Kid's bathroom ideas

[amym]

After reading through the archives & all of your great nursery ideas, I am hoping you can give me some help or point me in the right direction. We are moving to a new house (or new to us -- it is actually 40 years old) and the kids will have their own bathroom. They way it is set up is that there is a sink & toliet for each of them with a tub/shower between. I would like to do something girly for my daughter & boyish for my son & hopefully tie it together with the middle section. Right now there is yellow tile in it, which I like, but my DH doesn't, so it might not stay. The side for my son is connected to his room & the side I would do as a girl's exits into the hallway. We are going to paint DS room with a denim blue color. His bedding/theme is PBK Ranch Trucks. Any ideas or places to find fun bathroom shower curtains or ideas?

Thanks,

Amy

[amym]

That is a great idea. Bugs had crossed my mind, but then I kind of forgot about it.

I love that quilt. It is adorable. Thanks for sharing it with me!

Amy
mom to Samuel, 4
& Olivia, 1

[parkersmama]

We have a shared bathroom for our kids. The two boys share a room that is connected by a bath to the nursery. After we found out that this baby is a girl, we decided to re-do the bathroom in a gender-neutral theme (it was just a standard adult bathroom before). We painted the upper half a pale blue and the lower half a darker blue. At the place where the two colors meet I painted waves in the dark blue color (this was easy...I did a sort of stencil made from a wave that I got off our computer clip art). "Riding" the waves are rubber duckies that I stenciled around as a border. I got a rubber duckie bathmat from PBK and a rubber duckie shower curtain from Bed, Bath & Beyond, and we used the PBK letter hooks for each child's initial for a towel hook on the wall. It turned out really cute!

[daisymommy]

Funny that you ask! I just bought a bunch of yellow rubber duckies bathroom stuff and put it away for later (much later since DS is only 8 months old!)--but I couldn't resist,it was so cute. Walmart and Target both have pretty similar patterns of bathroom accessories in a white background, with blue checks and yellow ducks all over it. It is very gender neutral, and very kiddish. I bought the set from Walmart (complete with matching border)because it was slightly cheaper than Target and the toothbrush holder and soap pump was plastic/resin and seemed less likely to break if dropped. The ones at Target are ceramic (but if you liked their shower curtain adn rugs better, Walmart counter accessories would still match oaky). I am going to buy yellow towels and bath rugs to go with it all later(which should be easy to find about anywhere.)

Sassy makes alot of kids bathroom stuff that is yellow rubber duckies. Look in Target's baby toy section. I bought a water spout cover (so child won't bonk their head on it--ouch!), nonslip bathtub matt, mesh bath toy bag that suction cups onto the shower stall wall, and of course some little rubber duck toys!
Enjoy!
Amy

[jeneli]

Since its a bathroom, what about an underwater/ocean theme? You could paint the room a nice greenish-blue color, and the yellow tile could work as the sand/ocean bottom. On your son's side, you could paint or accessorize with "boyish" sea creatures such as sharks, eels, swordfish, octopus, and big sea turtles, and on your daughter's side you could use more "girlish" sea creatures such as mermaids, dolphins, starfish, sea shells, and brightly colored coral. In the middle section you could use more gender neutral creatures like fish, whales, and crustaceans to tie it all together. Good luck!

[amym]

Great ideas everyone! I love them -- now to figure out which one to do. Anymore, anyone?

Thanks,

Amy

[momathome]

They have some really cute kids bathroom themes at Target - I got some adorable frog-themed stuff there that my girls just love. They also have a ducks theme, fish, Sponge Bob Squarepants, some really funny stuff and it's all very affordable. Good luck!
-Lauren

[jeneli]

Just to add to my above post... here's a link to some really cute "tropical fish" bathroom items:

Tropical Fish

If the above link doesn't work, go to www.terrysvillage.com then click on "bathroom & laundry" then "tropical fish" (be sure to check out page 2 of the theme which has a tissue box, wastebasket, drawer pulls, etc).

Another "aquatic" theme that would work with the fish accessories besides the "ocean" theme I first mentioned would be to do a Hawaian Tropics theme. The boy side could have surf boards and palm trees and the girl side could have tropical flowers, sea shells, and pineapples, with the general fishy stuff tying it all together. Not that a girl can't like surfing, but you know what I mean... ;-)

[emmiem]

We have a Jack and Jill bath also. The boy's room is painted blue in a baseball theme. The girls room is painted purple in a dress-up theme with hats, shoes, and gloves. I had the entire bathrooms faux finished. The boy's vanity area had polka dots of purple and green on blue walls. The girl's vanity has purple walls with a wavy stripe of green with blue dots. The middle bathtub area has big wavy stripes of green on the blue background with dots of purple. This avoided being too young or getting tired of a theme. Paint is very changable!

[amym]

That sounds really neat too! All of these are great ideas. Thanks for sharing!!

Amy

[suzska]

I can't come up with any ideas right now. All the ones already posted sound great! Getting rid of the yellow tile will be messy. Our powder room (yes, our powder room on the first floor) has peach tile up to about 48". While there is tile in a powder room is beyond me. The house was built in 1960.

Anyway, to make matters worse, the previous homeowners put a textured finish on the walls above the tile (and on the wall in the hallway just outside the room--just the one wall). Probably to hid some water damage, but that's another story. The also had painted the walls white or an eggshell color.

Our kitchen has dark green walls, and I somehow thought the textured walls in the hall would look like mold or moss or something gross if they were painted green. So that wasn't going to work. I picked out a sandy color (Martha Stewart's "Pebblestone" ) for all the textured walls in the hall and bath. DH wasn't sure about it, but he should know to have faith in me. ;) Let me say it looks 100 times better. I still hate the textured walls, but at least they seem to "work" now with the peach tile.

I guess what I'm trying to say in this long-winded post, is maybe your DH will be okay with the tile once you pick out some creative paint colors or painting techniques.

We won't even talk about the silver-foil floral wallpaper that use to be in the main bath....

[sweetbasil]

What about a farm kind of theme? There could be animals AND flowers :) to make it girl and boy friendly....

I was going to do our kids' bathroom around a really cute quilt I found at www.ross-simons.com that had frogs, dragonflies, and daisies on it (am trying for the first time to post a picture below), because I thought it could be a good compromise for a little boy and a little girl. But then we found out that I'm having another boy, so we went with the PBK whale theme. Oh, well- maybe we'll try again for a girl :)

Good luck,