Main Floor Bathroom Pebbles and Wooden Slats

For Blue main floor bathroom, still my least favorite bathroom in the house, I removed the shower curtain I had put up when we first moved in and added some wood slats to the base of the shower area then filled with asian pebbles in grey. I think it looks better than the shower curtain.

New Orchid

The Master Bathroom is looking more like a bathroom, just have to get the pendant light over the mirror installed.

I bought an Orchid for a planter. The orchid isn't anything spectacular, but that's all the nursery had and I wanted something. When the flowers fall, I'll move to the pseudo greenhouse and fill with another in bloom. The planter was 6 RM and the orchid 8 RM, so both for under $5 US dollars.

Bathroom Mirrors

The Bathroom mirror is up in the Office Bathroom! We didn't have B make a wood framed one as we didn't want to add another element in there. After looking at all the mirror places we could find in Seremban, where they make mirrors and also windows and window frames, we found one place that would put up a mirror without the standard gold or silver tacky poster frame that all the companies suggested. The compromise is that it has 4 silver round top screws on the outside of the mirror. No one is doing this anymore for large mirror, but well, in Seremban it's all we could find and it looks ok. I'm just concerned the screws will rust over time as everything here does.

We also had the company install a round bevel mirror we bought at Ikea in what is now our Master Bathroom. You can see that there are two doors in the bathroom. One connects to our Master Bedroom and the other to what used to be a slightly smaller bedroom that we are now using as a big walk-in closet (will eventually have B make custom wood closet shelves around the whole room...). Anyway, the bathroom wall tiles are ok in beige. The special tiles are greyish green tint and have a bit of elegant design (or try to be) of course we would have gone plainer, but here we are. The floor tiles are a green color. So what I thought we would do would be try to go a bit more elegant here. You can see that the counter is pretty big for only one sink. I would have put two, but then again when both doors are open (they open into the bathroom), the one sink in the center looks good. The ikea mirror is kind of elegant and I found a small pendant light with little crystal chandelier pieces dangling in it, somehow glamorous but still minimal and modern that we will have put up when we get a few more light fixtures for around the house. That and add an orchid plant on the side of the countertop and some nice spa towels and we should be done.

Not sure we want to add glass around the shower, but might do someday. For now, I was thinking about buying some of that teakwood flooring (something like this) and put it in there with some asian pebbles around the outer parts of it all inside the existing edged parts of the tile floor. Just some thoughts, but not sure yet.

Light Fixture in Office Bathroom

I'm getting ready for B to make the mirror over the sink/vanity in the Office Bathroom as the Ikea mirror selection didn't have a mirror that would work here. In my recent post here, I shared the photo above which shows the weird yellow fixture over the sink/vanity that doesn't go with the bathoom or the other light fixture over the jacuzzi.

Close up of the yellow light fixture

So I looked around for some cream colored acrylic paint to try and paint the back part of the fixure, I didn't find the cream color I wanted, but found some pearl off-white paint with a bit of metallic in it. So I thought I would give it a try. Using my finger to rub the paint over the fixture, I didn't want it to look to solid. I wanted the paint to be slightly translucent, so that the color underneath was still present. Just wanted to downplay the brightness of the yellow color.

Here is a shot of the fixture after painting. It looks better and blends into the wall much better. But it's still an ugly fixture. For now, we use this and when we spot a nice fixture for over the sink/vanity and a vertical fixture to compliment it for near the jacuzzi, we can change them.

Home Office Bathroom

Now that the mirror in the mainfloor bathroom is up, I have to start looking for a mirror for the Home Office Bathroom. At first, I wanted a large plain mirror to cover the area, but I am having a hard time finding a company to get it from. I saw a mirror at Ikea in natural wood frame that might work. For now, I keep looking.

This is the light fixture that is above the bathroom vanity. It is pretty ugly and doesn't match the other fixture near the jacuzzi. I should look for another one that would look better, or figure out how to change the yellow color of the glass to beige. I dont really want to have to install another fixture because it means more holes in the wall, and we just don't know where the pipes run in the walls.

Main Floor Bathroom

Main Floor Bathroom snapshot from when we first moved into the house

I've mentioned that the mainfloor bathroom has the least attractive fixtures (light blue sink and toilet) and we sure wouldn't have picked Blue tiles for the walls and floors. But we have decided not to gut the bathroom for a couple reasons, first it costs too much, but second and more importantly, we have learned in Malaysia if something is working in the house it's best to leave it alone! If we have to deal with hooking up new plumbing and hacking the walls, we could run in to more problems. So for now we have decided to leave the bathroom as is. Well, it looks passable now as we have done a few things to downplay the ugliness and the blue of the room. The bathroom (which is somehow close to the kitchen) brings out the blue plate colors on the kitchen shelves to make the first floor have somewhat of a china-blue accent color scheme.

We couldn't find a mirror pre-made in the correct size that went with the Ikea cabinet we added in the room, so we had B our kitchen contractor make a solid wood framed mirror in the correct size and stained as close as possible to the dark brown-black wood of the Ikea cabinet. The mirror looks good enough for 70 RM, you can't complain at that price. But there is always something and when it was delivered it had two screw brackets at the top of the frame. B said he couldn't hide the screws behind the mirror. So I painted the screws white to hide them a bit, and I think they are passable. What a difference a mirror makes in the room!

There was no glass door for the shower area, so we used a shower curtain I had sent from the US. It was something I used in my house there. We couldn't find any good shower curtains here, I couldn't even find a white plastic shower liner for the back of the fabric curtain. I had to use a light beige one. Also the curtain had to be cut shorter, because the height of the wall was smaller than a standard shower curtain size.

Interesting to note that all of the shower heads that were installed on the bathroom walls were much to low, we had to adjust them higher by adding a new holder above the existing ones. We also bought new shower heads as the ones in the house were crappy. But shower heads here are really inexpensive as well as many of the bathroom fixtures in general. Chrome and stainless steel rust so quickly, so we have been holding off on the bathroom accessories until we find some that are good quality.

Guest Bedroom

For the main floor Guest Bedroom, once again we went with Nippon Paint in custom color: S3502-B a medium grey color. We bought Ikea furniture, Engan Bed and Engan Wardrobe and a couple white side tables. The Shades which are blackout to eliminate lights at night from the neighbor's house are Tupplur in grey (we used the Tupplur shades in the office and have been happy with the way they function). Bedding is Ikea too, although I forget the duvet cover name. The bed is a King Koil mattress which is as soft as we could find, nearly a pillow top but slightly harder. We wanted something good for our guests and most mattresses in malaysia are too hard. We would have liked to get Getha for our guest room, but it was over our budget.

The photo shows the main floor bathroom which connects to the guest room. Of all the 4 bathrooms in the house, this one has the least attractive tiles. They are white and navy/royal blue. and the sink and toilet are light blue! So without gutting the bathroom, we tried to downplay the blue and add this Ikea dark brown cabinet and dark shower curtain. B is working on a dark wooden frame for a mirror above sink (photos after it is installed). The planter on top of the cabinet holds a giant orchid plant (you can find beautiful orchids here in Seremban), well the flowers fell off the new plant one week after the guests arrived because the room might be too dark for orchids. I should buy new plants whenever guests arrive, or try a bamboo plant which is what the nursery suggested for the bathroom.