Before and After: An All-New Bathroom Perfectly Suits Its 130-Year-Old Home

Turning a bedroom into a bathroom sounds more like a brain teaser than a doable reno project. Drastically switching the purpose of a room is no easy feat, especially when you’re changing a space that once held a bed into one that can fit a functioning sink and toilet. Difficult, yes, but Jordan and Barry of The Brownstone Boys proved that it’s perfectly possible. Their 130-year-old brownstone came with plenty of space, but not enough bathrooms—so they adapted. “We don’t have a bathroom on the parlor floor and really didn’t want guests to go through our bedroom to use the bathroom. For us the dimensions of this bedroom seemed perfect for a bathroom with a window,” they say.

One of the first obstacles they had to sort out was the plumbing situation, since the room was in part of the house that didn’t have plumbing—so they had to build it all from scratch. “It required us running it up from the basement and through the entry way wall carefully threading it behind the original plaster moldings. Part of one got damaged and it was an expensive fix!” Jordan and Barry say. “We removed all of the floor and subfloor from the room, built all the plumbing in, and reframed and dry walled the ceiling.”

This wasn’t the only taxing part though: the windows, shutters, and trim had layers and layers of paint that had to be stripped off ever so carefully to get the beautiful original woodwork back to its natural state. Thankfully the grunt work paid off. “This beautiful original woodwork is all over the house but this is one of our favorite places to experience it. It contrasted so nicely with the white tiles,” Jordan and Barry say.

In terms of style, they decided on a vintage theme to honor the age of their 130-year-old brownstone and began building out their vision with that in mind. Their goal was to create a space that felt like it had been there all along. “Many of the design choices fell into place once we decided on a classic vintage-inspired design. We immediately knew what kind of tile we wanted without even looking at options,” they say.

To completely embrace the beautiful aspects of a bygone era, they speckled the floor with black and white hexagonal tiles and the wall with white subway tile, both from from Brooklyn Tile & Design. Tying in an art deco flair is a jazzy double sconce light fixture from Illuminate Vintage on Etsy, which contrasts beautiful with the utility sink beneath it that’s beautiful in a simplistic way. They continued the neutral color palette onto the walls, which were painted in Sherwin-Williams’ Pure White. Beneath the window, they installed a gorgeous clawfoot tub from Kingston Brass, to which they admitted makes for a challenging showering experience for guests, but just looking at the after photos it’s clear that the slight inconvenience was completely worth it. 

While each detail is a perfectly selected nod to vintage times, what Jordan and Barry love most isn’t actually in the bathroom. Their favorite part of the space? “The vintage door that we spent so much time looking for and piecing together! It’s perfect for the space,” they say. “It completes the vintage look of the bathroom. It also has the added benefit of letting lots of light into the hallway. We stenciled ‘WC’ on it so that our guests can easily find the bathroom when they go upstairs!” The door, which they sourced from an antique store in Pennsylvania, took a lot of effort to find and it ended up needing alterations from a woodworker to make it fit perfectly—this and a few coats of Sherwin Williams’ Isle of Pines. But the challenge proved worth it and their guest bedroom-turned-bathroom added a lot of value, both stylistically and in terms of functionality. 

All in, the room came together in six weeks with a budget of $12,000, a pretty good deal considering that includes the not-so-fun stuff like plumbing and drywall. But if you’re terrified tackling a space that requires work that goes beyond surface level, Jordan and Barry suggest imagining it and just going for it: “We envisioned the space as we built it before even looking at many other options. Because of that we have a strong connection to it. If you have a vision for a space, don’t be afraid flex your renovation muscles!”

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