Introducing Our Upstairs Guest Bath

Now that I finally acquired the red coral cabinet knobs, I was able to finish up this guest bath. This bathroom is located upstairs, to the left of the front entry.

This was built as a Hollywood bath; basically, one sink and cabinets on each side of the toilet and shower section. The counter tops are covered with decorative tiled by Gemma Taccogna. You can still see her signature on the tile. The abstract tiles are mainly orange terracotta red, well in line with the Spanish theme.

I left pretty much everything as was from the last owner. I believe they re-tiled the floor with travertine. I was able to find matching ones “Golden Tuscany”, yes, not very Spanish name, to extend the entire floor to the laundry room as it had peeling linoleum when we got the house. I want the floor to flow through rather than sectional out.

This is the picture I took when we first walk through this house back in November 2009. The lady in the picture is our real estate agent. See the old faucet fixture and the plastic cabinet knobs.

Here is a close up of the custom made tiles.

I hired a handyman to put in new faucets on both sinks. They were those old plastic gems accumulating type of handles. I left the cabinets as is, just repainted them whisper white, as we didn’t want to remove the custom made tiles. Besides, we ran out of renovation money and this was low on our priority list, compared to other things we had to do to the house.

We had someone painted the entire house, smoothed out all the popcorn looking ceiling. And I chose "Burst of Gold (DE5333)" by Dunn Edwards for the bathroom to compliment the tile and gave it a happy and bright feel. It helps with the fact that this bathroom has no window to the outside!

Now you can see why I chose the red coral cabinet knobs. And trust me; it took a long while and multiple trips to many stores to get this done. I had at least 20 different knobs on back and forth, back and forth.

Close up look at the red coral knobs.

When I got the red coral, I had lots of feedback. One thought they looked like PVC wrapped wire. Second one thought they were reindeer antler. Vanessa said they were non child friendly. I love them and hey I first saw them done like this on a dresser in a Coastal Living or Sunset magazine (can't remember at this moment). They are staying...

Tom put in a new toilet seat. I soaked the shower head in CLR to remove the mineral and hard water build up. We kept the shower head for its great water pressure function…old stuffs are just better than new in some area.

Two pocket doors allow privacy as needed. We had to put in new locks for them too.

I hung a clusters of my old cross stitches pictures up here. Gosh, these were stitched and framed from 7-15 years ago; yes, when I was crazy about cross stitching. I had a framer at the time who would basically put together these little frames from leftover cut of other customers' order, like for a few dollars a piece! I still love them!

On the other side of the Hollywood bath, I used different knobs instead, tiny pearl floral clusters, really beautiful too and in cream color, not as dashing in your face type as the red coral. I found them from HomeGoods. Too bad, I couldn’t find enough to cover the cabinets now installed with the red corals.

As you can see, this counter top has different tiles than the other side. Since this side is joined to the guestroom, I used a different wall color, same as the guestroom, "Blank Canvas", light beige like. We had to install all the bath fixture, except for the lighting and ventilation. They took EVERYTHING.

And here is a close up of the cabinet knobs on this side.