Small bathroom, big impact
Piece by piece, from storage organization to tile wall backsplash, we slowly transformed our master bathroom into a Japandi oasis.
The backstory
This master bathroom update was slow and steady, as we found ways to use the space more wisely and once again, transform spaces we’re using even more as a result of the pandemic. At a time, A and I hardly even got ready for work at home in our own bathroom, with me teaching an early AM cycling class and A taking class downtown near work.
Now we use the master bath a lot, and a few small updates later that we were able to do ourselves (and one big one we were not), the master bath has transformed, without any reno.
We started with this, dreaming of what it would be like to put a backsplash here.
One idea after another
The jumping-off point was our Marie Kondo-ed closet, which A wrote about here.
After we had organized the closet, we started to talk about how we didn’t actually have a backsplash behind the sink in this bathroom and that led to some water marks on the wall and all-in-all, a wet wall. While we are new homeowners, we knew that wasn’t good and a backsplash would help.
There’s already a good amount of white subway tile throughout the house, including the square blocked subway tile in this master bath’s shower. So we jumped at the opportunity to do something bold and further our goal of creating a Japandi (Japanese meets Scandinavian) home. Black, matte tile, with black grout. And of course, A couldn’t stop there, so he took a page from the latest bathroom trends and envisioned the tile being vertically stacked. Did he then start to talk about doing it ourselves and where we could get a tile saw? Yes. Did I entertain his idea long? No.
Our great friend and Swiss-army-knife of a home handyman Tom Karlson took on the project. With every project comes at least one small stumbling block and Tom found we had something a little funky going on with the electrical in the bathroom. But from lemon to lemonade, it brought about the thought that if we were going to change out some outlets/switches, we might as well match the tile and go black. We couldn’t be happier with the finished product.
To further our Japandi vision, and to the confusion of my parents, we asked for a trash can for Christmas and switched out the metallic silver can for a black can with a wood top by Yamazaki.
After a few weeks of living in style zen, I started to look up new laundry hampers to better fit the space. In another move to buck tradition, we went with a Crate & Barrel bench where we could hide the dirty laundry, create towel storage and best of all, a bougie seating area we can sit on while we brush our teeth and dream up the next home project.
Flip through below to see the master bath’s phases.
