Living vicariously

Apologies again for being a terrible blogger, between quitting my job and starting somewhere new, my life has been a bit hectic to say the least! It also means that all my inspiration to have my garden looking gorgeous has all but gone out the window!

In the mean time I've been helping my parents around their place and living vicariously through their zhoosh-ing of their home. The most recent task was updating their bathroom... now for the record this bathroom was renovated at least 15 years ago, so it definitely needs to be completely redone. However, for the interim, the decision was made to paint it black and add a chandelier which Mum has lying around the house (as you do...). Let me know what you think of the results.

PS - damn bathrooms are hard to photograph, especially when they are this tiny!

The Befores:

As you can see the bathroom is relatively plain and in a somewhat traditional style - black and white floor tiles laid diagonally, white wall tiles with black feature tiles. The mirror needs to be replaced and the pedestal sink is a little outdated.

During:

Picking a paint colour (and making sure we were happy with such a bold choice!). We ended up using "black orbit" which is a British paint colour if I recall correctly. When it's wet it looks navy, but it dries darker. It's not a pure black, but is pretty close.

After:

Ta da! OK we aren't 100% finished, as you can probably see the door and door frame needs to be painted and there are some finishing touches to be added. Mum is thinking of putting some black and white prints on the wall and possibly putting a black frame around the mirror. I'll keep you posted.

Overall we are really happy with how it's turned out. It makes for a pretty dramatic statement to say the least! When we were picking out the paint the chick at Bunnings half-scared me by suggesting that it would be too dark. But by keeping the ceiling white and having the white wall tiles - it's enough to balance out the black and make for one interesting bathroom.

Bisazza mosaic tiles

I've mentioned previously that I used some Bisazza mosaic tiles as a feature in my bathroom.

They come in an amazing range of colour mixes and can be used in bathrooms, pools or even as a kitchen splashback. They even have some to die for murals.

In m dream world, I would have a bathroom covered floor to ceiling in a floral pattern such as this:

Or maybe I'd have a kitchen with these tiles as my splashback:

Or any one of these!

At least a girl can dream... For more details and gorgeous inspirational photos check out the Bisazza website.

The bathroom

My bathroom was originally horrid! There was no way I could continue to live with the peach colour scheme, so that had to go.

It's a tiny space which was once comprised of a separate toilet. I'm sure most people would prefer to have a separate toilet, but in the scheme of my bathroom the only choice was to knock through and create a larger space.




I decided on a fairly neutral scheme, grey floor tiles and large white wall tiles. Here are some of the gory progress shots:


Words cannot describe how much I adore my feature tiles. They are Bisazza and a mix called "Bali plus". As I'm still young(ish) and (trying) to renovate on a budget, I unfortunately, wouldn't be able to afford these tiles! Lucky for me my parents recently renovated there house and just happened to have these babies left over... I'm a lucky girl.

Here are some of the finished shots of my bathroom. I still have the painting to do, but that's not on the top of my priority list.