ORC Week 8 | Reveal!
Hello and welcome to the reveal of our ORC! This project was challenging, fun, and beautiful- exactly what I wanted and needed. I’m pleased with how it turned out and I learned a lot along the way. I went into this challenge intending to grow as a creative and prove to myself that I could do it, start to finish. And here we are at the finish with a 100% completed bathroom. The faucet runs and everything. No really, I may or may not have said “It’s fine if the faucet is just for decoration, we’ll deal with it later” at multiple points. But Paul is handy af and got it done. He’s my favorite person/plumber/software engineer/woodworker and I couldn’t have done this project (or life in general) without him.
First, a reminder of where we started:
Okay, I won’t make you wait any longer, let’s get into the space. The room is teeeeeeny tiny. Seriously, at ~2.5x5.5 I knew I wanted to get nice photos of the space and briefly toyed with the idea of learning interiors photos (lol) but ultimately decided to bring in someone who knows what they’re doing. Whitney is a gem and captured our room beautifully.
This shot is one of my favorites. When pulling everything together, I wanted to celebrate artistry, creativity, and color. Paul made the black walnut shelf and my friend Tasha from Tasha Throws Raw made that gorgeous carved vase. Yes, they carve them by HAND and you definitely need one. That sneaky little floral painting to the side came from my gran’s house. I love layering new with old.
When I tell you this whole room is a labor of love by so many incredible people, I mean it. My friends are angels that show up when needed. Originally, I wanted to swap all of the existing plumbing for brass, which absolutely would have been stunning but might have pressed my handyman’s patience with me just a bit. And I needed him to still be excited to marry me (in OCTOBER) by the end of this. (He is and he resents the joke that anything could change that, I checked.)
We’re off track here. I had seen the skirted option around but didn’t love the look until Rebecca over at Studio Plumb recommended making three straight panels. I love love the crisp lines and the added storage underneath…did I mention the room is small? I polled a few different fabrics over on Instagram and ended up going with the neutral embroidered linen to bring in some softness without distracting from the paper or art. My wonderful friend Nikki offered to sew it up for me and we’re back again to being grateful for my little village of people.
Now let’s talk about this shelf. Several years ago, I put a cheap shelf above the toilet for storage and to liven up an otherwise empty room. Paul has wanted to upgrade it from basically the day I put it in so I asked him to make one out of black walnut with a radiused edge. When he was about 3/4 of the way through the process, before cutting it down, he brought the whole piece in to see how short to cut it and it happened to be nearly the perfect size for spanning the entire wall. I love having more space to add personal touches like my pot from Tasha, the art from my gran, and the prettiest print from another incredibly talented friend, Sarah Golden. Sarah’s print also brings in an important pop of the color black, which I think belongs in most spaces. Combined with a few other elements in the room, I think it grounds all of the colors and plays well with the wood tones.
We’ve talked a lot about the wallpaper in the last few weeks (deservingly so) because it quite literally inspired the entire space. It’s the Prancing Peacock paper from Milton & King in the Salmon colorway. How did we get here? My friend Miranda and I came across them on the M&K website and promptly ordered every single sample. The colors are beautiful, the rosey ground is warm and doesn’t absorb too much light in the small room, and I thought the scale would be perfect in there. Miranda installs wallpaper on the side (in addition to being a designer herself and also having another job) because she’s just that great. The whole thing was kismet.
Mirroring the walnut from the self is…well, the mirror. I played with a few other options but the arch won out in the end. I love the scale of it, it makes the room feel so much larger than the tiny secret medicine cabinet that was in here before. More on the secret cabinet in the post from week one. To round out the ceramic details in here, I snagged this cute little sconce with a ceramic shade.
I can’t get over how well everything plays together, it brings me an insane amount of joy. The version of me that endlessly re-arranged her room as a child and painstakingly painted the entire thing Barney purple at 15 is probably pretty proud of us right now. She’s also probably pretty disappointed that I didn’t add sparkles into the ceiling paint but taste evolves as we age, thank everything.
I think that’s a wrap! If you’ve made it this far with me, thank you times a million for following along. And now, I’d like to thank The Academy….Just kidding. But I would like to send out another round of appreciation to everyone that helped bring this project together.
Until next time,
Aynsley Anne
