It has been a few months since the last time I shared an update on Maple Hollow Cottage. Although we moved into this house 2.5 years ago, we have slowly been making our own mark on the place. Technically, this powder bathroom has actually been done for a while now. I just haven’t gotten around to sharing it. But, thanks to being 8 months pregnant, I am in my nesting phase which includes deep cleaning this whole house from top to bottom. Today’s project was to deep clean our powder bathroom. Not that our house gets very unclean, but ya know…just time to sanitize everything, give the porcelain a thorough scrub and make sure everything (including those baseboards and blinds) gets a good dusting. Once I was done and stepped back to admire a sparkly, squeaky clean bathroom I realized it was a great opportunity to finally get some pictures of it to share on the blog!

Although this house was built in 1984, a few renovations had already been done on it before we bought it. It has had an extension added on, resulting in an enormous kitchen that I LOVE (peep it here), and the powder bathroom was actually redone at that point too. But…it was kind of Plain Jane. And you all know that’s not my style. As nice as it was, I had to give it my signature style. Here is a glimpse of what it looked like before. I pulled this from the original listing and unfortunately, I only have this one picture but I think it gives you a good idea of the vibes.

Here is a comprehensive list of everything we did to make this little space our own:

• We replaced the toilet. I’m not sure how old that toilet was, or if the yellow tint was original or happened over time. But we got a new, pure white beaut and Adam Youtubed his way to installing it.
• We took down the heavy drapery and instead opted for new white woodgrain blinds with no curtains to let more light in.
• The light fixture was…not our style. So we replaced it with a modern and sleek fixture.
• We added wallpaper! And y’all know I love my wallpaper. Although I would slap some paper on every wall in this house, I know I have to um, not. But a powder bathroom is a great place to add some pizzazz.
• We hung a towel rack so we didn’t have to just have a towel laying loosey goosey on the counter.
• Then we finished it off with themed decorations and voila!

If you’re wondering why we went with a London theme, there’s a few reasons. Number one is that we always add in personal meaning to our homes. Our first home’s powder bathroom was Africa themed. I still miss that bathroom every day…it was amazing. With this one, we wanted to incorporate yet another theme that meant something. If you don’t already know this, I lived in London (or actually, about 45 min outside of London) for some time. It’s where I graduated high school! The perks of being an Army brat, am I right? Those years of my life shaped so much of who I am and it was so fun putting together a little space in our house to honor that part of me. And secondly, there was a specific art piece that I had commissioned that I knew needed to have its own place of honor in our home. It’s a little funky and I knew it would need to go somewhere special. Now, I know that a bathroom doesn’t really feel like something special – BUT this powder bathroom is right off of our kitchen and is the bathroom nearest to our patio. Since we do a lot of hosting, this bathroom gets a lot of action. So, in all reality, the art piece gets a lot of viewing and that’s really the main goal. The art is a “cheeky icon” piece by Meghan Jones out of Dallas. She takes famous figures and mixes wild patterns with fun, cheeky accents. After seeing some of her other pieces, I knew immediately that I had to have her make me one of my hero and icon, Queen Elizabeth I. I thought it would be so fun to have a painting of her cheekily holding a dirty martini. I really can’t think of something that represents my personality more than fun lemon print, QEI and a dirty martini. I mean…come on. It turned out exactly like I thought it would and it’s my favorite piece of art in our home! So we built a bathroom around it, ha!

There are so many fun touches to this bathroom, from a London skyline ring plate to the towel rack I grabbed for $5 at a thrift shop and painted the base to the iron knight coat rack above the toilet featuring horse race medallions and pink ribbon. It’s a super unique, quirky and yet classic powder bathroom that I’m so happy to share with you all!

So let’s take a step inside…

XOXO, Thessali

bathroom decor bathroom design home decor home renovations home updates london themed bathroom london themed room powder bathroom design power bathroom