Category: Bathroom refresh

Decor ideas for your midcentury bathroom

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Now that we got the base of our refresh done in the bathroom — tile cleaning, painting, etc. the fun part of decorating has commenced! I wanted to share some of the new goodies I’ve gotten to brighten up the space. I never really had spent time before bringing color or spice into the room and now I’m much happier — not done, but happy!

I know many of you might balk at fake plants, but I really love this larger plant on my counter that I got from Amazon — it comes in a set of two and in a really quality gray pot. In my bathrooms, I do better with these, and get the greenery I love! Same with the small succulent — it’s part of a great set where I spread them around the house. And I’m trying to bring in the pop of turquoise with this beautiful candle from Home Goods.

Love this large, artificial potted plant from Amazon, this small succulent in a set also from Amazon and this great candle came from Home Goods.

I have never gotten fancy soap dispensers, but I fell in love with this orange/peach glass soap dispenser. It brings a perfect pop of color tying into my countertop and sink, and has chrome finishes which matches my new vanity light perfectly!

Beautiful orange / peach soap dispenser.

I have long wanted a shelf above the toilet area and I scored this one on Prime Day this year. It’s very low profile and isn’t overpowering. I pulled a turquoise vase from our bedroom, and put it alongside a canvas picture I have had for awhile. That picture isn’t what I imagine permanently, but until I thrift or buy something better, it’ll do and bring in the turquoise I had imagined! I found a great smelling reed diffuser at Home Goods and added one of the succulents from this set to the shelf.

Love this shelf from Amazon, decorated with some goodies I already had, along with a pretty reed diffuser from Home Goods and another succulent from this set.

As you know there’s always tweaking to decor, so I’m sure I’ll find some great new goods in some future thrifting adventures and I’ll just have to keep my eyes open!

Midcentury bathroom refresh

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We’ve been plugging away on a minor bathroom refresh — not a gut by any means but refreshing and working with what we have. We still have two bathrooms in our house (on main floor) with all original finishes. They are great bones and easy to work with, to keep the vintage feel.

I started in this project with working hard to clean the tile and steam it to as close to perfection as I can. It was installed in 1960, so I most definitely didn’t get to perfection, but it’s much better and cleaner than it was!

We knew we wanted to paint. I was toying with these two colors but in the end we decided it was too close to the tile color and wanted something different.

We went ‘shopping’ to our downstairs closet that houses all our paint from previous projects. Low and behold there was a full gallon of this Gray Horse from Benjamin Moore which we loved in a prior project. So, I was ready and had time to paint AND this full can was in front of me ready to use. Off we went with the Gray Horse. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical, because I was worried this color was ‘too cool’ for the room, but once it was done, I LOVED it! And now we can play with decor to bring in different color accents.

The biggest transformation for us was our new vanity light. We previously had a very basic three-bulb light. This 4-bulb globe vanity light really transformed the space!

I will keep you posted on our finishing design touches. I have a great shelf I want to put up, we’re going to get some new towels and a rug and likely some plants. Now the more fun stuff!

Picking a midcentury bathroom vanity light

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Next step in our bathroom refresh is to pick a light to replace the boring, standard one someone added at some point. Here’s what’s in the room now:

Original tile and vanity — need to replace the light.

We didn’t find any used / thrifted lights off Craigslist or Offerup, so we’re going ahead with getting a brand new one, staying with a midcentury, chrome look.

Having new, brighter light in here will really help brighten up the room. It’s a fairly small bathroom space so more light will really make it feel bigger and brighter.

I asked my awesome Insta followers for some help in picking from a few options. I narrowed down to three options — all with a chrome, 4-bulb layout to get the most light we can.

These are the three I came down to. The popular vote from my followers was B — which is awesome because that’s also the one that we decided would be best as well. See my homegrown little Photoshop mockup as well. I am a sucker for any globe lights…I think they just look so perfect in a midcentury space.

I found it on Amazon for about $170 — so we’re going to give it a try.

They also had it in a beautiful gold color. I really am loving all the gold-fixtured bathrooms lately, but with everything else in the bathroom being chrome — hardware, shower stall and towel bars, we’re going to stick with it.

So we have a few more steps before we get to putting the light up…still working on cleaning the tile to no end, need to caulk, paint and just get prepped for that space.

I’ll loop back with photos once we get it up!

A few other lights I love!

Restoring original, vintage tile

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For any of you living in a midcentury home, you likely have some killer, original tile in your space. We have two bathrooms that are currently untouched, built in 1960. As you would expect, they are filled with glorious mosaic tile on the floor — full of midcentury charm. As you also likely know if you own a home from the 1960s, tile and materials from back then seem to last WAY longer than what is done nowadays. We love the tile and just want to restore and preserve what we have.

Our newest project began on our ‘brown bathroom’, as we call it. It’s basically our guest bathroom, as we don’t have a master bath, like many homes from this era. Here’s what we’re working with:

It’s really a great core and some beautiful tile. We’re embarking on a low budget refresh / small renovation to just spruce it up.

Step one is working to get the tile as cleaned up as we can:

You can see the grout is pretty dirty. I asked my amazing Insta followers for advice and many suggested a steamer. I was confident it would work, but my husband thought otherwise.

Well…results are amazing! We are not yet done…this is a lot of elbow grease and time. But I got this incredible product from Amazon and it’s working wonders.

I am just pushing the small nozzle around grout line by grout line, scrubbing, wiping away the gunk (which is amazing to see coming up, by the way), and doing the process over and over in each spot. Taking a small section at a time. I’ve got some trouble spots in the middle of the room that is proving tougher to clean up, but I’m going to keep plugging away.

Plan is to get it as clean as we can, then seal it up.

Follow along to watch progress @the_mod_bar.