Mi casa es su casa- bathroom spruce ups

Kitchens and bathrooms, kitchen and bathrooms- that's where you put your money. If any of you watch HGTV or have ever talked to a real estate agent, they all echo the same sentiment- kitchens and bathrooms. Meaning if you are going to invest money in updating your house you should put those dineros into the kitchen or bathroom. Well, given that we don't have a lot of money to put into our kitchen or bathrooms and the short time we plan on staying in the house (we are seriously beginning to outgrow these digs!), a major overhaul of our bathrooms was not in the cards. But that doesn't mean that we couldn't put some minor touches on the bathrooms to bring them closer to the bathroom of my dreams.

Both of the vanity cabinets in our bathrooms were a genric shade of oak and while I would have loved to tear out the cabinets and replace them with something like this, changing our current cabinets to a darker color would have to do. I thought about staining the wood a darker shade but I've never stained wood before and was a bit scared of trying that out. Instead I chose to paint the cabinets, which proved to be quite easy and turned out pretty well.

In our bathroom, I painted the cabinet a really dark brown color from Benjamin Moore and put some wood appliques on the stationary drawer fronts. The color looks more like a black than a dark brown in the current lighting that we have in the bathroom. Some new off-white bath mats and towels and voila- a quick and easy bathroom update.

As close to a whole room picture as I could get. The walls are Ralph Lauren Tangier Island and I picked up the bath mats at Home Goods and got the most wonderfully soft and thick towels from Pottery Barn.

Here you can see the wood appliques that I added to the drawer fronts. I ordered these appliques from here, and they had a huge selection with super fast shipping. Once I received these appliques I gave them a quick coat of paint and glued them to the drawer fronts with wood glue. I love the idea of these appliques and am holding myself back from putting them all over my house! All in all, I think we can say that the bathroom looks much better than it did when we first moved in!

In the upstairs bathroom I finally found a place to use a paint color that I have been itching to use. My sister had this color on the brick surrounding of her fireplace and I really liked the color but couldn't figure out where it would fit in my house. So when I got the motivation to paint the vanity cabinet in this room I knew that I was going to use Black Bean Soup from Benjamin Moore. One problem was that once I painted the cabinet that color, the wall color didn't look very good. I had painted the walls of this bathroom the color of a Tiffany box when we first moved in and while I liked the color, I was looking to change it to a more muted, soothing color. I decided to paint the walls Benjamin Moore Sea Haze and whew, I love this color! It is a grey-bluish-greenish color that really changes dependent on the lighting. Chris thinks its a boring color, I think it is soothing.
And just one final note- a product rave. This was the first time that I used Benjamin Moore paint and though it was quite pricey, it was great paint! One coat covered incredibly well and went on the walls and cabinet really nicely. And with the great coverage you could get away with buying less paint which would bring the price closer to the price of other paints.