The Great Bathroom Renovation of 2011: Wallpaper Stencil DIY

This next weekend Markus and I are going to spend a glorious five day stretch spending some quality time together and renovating our powder bathroom! In anticipation of the before and afters to come, I share with you today the great bathroom renovation of 2011. (If you used to follow my Tumblr account, I apologize for the repeat post. Consider it me re-running some choice episodes before next week's big premiere a la your favorite Bravo programming.)

Although we thought we purchased a house together after we were married, in many ways it was a glorified 1980's Floridian retirement community condo.

Take the hall bathroom for example:

I see an episode of Seinfeld being filmed here where Jerry goes to visit his parents at their place.

Why was this being allowed to happen in Dallas? In 2010? Yeesh.

After much wallpaper scraping (and a few tears - as you can tell from the image below this stuff was NOT coming off)...

we were able to turn our hall bath into a life sized hamster cage.

We finally had a blank slate and were able to paint! I loved the idea of a pattern next to the colored tile but after taking down the original wallpaper there was no going back. Instead we ordered two different shades of Anna Sova food paint (Creme Fraiche and Flying Saucer) and set out to make our own pattern using a Benjamin Moore wallpaper stencil. 

Both the paint and the stencil were perfect choices for the project. Anna Sova paint covers very well and goes on evenly. Plus it smells amazing, doing a much better job of calming my frazzled, post-wallpaper scraping nerves then a gallon of VOCs. After painting our base coat of the lighter shade, we measured out the room for the stencil. We would spray the back of the stencil with some spray adhesive, stick it to the wall and go over it with a large stencil brush. We started with the larger areas first and cut the stencil down as we went to fit the borders and corners snugly. 

It was a lot of sore arms and too much math for my personal preference (measuring the stencil placement is where the engineer husband comes into play), but over a year later and I still smile every time I walk into the room! 

We replaced the vanity mirror with one we found at Home Depot. The sconces are simple Home Depot finds as well and hold fluorescent bulbs. 

One of my favorite additions to the room is the pair of hand cut silhouettes we had done on our honeymoon. I would love to have one done of Little Child one day to put below ours!

The larger mirror was a Craig's List find that I originally bought to resell. I love the shape of it across from the rectangular vanity mirror. 

Looking at these photos today reminds me of how much fun Markus and I working on projects like this. It is going to be a great weekend and I cannot wait to show the before and afters from the next bathroom renovation. If you thought the before shots of this room were bad, grab a stiff drink and guard your eyes for what I have for you soon.