Bathroom |

A Beach Cottage Coastal Style Decorating with Vintage Like Pitchers

9:27 pm Bysarah

G’day! How you all going?

I”m diggin’ lovely vibrant flowers on my old floors…

..always nice to stare at something pretty when performing one’s daily ablutions

Let me tell you about the flowers on the floor & the pitcher though…

The only trouble with living Down Under is when one finds oneself unable to give up their dreadful habit of lazing in the tub reading magazines about cavorting around in Wellies and living in the English countryside everything becomes a bit topsy-turvy. You see not only do I get the magazine when it’s a month or so old…the seasons are all back to front.

Now that is not normally a problem my lovelies, in fact I quite like that…reading about winter and blankets and snuggling up when it is baking hot here, and bushwalking in shorts and wellies and reading about summer in good old England when it is ahem actually the same temperature in the daytime here as the English summer is anyway and having a sly little chuckle at the Blighty beach shots complete with the models in fleeces…

But when I saw a huge big pitcher of daffs a few months back, sitting on the floor by the hearth, of an old flagstone cottage deep in the depths of the English countryside,complete with flowers round the doorway and pots full of spring bulbs…. I have to say I had a wistful sigh

And now here this morning on my walk I just couldn’t not buy two big bunches of daffs for 5 bucks could I….because somewhere in the depths of my nappy-brain, the same brain that somehow simply cannot remember where my kids have to be on any given day, or keep a simple apointment…up popped up the pitcher and the flagstone and the cottage…ooh yeah….I wanted that, but to shove it a little more the coastal way…give me some nautical…

And while I couldn’t quite summon up a flagstone floor, I knew I could do nautcial and pitcher…

Well it isn’t quite the pitcher in the photo shoot, I imagine that one was picked out by some stylist with some funny name like Button or Bark and a much more mahusive budget than mine….it was more than that cushion I was talking about the other day…

Mine, of course, was the Beach Cottage version via Icqkea….you know that boutique? Right?

Catch ya later Beach Cottager’s…errm yeah, you know that thing I’m working on?

..it’s the Beach Cottage Coastal Flea-Market…with a few nautical stripes and shells coming your way… and it’s-a-coming soon..stay tuned

Sarah

Filed Underbathroom, flowers 23 Comments

The Beach Cottage DIY Family Bathroom Makeover Continues!

6:44 am Byabeachcottage

G'day BC DIY-ers, how on earth are you?

All here is well and good though errm it's somewhat chaotic. Did you think the makeover was complete with those shots? Errm I wish, just threw that in for a bit of eye candy…

I'm sorry this is taking us so long but I have been pretty busy here and in between taking on the bathroom makeover, we decided to have a birthday, dig a new flower bed from rock (oh that was a nice job)… blah blah blah, you know what it's like, the list goes on and on.

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Filed Underbathroom, beach cottage makeovers 27 Comments

At Last! The Beach Cottage Powder Room

12:44 pm Byabeachcottage

Morning.

Here's the Powder Room as it is now. You've probably gathered that this hasn't been my most fave project in the cottage. You'd be right. And it's taken me 3 months to even get this far.

I confess, it was the challenge that lured me, to make this over with what really is nothing in terms of budget and see what I could come up. I think there really is no dispute that it is an improvement and now it feels more like a room than what before was a tangle of plumbing and 80's design mistakes. They are of course still there, just a little less prominent.

Here is the before and I have to mention here that before this 'before' shot it was a lot worse, as you can only imagine, when we bought the cottage…filthy with an attractive veil of off-yellow paint on the walls and a blind that had ahem seen better days…

Yes I know it is not lime green, or 70's orange but it wasn't too pretty…

and as it is now

So the walls are painted with Dulux White on White, the tiles we cleaned and painted with tile paint. Attached the shelf above the cistern for a place to display a few bits and bobs and provide a bit of interest…

If you remember, I had all sorts of grand ideas for the window dressing but then went for just a simple rod and an old vintage tea cloth, with the most delightful texture just pinned up with those curtain clips…it filters the light beautifully and blows in the wind which I believe is a much better result than the more formal blind affair I had originally envisaged…and to be honest, very much more me.

The basket I painted with a white wash and stenciled on an 'S' and the float on the other side makes it look a little less jaded in there.

I wanted a wall of mirrors but once I started planning this I thought it would be too much, this is a very very small space and so when I found the round pie crust mirror at the same garage sale that I picked up the Glory Box from I thought it was just big enough to work alone and just detailed enough to add that vintage touch…

Either side of the sink we put up a set of three hooks for towels and I've hung a couple of my jam jar lanterns off there…and on the other side I painted an old cupboard with Dulux Whisper White, it brought back lots of memories (you can read that here).

I don't need to bore you again with the sink and skirt issue, there were some wonderful ideas and thanks to those of you who also took the time to email me with ideas, and photos and inspiration, I so appreciate that.

But really what I got most from all this, my whining on this blog about the skirt and my disillusionment with the whole thing, was two things.

First of all, suck it up sweetie, it's a pretty ok extra bathroom.

Second, the power of budget and white paint.

Sarah

mirror : garage sale cupboard : already owned

glass vase : Vinnies coral : Freedom shelf : IKEA

curtain : thrifted vintage teacloth curtain pole : IKEA

curtain clips : IKEA towels : Bed Bath & Table

fishing float : Freedom candles : Freedom hooks : IKEA

basket : IKEA & whitewashed

blogged for the 43rd Met Monday, thanks Susan

Filed Underbathroom, beach cottage makeovers, flowers, thrifted finds for the cottage 68 Comments

Beach Cottage Score ~ Vintage First Aid Box

7:40 pm Byabeachcottage

I can think of no better way of wasting time, when I should be cleaning the cottage and clearing up from the chaos of what seems to be every morning before school round here, than grabbing a coffee from my fave coffee house and having a mooch around the shops on my own…a couple of nice homey shops…a surf store for Christmas presents…and a couple of treasure hunting shops…just to top it all off nicely.

And one morning this week I got away with an hour or so of doing that, revelling in a light drizzling in the rain, after the heat of earlier this week…I savour these times

Of course, don't often come home with much, as needs must at the moment, but today I scored this old first aid box. It surely had my name on it, or rather the WC's…

I'm happy with it like this, flaking paint and rust and rather than being put to use it will, most probably, be wall art right above the door in that tiny room…I love this little box, something so cheering about the it, the kinda suggestion of days gone past perhaps?

So I'll give it a bit of a clean and get Mr BC to put it up this weekend and finally, skirt, no skirt, painted pipes or not, I will draw a line under the Powder Room and take comfort in the fact that many of you sent me notes to say that oh yeah your grossness was a whole lot worse than mine!

My main task for the next week or so is to get a few things sorted for Christmas, I have no choice but to get my act together early this year (have an extremely busy December coming up) and number one priority will be to get the vintage doors found last weekend, not only painted but hung…now that really could be an interesting time here with Mr BC and I trying to get that job done together

I'm sure you'd like to be a fly on the wall.

Sarah

Filed Underbathroom, family room, thrifted finds for the cottage 47 Comments

Beach Cottage Famous, Longest Ever, WC Makeover Peek

1:05 am Byabeachcottage

How you cookin' girls? I should be cleaning up this old cottage and doing some chores but instead I find myself ridiculously avoiding any such thing. I came back from coffee with lg all raring to go and then came in and it all sort of quickly fizzled…

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a quick sneak peek at the WC makeover (you can see the in-progress post with the white painted cupboard on the wall here). Yes this is the longet makeover in history, mainly because I was waiting for a shop to get in stock a special little something to finish it all off and because the skirt I made for the sink not only was I unsure if I liked it (Miss Beach Cottage gave it the big old thumbs down) after I had hot-glued it up it promptly fell down in a puddle on the floor.

But what I do like is the window dressing, if you can actually call it that, one of my complete DIY affairs, which some, who come from where I come from, may refer to as a bodge. Though it works for me…

Here's a shot of what I was working with, just to recap (and go here for the whole thing and a video tour!)- those lovely aluminium windows you know I lurve so much in this extended back bit of the cottage…

When I first revealed what to me had become an awful room, lots of wonderful commenters got me thinking and totally changing my mind in everything I had decided on, I was thinking burlap and touches of black and suchlike. I talked about doing a pelmet affair to the window but actually the light in here deciphers so nicely and the window is almost always open so I thought nothing could possibly look better than a simple piece of linen blowing in the breeze…