We featured Ashley James’ beautiful farmhouse style 1997 Clayton manufactured home a few months ago. Her home is a stunning example of just how beautiful and stylish a factory-built home can be. Today, we’re taking a closer look at her affordable farmhouse mobile home bathroom makeover. She took the small dark guest bathroom and made it lighter, brighter and more spacious. Thankfully, Ashley wrote about her experience for us and has shared some great tips and advice if you want to tackle your own affordable farmhouse mobile home bathroom makeover. You can find many more great articles written by Ashley on her blog, Lainey Drew.
As amazing as it is having the extra bathroom, it can be a challenge when it comes to decorating a small guest bathroom. The room is usually very small and tight. The low ceilings can make it seem even smaller. It is also usually a dark room due to little natural light. Mobile home “guest” bathrooms tend to have only one tiny window, or no window at all, resulting in a darker space.
However, I have some tips and tricks to show you how to make the most of your small bathroom. Today, I’m going to walk you through how I remodeled my guest bathroom to feel taller, brighter, and more spacious. And of course, you know I had to add some farmhouse touches in the décor!
The first thing we did was to replace our bathtub with a new factory mobile home tub. The old tub had yellowed over time. If you have a yellow tub needing attention, check out this post.
After the new bathtub was installed, we removed all the trim work from the walls and the VOG wallboards themselves to replace with beadboard panel boards from Home Depot.
Beadboard is an all-star product in home improvement but especially for farmhouse and cottage home decor styles. It’s affordable, fairly easy to install, and makes a great wall or ceiling covering.
Installing beadboard vertically is a good option for creating the illusion of a higher ceiling as it gives the eyes a line to follow upward. You can also use vertical planking for the same effect.
Unfortunately, beadboard doesn’t stand up to water. It’s fine to use around water but precaution is taken to keep water off it. Ashley shared a great tip to help give beadboard a little more protection against water by sealing it with oil-based paint on both sides and the edges.
Be sure to seal your panels before they go on the wall. They aren’t made to withstand water so we used an oil-based paint and painted two coats on both sides as well as all edges.
We used finishing nails along with construction adhesive to secure them to the wall. The panels come in 4 x 8-foot sheets. You will likely need to cut them down to fit the height of your bathroom.
Use spackling to hide the seams where each panel meets and sand smooth. Then, add new baseboards and ceiling trim. We used 1 x 4-inch PVC trim because it is waterproof and we wanted simple clean lines.
We chose to also add 1×4-inch trim on either side of our tub to frame it in and hide the transition from the beadboard to the shower walls. You’ll also want to add ¼ round or other corner trim to the corners of the room.
When attempting to make a small, dark room appear bigger and brighter, we’ve all heard to go with lighter paint. I really wanted to make this room look as big as possible so I went with white, Ultra Pure White by Valspar, to be exact.
In a bathroom, you’ll want to use at least a satin sheen though a lot of paint experts recommend going with semi-gloss.
I love the crispness and simplicity from the white but if pure white is not your thing, choose any color you like, just remember in order to maximize the illusion of a larger room, you’ll want to stick with a very light shade.
I painted everything including the walls, trim, and cabinet in the same shade of white and chose to add texture, color, and warmth using my décor.
Instead of refinishing our old cabinet and counter, we decided to replace it with a super affordable option from Home Depot. It is a combo set that includes the vanity and the marble vanity top for the unbeatable price of $99.
The new cabinet and sink made a huge impact in this tiny bathroom. Suddenly, things looked so much more updated.
Even though this cabinet is nearly the same width as the original, it adds more usable storage space because it is taller and has two doors. The original only had one door making it difficult to access things tucked to either side of the door opening.
A lot of designers like to use pedestal sinks in tiny bathrooms to give the room more space. It works as far as making the room appear larger, however, you lose all your under-the-sink storage. Just something to keep in mind.
Another way to update your storage is by adding a cabinet or shelving above your toilet. Not only will this maximize storage in a small bathroom, but it will also add height to the room by drawing the eye upward.
For a while, I contemplated using shelving above our toilet but nothing ever seemed just right. Then, I saw this chippy white cabinet outside of a local antique shop and knew it was the one! When I got it home, I couldn’t believe it fit so perfectly in this space. Score! It might be one of my favorite finds to date.
I chose to use a basket for my toilet paper. I like how the color of the basket adds warmth to this bright white room. Any time you go with white paint, it’s a good idea to be sure and warm up the design through textiles and decorative pieces.
Bright lighting is especially important in the bathrooms. They provide a clean and super bright light that truly is similar to daylight.
This one may seem obvious, but I didn’t want to leave it out. We use the GE refresh LED HD Light bulbs throughout our house.
Hanging your shower curtain very high up towards the ceiling will draw the eye up and add height to your bathroom.
However, shower curtains are usually only 72 inches tall which isn’t long enough to hang the curtain too high. That’s why I like to use regular window curtains as shower curtains.
A pair of 84-inch window curtain panels can be hung close to the ceiling and will almost touch the floor, completely hiding the tub. Think of how many more fabric options you will have when you start searching the window panel aisle for your bathroom!
I have also used cotton drop cloths as shower curtains and used curtain rings to hang them. You will need to get at least 1.5-inch rings to fit over the ends of the shower rod.
The key to using curtains or drop cloths as shower curtains is to use a shower curtain liner behind them. You can see where I hung two shower rods in the image above. One is a little lower and sits behind the other. It holds my shower liner. The other is a little higher and holds my decorative bathroom blinds and curtains.
You can find extra-long shower liners at Bed Bath and Beyond or on Amazon.
Choose a somewhat tall mirror for over your sink. Mirrors give the illusion of depth and also make rooms look brighter by reflecting light. So, it only makes sense that the more mirror you have, the more depth and light you have. Though, I don’t recommend going with a mirror much wider than your vanity or sink.
A taller mirror will add both depth and light while at the same time, add visual height. This mirror frame was a DIY made by my husband from reclaimed wood.
Once you’ve got your bathroom lighter, brighter and looking more spacious, it’s time for the fun. Time to add in those details that give the room more of your style.
There are so many items you could use to add beauty and style to your bathroom from candles to wall art to
the soap dispenser and pretty towels.
Plants are one of my favorite things to add to any room decor. In a room with little natural light such as a
mobile home bathroom, you’ll want to go with faux greenery.
Here’s a little round up of my favorite places to find faux greenery:
Mobile homes are awesome for including a second bathroom in nearly every model. The second/guest bathroom is usually very small with little to no natural light. It’s okay though because we can work with that!
Ways we can make the most of our small, dark bathroom as well as making it appear lighter, brighter, and more spacious include:
I hope you enjoyed our guest bathroom remodel! Have you taken on a mobile home bathroom remodel? Do you have any tips or tricks that I may have missed? Let me know in the comments below!
Thank you for stopping by today, friends!
Ashley
PS: Mobile Home Living is a member of an affiliate program that includes Hobby Lobby. Enjoy this 40% off coupon for Hobby Lobby.
Ashley put together a few of her favorite products that she has either used in her home or are similar to things she’s found at flea markets, yardsales, and Craigslist. All links are affiliate links for Ashley.
A big thanks to Ashley for sharing her affordable farmhouse mobile home bathroom makeover with us. And thank you so much for reading Mobile Home Living!
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