It’s finally powder room reveal day!

Today IS the day! The reveal of my powder room project that became an homage to a place I loved as a kid, Crystal Beach Park. If you’ve read the last several posts (here, here, and here), you know it was a labor of love…and a crapshoot at best (wow, that’s an unfortunate choice of words to use relative to a powder room).

But not only did it ACTUALLY turn out as envisioned… this room continues to make me smile whenever I have to, um, visit.

Several months ago, I mentioned that I was in the process of updating our back hall powder room.

While searching for inspiration, I found this beautiful half-bath by Pure Salt interiors. The fixtures were a little different but it was a great starting point. Their waIlpaper choice is lovely, but I ended up deciding to create and decorate the walls with my own toile pattern.

The first part of this project was to add some wainscoting to the bottom third of the room…I added wainscot in another area of the house and learned a lot from it so I was anxious to try it again.

But like all my projects, there were some bugaboos to solve. How high should it be? How many “boxes”? Does the spacing have to be even? Should the fixtures be centered within their own boxes?

What to do about the teeny tiny sliver of space on the right of the door and the left of the window?

I DID finally figure out all the variables and finished the wainscot…NOW I was ready to move on to the fun part.

When creating my toile, I planned to render it in black and white, and knew the feature image had to be of the park’s signature attraction, the Comet roller coaster.

However, I had an epiphany to interrupt the continuity of the black and white by introducing color to one image that emphasized the iconic “Comet” sign. So, this became the feature image of the wallpaper:

…and that led to more fun decisions.

Before I could hang the wallpaper, I needed to make and hang the window treatment so I could determine how to line up the paper. (You have to remember that I’m a minutia junkie and this kind of detail completely matters to me. And while making the shade I thought “how cool would it be to have trim work that repeated the same colors used in the sign?!”

Hey! Instead of repeating the wallpaper design, why not sew a window treatment in a contrast solid or print?

Good question!

“Pattern drenching” is a thing people often do with toile, and is something I wanted to try. Check out this gorgeous room by designer Anthony Baratta…

…who repeats the tropical toile on the bed linens, pillows, headboard and footboard, window treatments, wallpaper (above and below the molding), and window ceiling detail.

I can always switch out the shade if the mood strikes (and it someday will), but I definitely enjoyed making the pattern in the shade line up with the wallpaper.

Okay, we know you’re weird about details that no one cares about, can we see the room sometime this decade?

Woof, tough crowd.

One more thing…I noted in one of the prior posts that I received mixed reviews on the end product. I sought input from someone who always knows the right thing to put in the right place…and could tell right away that the room wasn’t his jam. “It’s a lot.” was the vibe he felt. He suggested that the paper needed to become the background rather than the focal point and that maybe I should fill the large wall with an oversized photo.

We tried that with a picture I had and from a design perspective, his point is well taken. I may do that sometime down the road. But for now, I decided I am loving and enjoying every happy memory with every image I see each time I enter that room (and let’s be real, as a woman over 60, I enter it frequently, haha).

So, this might likewise NOT be your kind of ride….but pull up your lap bar…here we go!

Reflecting on the Pure Salt inspiration photo at the top of this post…theirs also contained lovely crown molding..which is not (as yet) in my skill set, but is something I hope to revisit. In all, my room is not remotely as pretty as theirs, but it’s quite a bit more sentimental and in the end, is a really fun room to have and share with others who will appreciate the memories it evokes.

Finally, you will rarely (if ever) find a houzz photo of a powder room that includes, erm, reading material…however, mine includes this entertaining mystery by author and amusement park historian Rose Ann Hirsch:

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Once again, sincerest thanks to the keepers and owners of the original photos of Crystal Beach (please see this post for more information), who graciously gave me permission to use their images in my project: Kim Carney, Rick Doan, Ken Jones, Jr., Ken Jones, Sr., Dale Roddick, and Thomas Martin Smith. I would also be remiss to not note that two of the images used were from photographs of the late “Mr. Crystal Beach,” Paul Kassay.