Home Design and Architecture Guide

Do it Yourself Bathroom Design

Do-it-yourself projects are fun and the results gratifying. With a little help, you can transform your outdated bathroom into a magnificent room that is contemporary and fresh. Pulling in energetic colors is one way to achieve this transformation. To give you an idea of how you can accomplish this, you could paint the walls of your bathroom periwinkle. For the window curtains, choose a pattern that incorporates both a small and large-scale design and use colors of purple, wine, green, and periwinkle. Next, remove your cabinet doors and drawers. Sand down to get any loose areas of paint or debris off, preparing the surface for painting. Use a good primer and then choose a red color that matches the color in the curtain fabric. Add new contemporary hardware, a matching red shower curtain, bath rugs that have several different colors of green that you will make, and then for accents, use items with touches of gold. The bathroom will be bold, cheery, modern, and completely new.

The great thing about this type of bathroom design is that most of the items you can make yourself. For example, the window curtain, shower curtain, rugs, painting the cabinets, and even some of the accent pieces can all be handmade. We touched on how to prepare and paint the cabinets but what about the rugs.

Making green quilted rugs will make getting out of the tub a pleasure to your feet. Rugs can be made by choosing fabric of various shades of green and cutting it for a 24 x 30 inch rug. This is the finished measurement so you will need to add 1 � inches on each side for the seams. After cutting the top piece from the green fabric, you need to cut a second layer the same size made from batting, and a third layer of muslin. The bottom layer of muslin needs to be 1 inch larger than the top fabric and batting piece. The batting will go in between the fabric and muslin, with the muslin extending � inch over the fabric on all sides.

Next, pin all the layers together with a quilt grid on top. Machine-quilt on the grid and when finished, trim off the excess batting and muslin so they are the same size as the top fabric layer. To add cording, you will need to measure the perimeter of the mat and then add a couple of inches to accommodate the corners. Now cut out 4-inch bias-cut strips to match this length. Sew this into one long strip, pressing the seams open. The 1-inch cording will be centered on the wrong side of the strip and the fabric folded over to enclose. Make sure you match the long edges. Using a zipper foot attachment, stitch close to the cording and then pin it on the right side of the top fabric layer going along the perimeter of the mat, again matching the raw edges. Keeping a �-inch seam allowance and sew this together. Finally, the seam allowance will be pressed to the muslin and all layers will be topstitched. To finish the rug, a nonskid backing will need to be adhered to the back under the mat. These are not difficult to make as long as you follow directions and take your time. Your new bathroom design will bring an entirely new look to your home!