At Bliss Ranch it's about the rocks. I love boulders, and stones and the earthy element of the color variations. When we built this house I also needed to be creative to keep costs down.
What we had a lot of - was rocks. Most of them were in my head.
All those years ago there was no internet to get ideas from or show anyone what my vision was, so Brawn had to interpret what was in my head.
Hence the rocks diagnosis and a mudroom vanity top made of field stones.
The rocks are sealed in a non-glossy goo, and are surprisingly easy to keep clean. For those times when real mud made it into the mudroom bathroom, it was by far more attractive on rocks than it would have been on granite.
Really this bathroom has no place to bathe in it, so technically it is probably a powder room. But the kids did more bathing in there without a bath then they ever did powdering.
Wall to wall the bathroom size is 7' x 4' with a 10 foot ceiling. The toilet is behind the door, upon which I had to sit to take some photos. No I was not multi tasking. This bathroom is at your service if you are in the garage, on the patio, or in the front yard.
It is also the closest to my computer so the reading material is important, because who doesn't like to keep their friends close?
Kelly from
The View Along The Way, just one of my many superstar blog friends who grace the pages of magazines these days and keep us company in our bathroom.
And then there is Cassie from
Primitive and Proper who reenacted Kelly's photo shoot when she went to visit last weekend. I told her to give Kelly a hug for me, then take baby Mila and run. I also see after the magazine folks left, she moved her washer and dryer back where they were.
Kelly is right up there in the top 10 Bliss Ranch bathroom reading material. This book was a gift from my BFF when our youngest was born. Little did she know it would become a family favorite and one we quote from often.
When our guests take a little longer using the mudroom facilities, we know why - it's because they are reading the book, and often times they emerge quoting from it as well.
It was hard to take photos in this room without a lighting set up. And while I love you all I did not feel like setting up lighting. Lazy is my middle name. There is a big window directly above the guests sign that keeps the room private and bright enough for necessary things.
I picked up this shoe size thingy at an antique shop called Mustard Moon... many moons ago.
The ceiling of this room is trimmed with these details. Brawn made all the components in here - the trim, the vanity, the counter. The wood is not oak, although it looks like it in these photos, it is hickory, as is the vanity.
This seems like a good time to tell you, that when I say Brawn made it, I don't mean he went to the lumber yard bought some trim, cut it and installed it. No. I mean he
maaadddde the trim. He cut all those grooves and round parts in the garage with his saw and special cutters from regular hickory boards that he picked up at a lumber mill, not a lumber yard.
I learned the hard way after initially installing all white ceramic flooring tiles, that the place for white was not in a mudroom that was home to six kids and a Great Dane who slobbered in that area, unless I wanted to do nothing but clean it, so we changed that.
What I needed was a mud colored mud room.
This bathroom is also home to the famous toilet tong toilet paper holder.
I bought this heavy metal piece of junk at Second Hand Rose in Buffalo Minnesota, where you can get your junk fix in a whole town of the best occasional sales.
I was tired of this bathroom never being stocked with "supplies". That isn't a problem any longer thanks to this holder which also hides the scratch marks in the wallpaper where a bored 4 year old child once started peeling the paper off.
This week I added the little sign above the antler towel holder. Due to that, some dining room chairs being redone are going to be missing four large head tacks. And I did not kill this deer, I rescued the rack from a garage sale 20 years ago while on the hunt to save money and have a unique towel holder.
It is time to paint the frame on this Schnapps advertising mirror. I gave it a coat of bronze spray paint about 12 years ago. Maybe I'll just sand it down a bit.
The
emergency first aid kit I put together last summer in an old tool box, found a home in this bathroom as well. It is the perfect location off the garage for first aid stuff since fingers tend to get cut often in close proximity.
The little ladder is from the same vintage 50's bunk bed as the
front porch bench Brawn recently made. Recall my son painted the whole set black when he used it for his kids.
When he built them new beds, the bunk stuff came back to me, so I distressed it a bit and gave the ladder a home in the mudroom bathroom - because Kelly needed a place to hang out.
And when you have a seat to rest in here, directly in front of you is the vanity mirror where you can adjust your hairstyle while you wait. That IS multi tasking.
Linking Kelly in the bathroom up at:
Upcycled Bathroom Ideas @FunkyJunkInteriors
Summer Linky Party @ThistlewoodFarms
Share Your Creativity @ItsOverflowing
