You know when you’re brushing your teeth at 6.30am, standing in a pool of water because your 3-year-old can’t quite grasp the concept of where the plug hole is, you’re clutching your huge pregnancy belly and your house is covered in miniature toys and you just hate everything about your bathroom? Yep. That was me.
Every. Single. Morning.
Until about three months ago. Ok, so full disclosure.
We hadn’t loved our downstairs bathroom since we moved in nearly two years ago.
Since before we even had Lola. Our then toddler woke us up most mornings by hurling herself at the bathroom door repeatedly until we opened it, so the room definitely got more than its fair share of abuse. The previous owners’ decor choices consisted of magnolia paint slapped everywhere then leaving the house.
It made the downstairs bathroom look like something from the seventies. But instead of avocado suites and paisley patterns, it just felt sterile and beige. The walls basically begged to be covered.
See when we first moved in, I’d wanted to re-tile the whole thing. But that kind of renovation is expensive. We had quotes for nearly £3000 for just the main bathroom. £3000!
When you’ve got nursery fees to think about and a second baby on the way soon our budget was just £1000 tops for the bathroom. So basically £3000 is the equivalent of a million pound whenever you’re a parent. Fast forward two years and maternity leave had given me plenty of time to browse those Pinterest boards I’d pinned loads of pics to a few years ago.
My sister- in-law Sarah mentioned that she’d wallpapered her downstairs toilet over a weekend and spent about £50 and it looked amazing. Cue my automatic ‘eww wallpaper will just peel off when it gets steamy in there’ voice in my head. Sarah sent me some pics.
It was flipping lovely. This beautiful William Morris style botanical print that looked like it belonged in a magazine. She told me all about vinyl coated papers and how wallpaper has come such a long way since our mam’s sticks to your wall until it goes fluffy option.
I Googled like mad. Watched Youtube videos and read blog posts into the night. Did you know you can actually buy wallpaper these days that’s designed to be washed?
WTF! Turns out technology has moved on even since I last picked a roll up twenty odd years ago. Why would you wallpaper a bathroom I hear you cry?
Well lets just say when your toddler throws her bath toys everywhere in the shower while you’re trying to get ready for work that beige box is not a pleasant place to be. There are vinyl coated papers these days that are designed to cope with bathrooms and steam. Yep, there’s even paste-the-wall options now so you don’t have to use the oh-so-traditional sticky backed rolls.
You literally paint the adhesive onto the wall and then stick the dry wallpaper onto it. Zero soggy sheets to wrestle around when your clinging to the edge of a bath- tray whilst holding a small child. I was sold.
Watched numerous videos on how to wallpaper. Seriously, there’s tutorials on EVERYTHING on Youtube. Asked the lovely woman in the wallpaper shop down the road a million questions about where I could and couldn’t place paper.
Turns out walls that don’t get showered every day are totally fine to cover. And you’re not cramming wallpaper up against a radiator like you may be in your bedroom, so it tends to stay a lot cooler in there too. Long story short I decided I’d start with our downstairs bathroom.
Worst case scenario I ruined our toilet…. And trust me we barely go in there unless we need to! Pinterest and Etsy became my best friends.
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I fell in love with botanical prints. I stumbled upon the most gorgeous deep greens with gold detailing. It reminded me of those Instagram baths you see with huge skylights and scrubbers popping off the ceilings.
How on earth could that ever look good in our tiny upstairs bathroom I hear you ask?! Well forty-three pounds later and we had enough paper to cover the smallest room in our house. How hard could it be?!
It took me half a Saturday whilst Amara was at my moms to do. Start to finish by tea time. And the results were STUNNING.
It instantly made our tired, worn toilet feel homely and welcoming. We literally had people coming in our house and commenting on it whenever they needed to ‘borrow’ the loo. Our mate Dave actually spent about ten minutes staring at the botanical detail at one point while I forced him to have a coffee.
I was craving more. SO when it came to renovating our main bathroom upstairs I decided to go bolder with my choices. I opted for a gorgeous large scale navy and white geometric print that actually made the room feel bigger.
I knew I didn’t want to spend a fortune covering every wall so instead I just did the wall behind our sink unit. Creating a huge feature wall that instantly makes people’s eyes travel up the room rather than looking at the damp square meter of ceiling we have 😂😂 The most important part here is prep work. You need to seal your walls first with a moisture proofing primer – basically stops your paper absorbing moisture from the walls.
It’s like an insurance policy when it comes to wallpapering bathrooms! I also got our extractor fan checked as the noise it made was louder than it’s actual performance let on! Turns out five years worth of dust clogged up the filter and it wasn’t sucking up much at all.
So my other half took care of that off I did the priming! I’ll also let you into a little tip I wish I’d know before I started. Always do your main wall first.
You’ll be fresh and its the wall you’ll see first when you walk in the room so you want it to look perfect! Keep a damp cloth to hand as the paste drips dry clear and you’ll never see them on darker papers. And measure your walls!
Apparently we live in houses that aren’t built straight anymore 🙄 our Victorian house definitely had wonky walls. My gorgeous bathroom completely changed my whole morning routine. I went from forcing myself to get ready in a sad beige box to actually enjoying getting ready each morning.
Sounds so silly but when you wake up and dread spending time in your bathroom it really makes you feel quite down. We spent about £160 total on both rooms including wallpaper, paste, brushes and other materials. Tape rollers etc.
That’s it! Compared to thousands of pounds for tiling both rooms we decided NEVER doing bath mats AGAIN was worth the slight compromise! Ok so there’s a few downsides.
You do still need to be careful washing hands etc as the steam from the water can still mark the paper over time. If you’ve got small children like me who think your bathroom walls are there for drawing on then it also means you can actually wipe down your walls. Ta-Daaaah! !
The papers have also stood up SUPER well to daily showers, occasional toddler-free bubble baths for myself when my back is killing me ( HUGE advantage to having a downstairs bathroom let me tell you!) and surviving mop head attacks from Lola during bath time.
I did rush out and buy this beautiful damask pattern paper before I started our bathroom. It was absolutely beautiful….just far too small a print to work with being so close to it every day.
I ended up returning it for something larger and less intricate. Don’t cheap out on the quality of your paper but remember less is sometimes more! OH and FYI – Once you’re hooked.
YOU NEVER LOOK BACK. Since completing both rooms it’s got me thinking about what else I can wow myself with! Next up our bedroom I think….grasscloths would look AMAZING behind our bed.
Honestly just do it! Pick a small bathroom or maybe just one wall if you’re not sure and get stuck in. My advice would be to decorate a room you HATE and trust me, when you’re sat there panting and cursing why you thought it was a good idea after loading up the forth box down the stairs you’ll be thinking ‘I can’t wait to do my next bathroom” #gammit
