Between power showers, moon baths, lotions, potions and everything in between, the bathroom is crucial to any witch's self-care routine. Energetically, bathrooms correspond to your emotional life, connecting the element of water with the processes of letting go, releasing and detoxifying. A clogged drain could indicate a struggle to feel some big feelings or difficulty detaching from what's no longer serving you. The state of your toilet can speak to how you deal with toxicity in your life. As with any room in your home, if your bathroom has issues there could be an energetic disturbance there affecting your life both inside and outside of your home. How you care for your home is a refection of how you care for yourself, and caring for yourself is practical magic!
As you may know depending on whether you’ve been following along on Instagram, the bathroom at @Hauswitchathome headquarters is undergoing quite the transformation in the next few weeks, complete with new floors, a new vanity, toilet, medicine cabinet, lighting fixture, and hardware!
The big reason we're renovating the bathroom is that there kind of isn’t a floor right now? Floors represent grounding and boundaries, so the fact that our floor is sort-of non-existent is... not great. Best guess says that we've got ourselves some painted linoleum. Can you even imagine such a thing? I guess it just seems like a half-ass, quick-fix kind of solution that just won't do in an intention-filled home. You know?
The previous owners had put down a teakwood plank bathmat to hide the non-floor, so that’s what we saw when we first viewed the apartment. Since it was peak Covid times we were only allotted 15 minutes to see the place and the bathroom floor wasn’t going to make or break the deal anyways, so we just didn’t really pay that much attention.
Well for as cute as the teak thing looked, functionally it was NOT for us. It creaked, it didn’t feel good on our little bare feetsies, and ultimately just wasn’t a long-term solution. HOWEVER, when I pulled it up, I saw that it had left all these dirty indentations on the floor and no amount of cleaning helped.
So it became apparent that we would need to cover it with something... like say, some actual flooring. Which I considered doing myself, until I realized that the vanity cabinet is chipped and worn, the shape of the sink is annoying, and the medicine cabinet has rust on it. It seemed silly to redo the floor and then put the tired, worn out stuff back in, but a whole makeover sounded a little overwhelming. That was when I knew the project was definitely too big for me to handle and I decided to reach out to Elizabeth and Lindsay from Dwell October, a Salem-based interior design duo known for their "witchy-modern" aesthetic.
After a consultation the "DO" ladies were kind enough to put together some mood boards with possible new lewks for the bathroom and they really knocked it out of the park. They took into account that I would want to source as ethically and sustainably as possible and mixed big box items with ones from smaller businesses as well. Here were the original 3 concepts:
So, I was OBSESSED with the star tile from the first design and since they purposely designed the boards to be mix and match we decided to pull elements from all of them. Here’s where we landed:
Since Melissa and I are not considering the Penthaus our “forever home” we have to keep in mind what future buyers might like and are resisting the urge to make things too specific to our taste. As much as I loved the star tile idea we thought it might be a bit much for other people and too busy for the size of the space in general. So Elizabeth and Lindsay came up with the amazing idea to do a mostly black floor with a scattering of the star tiles, and I literally could not love that more. The best kind of compromise, where everyone actually gets what they want!
Other things I’m obsessed with:
- The new vanity sink is much smaller, leaving some counter space along the edges which will be much better for accommodating makeup and hair-related tools.
- They managed to source a medicine cabinet that is the same size and will have roughly the same amount of storage as our current one, which was something I was really hoping for.
- That light fixture!
- The idea of having a “big reveal” for myself since I always loved giving that to my clients.
Things I had to compromise on:
- We decided to keep the faucet chrome rather than a cute brass or black since the bathtub/shower hardware is chrome and it made sense to me that we keep it consistent. Especially factoring in the eventual re-sale, I wanted the stuff that was harder to replace to be more classic. But it was hard! I love the black faucet they had picked out so much!
- Pretty much everything is being sourced from big box suppliers. Between Covid-related supply chain stuff and cost-related concerns, Wayfair, Home Depot and Build.com are where almost everything is coming from. (I'll include all the final Sourcing Sorcery details after its all done!)
- It is a hard time to buy furniture because supply chains are still a total mess from Covid and Suez Canal related issues. So I had to pick a different vanity than I wanted but oh well!
- The cost of labor was much more than I'd anticipated. I’m a huge proponent of paying more for a job well done but I was truly not prepared for what that would actually cost. It definitely took me a minute to feel great about giving the go-ahead, but if I'm going to pay a lot for something, I'm happy it's people's labor.
To offset the big box of it all, I’m shopping small for everything else that I possibly can. The rug, bathmat and accessories will all come from smaller businesses.
The other thing I’m really excited about is that we’ll be staying at the Hawthorne Hotel while the bathroom is undergoing its transformation, hauscats and all! Doesn’t a family stay-cation sound like the cutest thing ever? Salem is packing her bags already! (not really, she only has one bag and she HATES when I put her in it).
Neither Melissa or I have ever stayed at the Hawthorne and we can’t wait to play tourists in our own town. Plus they were very sweet and accommodating so keep your eyes peeled for some cute #hauscatsatthehawthorne content! Cinnamon Roll is very much looking forward to seeing some ghosts...
Okay, that’s it for now! Next time we talk I’ll have some delicious “after” photos!
The Moon is in Capricorn and the witches say "Suffer No Fool".
