This will be an all-in-one post, because the update is only partial.

We have a hall bath upstairs that had out-of-date styling, but fixtures in good condition. The bath is for our preschooler (and guests), so it seemed like a waste to rip it up and spend money on a complete makeover just so that a small boy could have a more Architectural Digest-worthy bathroom. He only learned to use the potty just last year, so that seemed like a disproportionate reward. We ultimately decided just to paint and re-decorate the bathroom to buy us some time before we go for a full renovation.

I apparently took terrible before photos, but it’s not that different so it doesn’t matter much.

So, sure, the tile is gray with floral touches. But it’s perfectly functional.

We asked our son what theme he wanted for his new bathroom, and he said, “rainbows.” They are both his “favorite color and shape”, incidentally. Easy enough. I didn’t have a lot of other inspiration for how to decorate, but then found two prints to use as a jumping off point.

I bought these two prints at the One of a Kind Show in Chicago (they can also be found online here) and we decided to pull the wall color from here. We first thought we might go with a yellow for the walls, but as HGTV has shown time and time again, it is almost impossible to find a good yellow. After some false starts, we scrapped that plan  and went with an aqua that we matched from the fish print. It’s bright and happy and, as our son said, “looks like the ocean.”

As you can see in the before photos, the door is not original and had never been painted or stained, so we had to do that as well. Then we swapped out some hardware on the left and just had to buy a few accessories.

 Here’s the result:

The final flourish is below. My sister needle-pointed this Electric Blue Bathroom piece for me when we still lived in the city and had an apartment with shockingly blue, floor-to-ceiling tile. Two homes later, I still keep finding a place for it. If you needlepoint me a toilet, I am going to cherish it forever. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Our son loves this bathroom (“it’s very, very rainbow”) and we are pleased with the stopgap result. Andy said that he thinks it looks a little more kiddie than he was expecting, but again, the kid is 4. When he turns 12, we can masc it up with a gun rack and deer mounts.