My husband and I bought our first house near the end of 2008, and then I started working 60 hours a week living in my office writing finishing my dissertation.

One of the first things I did when I got a life again was add some oomph and storage! to our tiny master bath.  This was NewYear's weekend of 2009/2010.  I was "only" 24 weeks pregnant.  It was my first ever home improvement project .  I did it all by myself and I am really proud of how it turned out!

Yeah, the before picture looks pretty dull, right?  I took down the single towel bar before standing in the tub to take this picture.  There's Bamm-Bamm looking cute!




Installing beadboard is super easy (as long as it's not behind the toilet).  And you have a lot of choices.  I wanted mine to go high on the wall, but I hadn't found the 4x8 sheets of it at Home Depot yet.  So I bought the tongue and groove panels (8' tall, 21" wide, 3/pack).  Because this is a bathroom, and humid, I primed the backside of the beadboard beforehand.  Now you can also buy awesome cool beadboard wallpaper ( check it out!) 

I didn't want to glue this stuff straight to the wall (what if I change my mind one day!).  So I screwed some thin (1/4") narrow poplar boards to my studs.


I glued my boards to that (I used liquid nails for paneling) and at the top and bottom where I was putting molding I also used long finishing nails.  I don't know how you would nail into the "tongue" of the board (like they suggest on the package) and still get the "groove" to fit!  Whatev... I just nailed into the very top and bottom of the board (the molding will cover them up).  Then I replaced the baseboard and added some (pretty) baseboard upside down to the top (pics in the next post!).

That was the easy part.  Stay tuned... it gets better!