This 1918 NYC Apartment Bathroom Goes from “Crumbly Mess” to Colorful Charm

ABOUT THIS BEFORE & AFTER

HOME TYPE: Apartment, Historic Home

PROJECT TYPE: Bathroom

STYLE: Colorful, Vintage

SKILL LEVEL: DIY

RENTAL FRIENDLY: Yes

When it comes to renting, sometimes what you see isn’t ultimately what you get. DIYer Abby Starobin (@symphonylanedesign) found this out the hard way when she moved into her 480-square-foot 1918 Brooklyn apartment. Although she loved the building’s vintage appeal, the apartment’s rundown state wasn’t apparent when she first toured it because someone else’s belongings were in the space.

This included in the bathroom, which she says “hadn’t been maintained since, like, 300 B.C.” (Okay, maybe that’s what it felt like, but it really and truly hadn’t been maintained in over a decade.)

“It was absolutely disgusting,” Abby says. “The floor tiles were detached from the floor and created a crumbly mess. The grout was black. It hadn’t been caulked properly. Of all the rooms in her apartment, it probably took the most work, but Abby transformed her old, gross bathroom into a peachy, personality-filled haven.

First, the tiles got a refresh.

Because Abby rents her apartment, she had to get creative when it came to refreshing her apartment bathroom, and phase one involved giving it a deep clean. “If I owned the place, I’d rip out the whole room and start over,” she says. “But I couldn’t do that. I had to accept it wouldn’t be perfect, but it could be improved… I grabbed a toothbrush and some bleach and went to town.”

Her landlord fixed the floor tiles, and although she says they’re not quite the right color as the existing tile, “thankfully, the rug covers it!” Abby removed the old caulk in the room and added new, which she found surprisingly “fun and easy,” albeit a gross DIY project.

“Removing the old caulk was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I swear there were entire ecosystems with their own governments living under there.”

The rug inspired the paint color.

Abby decided to base the bathroom’s new color palette on her pre-existing Urban Outfitters rug (it’s now sold out), which called for plenty of pastel tones. She chose a peachy shade, Benjamin Moore’s Mixed Fruit, for the room’s accent walls.

She added other patterns and colors, too. She installed a sparkly blue toilet seat and made a new mirror frame herself by pouring casting material into a mould, then gluing that over the top of the old mirror. (The picture frame to the right is a similar DIY project.)

“Since the room is long and narrow, I had to be careful not to overwhelm [it],” Abby says. “While I have patterned wallpaper, I did a solid color shower curtain to balance it.”

A patterned wallpaper completes the bathroom.

The aforementioned wallpaper, a peel-and-stick pattern with ladies surfing, is from Spoonflower. “Putting up the wallpaper was challenging because I could hardly fit a ladder in the room,” Abby says. “I had to stand on the back of the toilet on my tiptoes to be able to reach a high corner.” Her best wallpapering advice? Having friends to help is crucial.

But Abby is proud of the elbow grease (and style) that went into the “after.” “I went from being repulsed by [the] room to adoring it,” she says. “Sometimes, I look at old photos and can’t believe how far it came. My bathroom is bright and peachy with lots of fun things to look at. It took several months and a lot of hard work, but bit by bit, I got it done.”

Inspired? Submit your own project here.

Further Reading

I Tried the 90/90 Rule and My Closet Is Now Fully Decluttered

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted To Know About Article’s DTC Furniture

See How a Stager Used Paint to Transform a 1950s Living Room