Budget-Friendly Half Bath Makeover with Aqua Walls

The main floor half bath has gone through a few subtle transformations already, but it needed a few more touches to make it ready for sale.  When we bought the house, this is the powder room that greeted us:

Yikes.

If you remember, first I removed the blue wallpaper with gusto, then the room was painted a soft greige to help the existing elements (70s beige counter, bisque toilet and sink) blend in.  A new light fixture helped modernize the space.  Then we ran out of money.  To save a buck, I snagged the 1970s hardware from the en-suite powder room (that was fully renovated), and applied a little leftover black spray paint.  Apologies for the horrendous photo - it was taken pre-blog (with a 2.0 megapixel potato apparently)!

We obviously kept the toilet (it's made in Canada, I couldn't toss it!), tile (because it runs through the adjacent halls as well) and vanity (good condition, plus the tile runs up to but not under it, so we left it in place and painted it to match the walls).  With all this un-jazzed stuff, we needed something to jazz up the space.  A simple mirror was a practical change.  Next we upgraded the counter with the same grey laminate we have in the kitchen, and added a chic black faucet (see here for similar).  The glass vessel sink (see here for similar), the jewel of the room, has been a hit with everyone.

A new towel bar from Target added some storage (this one is kind of similar), and art is always a good solution for making a space seem fresh.  After these changes, we had the half bath you recognize from other posts:

Although it looked better than before, despite a good wall-washing some of the wallpaper paste lingered and showed through the paint in streaks.  I thought potential home buyers might think this is water damage, so I added "painting the bathroom" to our list of urgent projects.  I taped everything off, taking special care to wrap the glass sink with a blanket in case anything was dropped on it.  Then I primed the trouble areas with a stain-blocking primer. 

Enter Dad, painter-extraordinaire (despite being colour-blind) and now the room is a soft turquoise (CIL Tropical Paradise, from Canadian Tire).  Although a bit brighter and much more intensely aqua than I originally intended (I was hoping for something like this), the turquoise paint makes the space seem airier, fresher and newer.  It also complements the green glass sink nicely.  I wanted to add more white (like a big white picture frame with a colourful photo from Hungary blown up) but anything white in here turns green from the reflection.  A black-framed print (the original, which I feel privileged to have seen, is by Tamara de Lempicka) works in a pinch and ties in the emerald green from the vintage kitchen posters and dining room painting. 

It's super hard to photograph this little windowless room, but it looks so gorgeous in the photographs taken by the photographer for our MLS listing:

Let's take a look at the before once again.  If not for pictures, I would barely remember what the house looked like when we bought it.