Reveal: Carolina Cottage Bathroom

Carolina Cottage Bathroom

The Carolina Cottage Bathroom is so stinkin’ cute! I was so excited to be able to reveal the outside of the Carolina Cottage to you and EVEN MORE thrilled to show you the inside. The overwhelming support I have had from this community is amazing. I will be putting this little pace on AirBnb for you all very soon! My newsletter community will get special access and maybe even a giveaway or a discount code ;).

Retro Design Elements

There is only one bathroom in this little house, so I worked hard to made it extra special! One of my main goals was to keep the house true to the time period it would have been at its best: the 1940’s and 1950’s. You will see that reflected in many of the design elements.

In case you don’t remember how far we’ve come here – the entire bathroom was gutted. After I bought the house on Facebook Marketplace {without telling my husband 😬} we discovered much of the house was rotted. Sadly, it was falling in on itself in several places, including the bathroom. Mark started to lovingly call this home “Misery Manor” after we started work on it. It seems like so many things went in ways we would have never anticipated, but she turned out pretty dang cute if I say so myself.

Bathroom Demo Revelations

In addition to the flooring needing to be redone, I had to pull off all of the wall coverings. We pleasantly discovered floor to ceiling pine tongue and groove! Unfortunately, the top portion had several places that had been cut out over the years. And of course, all the wood surrounding the tub was ruined due to severe water damage.

I decided to leave the lower tongue and groove as it was and on the upper part of the wall, we salvaged what we could and used in other places of the home that needed repair. After removal and cleaning, we placed sheet rock on the top portion where the wood couldn’t be saved.

The very cute flooring is actually sheet vinyl. In the last home we remodeled ,we used sheet vinyl and I love how low maintenance and affordable it is. I found this particular basketweave bathroom floor at Georgia Carpet Industries. I ended up saving thousands by using sheet vinyl {which I really needed after all we had to do at this cottage.}

Creating Storage

Since there is only one tiny bathroom in the entire home sans storage, I knew we had to make some layout changes. {In case you missed it, we actually pulled off the back of the cottage entirely and made some big changes to create more space in here.} For the bathroom, we initially thought we would build shelves in, but then I came across this cabinet.

The cabinet fit so perfectly for our linen storage, I couldn’t pass it up. It also saved us time and money! While it may be hard to tell, the cabinet is actually metal and totally makes me thing of all those vintage metal medicine cabinets.

We added these cute glass shelves and medicine cabinets above the sinks for more storage as well. The medicine cabinets had to be surface mounted. The two supporting house beams run directly behind both of these mirrors. {Told you this place was full of surprises!}

Scrub a Dub Console Sinks and a Tub

I knew immediately I wanted to use console sinks because of how amazing they look. Console sinks were popular in the 1950’s and since we wanted this cottage to have some more “adorable” historically inspired elements, this was the way to go!

We were able to put two sinks in which was pretty amazing since we had such limited space to start. I love Vintage Tub and Bath and knew they would have just what I was looking for! I chose these sinks with chrome and an eight inch faucet drill and they are more perfect than I could have imagined. For faucets, I’m a sucker for a cross handle and found these very affordable, wide spread options on Amazon.

Lighting makes a huge difference in any room so I wanted to choose wisely here. I went to one of my favorite restoration replica shops, Van Dyke’s and was able to find these cuties! These lights are truly vintage inspired! They go so well with the time period of the home I was trying to emulate. Many of you know how much I love Van Dykes and have also used a lot of their reproduction pieces in my own home!

Bathtub Refinishing

This might seem crazy, but we were able to keep the original tub. I wasn’t sure how the refinishing would end up, but it looks like a brand new tub!

After more research on the design elements, I added 4×4 white square tiles to keep everything period appropriate where possible. We also added some shower niches since there was no where to store anything before. And we finished it off with a Shower Trim Kit from Amazon.

In case you didn’t know already, Mark did all of the plumbing in the entire home. He’s a former pro so his skills are coming in very handy here. However, he doesn’t miss crawling under houses for work one bit! {If you want to read more about his incredible family business story, click here.}

Once the tub was refinished, I finished the soft vintage look with a double curtain rod and these sweet curtains. I really like a double rod because it allows for the functional shower curtain on the inside and then the cute curtains outside. 

Finishing Touches

I chose Chrome finishes, because it’s what would have been in this home when it was built all those years ago. I was so tempted to use gold, but classic and timeless always wins in an older home!

The main ceiling light is some of my favorite go-to School House Lighting and so affordable. The doorknobs are actually original to the house and spectacular. My Dad actually cleaned them up with a soap and elbow grease and they couldn’t be prettier!

For paint colors, I went with the same blue we’ve used in the rest of the home {Nantucket Fog by Benjamin Moore}. There is no natural lighting in the bathroom, so it actually gives this blue a richer tone. I feel like having the walls and trim all painted the same color make such a bold statement. {I dropped all the colors into an easily downloadable palette in my resource library. If you subscribe you will receive the password!}

Friends, I would love to know what you think! Drop me a comment with what you love most or any questions!