Bathroom

The floor tile in my cottage’s loft bathroom and laundry room was in great shape, and it wasn’t ugly. But . . . it needed a little something.

The room was essentially a white box, and I wanted to give it personality without tearing anything out.

This post contains affiliate links and sponsored content as part of the Amazon Influencers program. Please read my disclosure policy for more information.

Having installed peel-and-stick floor tiles in my sister’s kitchen five years earlier, I wondered if that would be an option for this bathroom. But because those were more akin to real tiles with thickness to them, I knew they wouldn’t work on top of the tiles already in this space.

So I settled on waterproof tile stickers, or tile decals, which are very thin and can be placed right on top of the preexisting floor tiles.

Prepare for tile sticker installation

To get the floor ready for installation, I first vacuumed and then cleaned the tiles and grout with Krud Kutter.

Krud Kutter is the cleaner I use before almost all of my painting projects. It does an amazing job and doesn’t leave any residue, so I was confident it would be a good choice before putting down tile stickers.

Mix up the tile stickers

Next, I opened all of the tile sticker packages and mixed up the decals from the various packages. I did this to be sure that if any of the colors varied from package to package, they’d blend in and not stand out in sections of the bathroom.

Start with full tiles

The next part was easy and went quickly. I started with the full tiles where no cutting is required, and placed the tile stickers.

The preexisting floor tiles in this room measured 8″ x 8″, so these tile decals, which were slightly smaller than that, were the perfect size for my tiles in that they didn’t require me to trim them to fit full tiles. It’s good for the decals to be slightly smaller than the preexisting tiles so that they don’t hang off the edges.

I took care to ensure that each sticker made contact with the entire tile. (You don’t want any edges hanging off, or your socks or shoes will snag on the corners.)

My process was removing the paper backing from the tile, placing the sticker on top of the tile, and rolling over it with a brayer to make sure the decal’s adhesive made good contact with the tile.

Cut and place partial tile stickers

Then it came time to cut and place the partial tile decals. For this part, I used white copy paper, a ruler, a pencil, and scissors.

Essentially, I traced a full tile onto a piece of copy paper and cut it to size. Then I laid that paper on top of the partial tile on the floor, and traced along the edges that needed to be cut.

I then cut those parts of the copy paper and traced them onto the front of the tile decal. I cut out the tile decal to shape and placed it just as before.

The copy paper worked great, including around the base of the toilet. But a contour gauge would also be helpful for even more precise lines.

The finished bathroom floor

This took me about five hours from start to finish, and I absolutely adore the charming look these adhesive tile decals gave this space.

Of course, I don’t expect that these tile sticker decals will last forever, but they’re inexpensive and a relatively quick way to update a bathroom, so that’s fine with me.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, and tell me what you think of this room’s new look! And don’t forget to share this image on Pinterest to share this post with others!

If you have a mirrored medicine cabinet and/or Hollywood vanity light in need of a new look, this easy DIY makeover might do the trick.

Our tiny lake cottage has a super small bathroom and laundry room cleverly packed into the loft. Complete with a very slanted ceiling and an extra small footprint, it is actually one of the main reasons we purchased this cottage.

Most of the properties we looked at only had one bathroom, and if they had laundry machines at all, they were in weird places, like the crawl space.

So, even though some might not view this particular bathroom or laundry room as ideal, I love it!

I recently set out to give it a makeover (more on that soon), and one of the projects was refreshing this existing mirrored medicine cabinet and Hollywood-style vanity light.

This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy for more information.

Why not replace them with a new mirror and new light?

Because I know you’re wondering why I didn’t just rip out this medicine cabinet and vanity light, I’ll tell you!

First, with such a small cottage, we need all the storage we can get. A medicine cabinet was a must-have in here.

Next, the slant of the ceiling makes it so that a regular-sized mirror and a separate vanity light would not fit. The mirror would be too short.

Finally, I like a challenge. I wanted to see what I could come up with.

So here we are.

Peel and stick mirror trim

The edges of this mirrored medicine cabinet were becoming discolored (getting those black or brown splotches along the bevel). That’s not a huge deal, as desilvering happens to mirrors all the time.

But I found this cool peel-and-stick trim for mirrors and decided to try it out here. It sort of reminded me of my mirror wall makeover, except there I used tape, which was totally flat. This mirror trim has more heft to it and looks more like trim.

It was easy to cut with scissors and press onto the face of the mirror, and it gave it an updated look right off the bat. I chose the matte gold finish, but it comes in other colors, too.

Hollywood light fixture makeover

The next part of this project was giving the dated vanity light a makeover. I had several ideas rolling around my brain, but none was going to work quite right. It took a lot of trial and error, but I eventually came up with this solution, which took into account a couple of important factors:

1. Any light embellishments did not interfere with the functionality of the medicine cabinet or hit the sloped ceiling, and
2. The light bulbs could still be incandescent (this fixture would not accept LED lights. Trust me, I tried). Incandescent bulbs are hot, whereas LED are not, so I had to be cautious about heat and starting a fire.

I found glass candle wax catchers (the fancy name for them is “bobeche”) and decided they were exactly what I needed.

I applied Rub n Buff in the shade Gold Leaf around the edges and backs of the bobeches, and super-glued them to the part of the fixture where the light bulbs screw in (which I also applied Rub n Buff to on the outside only).

With new, clear incandescent bulbs, the Hollywood vanity light looked less 1980’s Glamour Shots chic and more, well, cute.

In the end, would I rather have a new mirror and vanity light? Probably. But I’m glad to have come up with a creative solution to work with what I already have. I’d so much rather save the cash!

I’d love to hear what you think about this makeover, so please leave me a comment, share this on Pinterest, or find me on social media @averagebutinspired.