After a $700 Makeover, This 1990s Half Bath Is Now the Nicest Room in the Apartment
Half baths are a great spot to experiment with your design style because they’re small in square footage, so anything bold or a little beyond your comfort zone will still be small in scale. Still, wanting to experiment with your design style or try something new can be overwhelming because there are so many design trends and DIY projects to explore.
Apartment owner Luci LaFuria (@hearthhavennyc) says she felt that way when she was redoing her half bath. “Because it was a blank slate, I knew I could do just about anything, but I was always overwhelmed by how many different directions I could go with it,” she says. “I finally found inspiration photos I liked and knew statement powder rooms are such a fun way to try a new design style. I decided to join the Spring One Room Challenge to help me plan out how and when I would complete each piece of the project.”
The bathroom was bright green when Luci and her husband, Seth, bought the apartment. “I believe this bathroom was added to the apartment in the late ’90s,” Luci says. When they moved in, they had everything in the apartment painted white, but that “felt really boring and sterile” after a while, Luci says.
Box molding takes the apartment out of the 1990s.
She added some character with box molding, and it was her first time doing DIY molding. “Because I live in NYC in an apartment, I don’t have the space or ability to get power tools, so I bought a hand miter saw to cut the wood trim at a 45-degree angle,” she says. “It was only difficult because the one I bought didn’t have the right clamps to hold the wood in place, so it would move around a lot. And again, because of my apartment situation, I don’t even have a good table to clamp it down.”
It took perseverance and some course-correcting, but multiple orders of molding and lots of Liquid Nails later, the walls have some added architectural interest. ”My arm would get tired, but I just took breaks and pushed through!” Luci says.
Her advice is to use an electric miter saw if one is available to you, and to use Liquid Nails and wood putty to help with application “With the box molding, you’ll most likely have little gaps where the corners meet. Especially if you don’t get a perfect 45-degree angle, like me,” she explains. “You can use wood putty to fill those and then sand it and your corners will be nice and smooth.”
The vanity area features budget-friendly upgrades.
Luci and Seth, with the help of their building super, switched out the faucet with a brushed chrome one. Then Luci added vintage vibes by adding gold Rub-n-Buff to her vanity light. Now the bathroom features mixed finishes, which is a detail Luci that loves.
“It’s $10 for a small tube [of Rub-n-Buff], and a little bit goes a long way,” Luci says. “I also used it on the door hinges.” She also used a dark stain and added decorative trim to a mirror she already had. “Finally, I added final details like the shelf, art, and the towel hook,” Luci says. Her project total came to about $700.
“The new space feels so much more elevated and custom,” she says. “It’s not just a white box anymore. We joke that it’s the nicest room in our apartment now.”
This project was completed for the Spring 2025 One Room Challenge, in partnership with Apartment Therapy. See even more of the One Room Challenge before and afters here.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.