Our Ensuite Makeover That Didn’t Quite Go to Plan…

When we moved into this house, our ensuite bathroom was pretty low down on the list of things we wanted to change. It was tiny, had no window and had clearly been carved out of what must once have been a massive bedroom, but it did the job and, to be fair, nobody really saw it apart from us.

Which I think you’ll agree was probably a good thing when the wallpaper choice was as interesting as this…

And then there was the carpet! I know bathroom carpets were a thing once upon a time, but I’ve never been a fan and although I managed to tolerate it (barely) for a good six months after we moved in, I eventually got to the point where I just couldn’t take it any longer. 😂

So replacing the flooring got bumped up our never-ending house to-do list and we decided we’d get some cheap lino to replace the carpet and leave the rest of the room alone for now.

That was genuinely the plan. Honestly. 

The flooring that started it all…

We went to a local flooring shop to have a look through their offcuts because the room is so small that we thought we’d easily find something that would fit without spending much money. We’ve bought small offcuts in the past in this shop and knew that we could get a piece for about £35 if we weren’t particularly fussy. 

And we did find plenty that would have done the job perfectly well but we didn’t LOVE any of them. I thought we’d be OK with not loving the floor as it was just going in there as a do-for-now (my mam always used to say that 😍) but it turns out that we weren’t! I made the mistake of having a little look through the sample books for the full price flooring and I spotted a white and gold marble-effect lino that I absolutely loved.

It was obviously much more expensive than the offcuts we’d gone in for but luckily, because the room is so small, we only needed a little bit so even at full price, we still only spent £109 which isn’t bad at all if you ask me.

It’s still more than we’d planned to spend but I loved it and decided it was worth paying the extra. 

It was going to take a few days to arrive so in the meantime, we pulled up the old carpet (ugh – I can categorically say that no-one should ever have carpet in their bathroom after this unpleasant task) and couldn’t believe it when we discovered these gorgeous original floorboards underneath!

For about five minutes, I did wonder whether we should forget the lino completely and just restore the floorboards in the ensuite instead. But the lino I’d chosen was so gorgeous looking that I couldn’t bring myself to change the plan. 😂 I’d already started picturing the room around it and, practical bathroom reasons aside, I really wanted that floor.

So the beautiful floorboards have been covered back over for now, which feels slightly criminal, but at least we know they’re there.

The wallpaper had to go too…

And that should have been the end of it if we’d stuck to our original plan.

But with the new flooring down, the wallpaper suddenly looked worse than it had before, the dark wood made an already windowless room feel even darker and I started thinking that seeing as we’d replaced the flooring, we might as well make a few other little changes at the same time.

I wasn’t sure if my partner would agree as we have so many house ‘priorities’ right now so moving something else up the list just wasn’t in our plan.  I took matters into my own hands one afternoon and started painting over the wallpaper using some leftover Farrow & Ball Dimity (mixed up at Valspar for a third of the price) that we already had from another project. I do love Dimity and it seems to go with pretty much everything in this house, which is probably just as well because if we’re not careful, the whole house is going to end up painted that colour soon. 😁

He came home from work to find me up a ladder painting and I’m happy to report that he smiled and rolled his eyes at me, said ‘I knew you’d do this’ and grabbed the other paintbrush! 

It’s a good job he was on board as it took more coats than I’d expected to cover the interesting wallpaper pattern underneath but it’s done now and looks a hundred times better!

The £20 Marketplace mirror that changed everything…

I knew when I chose the fancy flooring that I didn’t really want this room to match the rest of the house. We’ve put so much thought into the other rooms because we love the original features and we want the things we add to feel as though they belong in an old Victorian house, but I quite fancied having one little room where I could completely ignore all of that and just have a bit of fun.

I wanted it to feel quite decadent and a little bit over the top, so I’d been looking at some gorgeous green marble wall panels with brushed gold finishes and had pretty much decided that was the direction I wanted to go in for this room. The panel we needed wasn’t overly expensive at £65 and it would have given the room the exact look of decadance that I thought I wanted. 

And then I spotted the most amazing mirror on Facebook Marketplace for just £20, which completely changed my plans.

It’s a huge beaten metal gold mirror from Next and it’s honestly one of my favourite Marketplace finds for ages. It’s probably much bigger and more over the top than anything I would normally choose for such a small room, but I absolutely loved it and knew it would look lovely with the new flooring.

The only problem was that once we’d got it home, I started thinking that the green marble panels might be a bit too much alongside such a big statement mirror. I know I’d said I wanted the room to be a bit over the top, but even I have my limits. 😂

The more I looked at the mirror with the newly painted walls and the marble-effect flooring, the more I liked how everything looked together without the green marble, so I decided to abandon that idea completely. Which was a good thing really because I’d have been gutted if I’d already spent money on the panels and then decided I didn’t want them.

And the dark wood ended up staying too…

I’d also been planning to paint the dark wooden furniture in the ensuite because I’d convinced myself that it was making the room feel even smaller and darker than it already was. I’d been thinking about what colour to paint it for a while and was quite looking forward to another little painting project.

But then, once the walls were painted and the new flooring was down, I realised that the wood actually looked really nice as it was. I think it was the combination of the dark wood and the old wallpaper that I’d disliked rather than the wood itself, because with everything else looking so much lighter, it suddenly seemed to fit perfectly.

So I’ve decided to leave it exactly as it is, which has saved me buying more paint and spending a few days doing a job that it turns out I didn’t actually need to do. I do love it when I can cross something off my to-do list without having to do the work.

Finding some prints for the walls…

Once we’d got the mirror sorted, I knew that I wanted a couple of prints on the walls to finish things off, so I bought some gold frames from IKEA that I thought would work really well with the mirror.

Finding the actual prints was another story though, because I must have spent a good hour looking online for something that we both liked and I just couldn’t see anything that I loved enough to buy. There were plenty of nice ones but nothing that made me think they were exactly what I wanted, and I didn’t want to spend money on something just for the sake of having something on the wall.

Then I remembered that I’d bought a couple of A3 sized canvas prints ages ago when our favourite vintage shop was closing down. They’d been reduced in the closing-down sale and I’d picked them up because I liked them, although I had absolutely no idea where I was going to put them at the time.

They’re quite random animal prints and they’re not really very us, but they are funny and I thought they might look quite good in the frames, so I dug them out and gave them a go.

And actually, I quite like them! I will say though that I sent the photo of them to my partner and his reply was simply ‘WTF’ which is the point that I realised they were definitely the over the top prints that we needed for the room. 

If I’m honest, they’re probably not the prints we’ll have forever, but they make us smile for now and there’s no point buying something else until we see something that we genuinely love. I’ll just keep an eye out when we’re browsing charity shops or vintage shops and if we spot something perfect then we can change them, but there’s no rush at all.

Our finished ensuite makeover…

I’m really pleased with how our little ensuite has turned out, especially considering that all we originally intended to do was replace the bathroom carpet with a cheap lino offcut.

We’ve still got the same sink, toilet and shower and we haven’t changed any of the layout, but the room feels completely different now that the old wallpaper and carpet have gone. It’s so much lighter and brighter than it was before, which makes a huge difference when you’ve got such a tiny room with no natural light.

I love the new flooring and I absolutely love our giant bargain mirror, and I’m really glad that I didn’t rush into buying the green marble panels or painting the wooden furniture because I think the room looks much nicer without either of those things.

We’ve definitely spent more than we originally planned on the flooring, but we’ve saved money in other areas by using paint we already had, keeping the wooden furniture as it was and using those old canvas prints rather than buying new ones. And the £20 mirror was such a bargain that I’m still feeling quite smug about that one. 😂

It’s funny really because if you’d asked me when we first started what I wanted the finished room to look like, I’d have described something completely different to what we’ve actually ended up with. I think I was so focused on all the things I wanted to change that I hadn’t really considered how much difference just changing the walls and floor would make.

One thing that makes this makeover a little bit different from everything else we’ve done in the house is that I’ve made pretty much all the decisions myself. Normally we do everything together and both have plenty of opinions about what we want, but we’re finally getting around to sorting out the garage at the same time and my partner has been a bit distracted with that.

I did tell him that I wanted this room to be a bit over the top, which is much more my style than his, so I think he’s probably quite glad that I’ve just got on with it. 😂 I’m not sure he’d have agreed with all my choices if he’d been as involved as he usually is, but I love how it’s turned out and I think he’s happy with it too!

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