Riggs.... Home At Last: The Gorey Guest Bath

I've been pondering the guest bath for a long time - three years to be exact. I knew that I wanted something fun, light hearted, amusing. But it's a really small bathroom and everything I came up with seemed as though it would overwhelm the tiny space.

But I also knew that I had to have some color! Gak! Look at all that beige!!!

So after much thought and the rejection of many ideas - including a really funny idea I had for using a Superman theme. Picture it - "This is a job for..." Bwahaahahahaha! I finally hit on the perfect thing. I decided to do a sort of a tribute to an artist and writer that I just love - Edward Gorey. If you're not familiar with his work Google The Gashlycrumb Tinies which is one of my favorites. I just crack up every time I see his work.

So, first thing to do is begin to search for the right fabric to make the shower curtain. I found a great one in a color combination that looked perfect. Pale, sage green background with very pale pink highlights, lots of shades of grey. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what I was going to do!

I whipped up a shower curtain - so easy. Basically a giant square with wide hems top and bottom. Measure your opening, you'll need one and a half times the width of fabric and about 72" long. I decided to use large grommets instead of shower curtain rings. I've done posts before on how to use these grommets before, so if you want the details check out this post: Drapes

But here's the quickie version of how to put them on.

Using the template that comes in the package, measure and mark the locations for your grommets. Take the size of the grommets into consideration when you're spacing them and always use an even number. I used a dozen 2.5" grommets.

Cut the holes, be careful to stay inside the line!

Put the half of the grommet with the ridges under the fabric, place the half of the grommet with the spikes on top. Make sure the fabric is under the grommet and snap the two halves together. So simple - and aren't they so much better looking than those metal rings?

Now to get the paint up - and I do mean UP! I decided that I wanted to paint the ceiling as well as the walls. Why don't we all paint the ceilings?? It's one of my favorite things to do. This is a really dark little space so I wanted to stay away from overly dark colors and try to give the room the illusion of size and light. I did this by painting the ceiling a very pale pink. The color is called Pink Taffy by Valspar. The walls are a true grey called Gravity. Crisp, clean, light ~ perfect!

This is probably the worst picture ever. Don't worry, I have others!

Now for the fun part ~ I wanted an accent wall. I love really wide stripes, which I could have done but I wanted something a little more - dramatic. So, I decided to go with huge (12" wide) stripes at a 45' angle. In my head this sounded simple but after much pondering, mumbling, mathing, I gave up and called my daughter-in-law, the math teacher. She made me a gigantic template! It's the perfect 45' angle with little marks for the width of each stripe marked on it. All I had to do was start in the corner, make the first line, slide the template over until it lined up with the marks and zip the next line on - couldn't be easier!

Once all the lines are lightly penciled on the wall I taped off the stripes using Frog tape. It looked like this:

You'll notice that the stripes aren't the same width. The wider sections are the ones that will be painted the darker grey. Once the tape is on the wall you need to work fairly quickly because the longer the tape stays on the wall the harder it is to remove it cleanly. My process is to paint a stripe and then remove the tape while the paint is still wet. The lines come out much sharper that way.