Powder Room Makeover – Vintage Green Bead Board

As promised, I’m back with the official kick-off of the POWDER ROOM MAKEOVER EXTRAVAGANZA! Which is an over-the-top way of saying I’m painting and wallpapering and DIYing my booty off. It’s not the least bit glamorous.

Last week, I shared how I went all goo-goo eyed in Chicago and gathered up a whole heap of design ideas for our downstairs bathroom. Because honestly, I was drawing a blank on this one…

Orange and beige and travertine tile. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with orange and beige and travertine tile, but you just know when something isn’t your style. This was one of those rooms. Nice but not me (or Robert… what he likes matters to me too).

(Want to see the powder room’s final reveal? Click here for the full “after” tour.)

So I spent an afternoon painting over the orange with some Benjamin Moore Classic Gray paint I had leftover from painting our foyer. Wallpaper is going above the bead board (I shared 30 of my favorites here), so to make sure that orange didn’t show through the wallpaper, that almost-white gray paint came in mighty handy.

For the bead board, all I knew was I wanted a light minty vintage (dare I say slightly retro?) green. It took me about 8 paint samples to get right (the people at the Lowe’s paint desk run screaming when they see me coming), but I landed on the winner:  Benjamin Moore Hollingsworth Green.

The color is exactly what I envisioned! But, of course, photos don’t nearly do it justice. Just take my word for it on this one. It’s a stunning color. Blame the photographer. Narrow, dark spaces are really tricky that way.

I can’t wait to see it once I paint / swap out the oil rubbed bronze fixtures in here for antique brass. It’s a totally different route for me. I’m usually an ORB fan all the way, but this was a room I really wanted to have fun with and experiment a little bit.

I taped these two wallpaper samples on the wall and the winner, to me, is definitely the black and white with the large florals. All the heart eyes! It’s a modern take on a classic, which is my whole goal in this space. But I’m getting ahead of myself… more on that later.

So to kick off the usual handy dandy to-do list, here’s where we are to call this powder room complete:

• Paint bead board
• Paint over orange wall
• Paint mirror frame
• Hang wallpaper
• Swap out light fixture
• Swap out towel bar / TP holder
• Paint inside of door
• Paint door trim and crown molding
• Install new sink faucet
• Gray wash vanity
• Rip out tile floor
• Install hexagon tile floor
• Decorate!

Are you in the middle of a bathroom makeover yourself right now? I’d love to hear all about it! With 2 more bathrooms in our house needing even more work than this one, we’ll take every piece of advice we can get.