This “Boring” Bathroom Transforms into a “Happy” Oasis with a Modern Makeover (Including the Grout!)
When you move into an older home, odds are that not every room is going to line up with your home decor taste — especially if you prefer a modern look. That’s what Anna Bodilsen (@annebodilsen) found when she and her husband moved into their mid-century modern Danish home and were confronted with its plain bathroom.
“Our house is from the early 1950s and [has] a lot of original features — the bathroom not being one of them,” Anna says. “I guess it was redone in [the] early ’90s with a glass shower screen, bland vanity, and white tiles that were perfectly fine but just really boring.”
Because a full renovation wasn’t in the couple’s budget, they were challenged to come up with budget-friendly ways to make the bathroom “a bit more fun and personal.” Here’s how they gave the space a much-needed update for $250.
Create a shower door with glass blocks.
To freshen up the room, Anna and her husband, Christian, decided to replace the single glass panel in the shower with new glass blocks that they sourced secondhand. Although she says the blocks were easy to work with, contending with the house’s odd angles presented a bit of a challenge.
“The problem was [that] the old house [had] weird angles and certainly not a perfect 90-degree angle between the floor and the wall,” Anna says. “[It] took quite some time to carefully level that out,” she adds. “But as soon as the first row of building blocks were installed, it was easy from there,” Anna explains.
The new glass blocks add dimension and echo the square tiles on the wall.
Add a pop of blue.
With a strict budget, Anna knows one quick way to bring some life into a space: paint. But she jokes that her husband thinks she has a habit of adding “too much color and wallpaper to the house.”
So, they compromised and stuck with one color (and no wallpaper). Anna painted the walls a tranquil deep blue — Flugger’s Dive Hard. It had an immediate impact, brightening up the whole space. “[It’s a] much more fun and happy room!” Anna says.
Color the grout a complementary hue.
In order to tie the bathroom’s blue palette together, Anna opted to paint the grout a similar shade. She did so by placing a postcard-sized piece of cardboard on the tiles at the edge of the grout and using a posca pen to outline the grout in a straight line and fill it in with color.
“[It] took a lot of time, so [I] managed to get through a fair amount of podcasts and audiobooks,” Anna quips.
Her dedication ultimately paid off, transforming the home’s bathroom from a small space she used to avoid to a room worth spending time in.
“The functions are the same, and the room is still tiny but has so much more personality,” Anna says.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.