll be a professional.  :)
Here is the before:

The vanity is solid oak.  It's beautiful, but it's HUGE for a 1/2 bath. 
The top is an outdated cultured marble.

Don't you LOVE this wallpaper????

 Because this room is tiny, I'll have to help with some details so you can envision it.  The light fixture is gold, the faucet is gold and the toilet paper holder is....you guessed it!
I tried the Piranha system sold at Lowe's to remove the wallpaper.  I may have more of an opinion after doing the other two bathrooms.  This wallpaper is foil, which may be why it came off in two layers rather than as a whole sheet.  It wasn't terrible, just time consuming and I kept hearing my high school English teacher say "patience is a virtue." :)

The paint I picked for this room is only on the back wall behind the potty.  The other walls are a lighter shade of the same color...just to keep it from being really dark in a small room.  Here's the reveal and then the story behind it.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm having a hard time inserting a close up above the potty....

• Greg painted the gold fixture in a satin nickel....he also painted the toilet paper holder too.  It's recessed and I'm almost positive they don't make those any more!  We didn't see them in any of the stores, but we didn't look super hard either.  I'm pretty pleased with how the fixture and TP holder both turned out.

• After peeling off the wallpaper, the walls had to be spackled and sanded.  This was crazy time consuming.  I thought the wallpaper would come off and I could just paint.  OH NO....that's not the case.  The walls were primed, which definitely helped, but several areas (especially around the sink) were extremely difficult to get smooth.  I hope you'll never notice, but it's not perfect around the sink alcove.  I spackled and sanded and painted, the spackled and sanded and painted again.  It was obvious that when the house was built, the intention was to keep that vanity in there until the end of the world.

New baseboard and 1/4 round.....Looks SO good....the picture just doesn't do it any justice at all!
(And I'm claiming about 80% of the installation.)

Here are a few pics from the past week. 

I'm pretty sure the side guards were superglued to the wall....They were really hard to remove....
and tore up the sheetrock :(

This was my workspace for a week!

We had to remove the door to get the vanity out....the house was built around this vanity!

Would I do anything different?  YES!  I really wanted a pedestal sink and due to the installation of the pedestal, it's not going to happen.  This is totally fine and the options are wide open.  What I would do different is to research sinks FIRST and then proceed.  For now, you can use the 1/2 bath, but you can't wash your hands!  Searching for a mirror too....

Will post more when it's 100% complete.

Enjoy your day....and give me your feedback?  What kind of sink and mirror would you use!?

Jana