Last Thursday during my lunch break I headed over to Target to pick up a couple of things, which happens to have a Marshall’s next door. So of course I had to pop in there too. I mean.. It’s Marshall’s. While perusing I came across these adorable 70s-esqe Jonathan Adler looking towels.

They were marked down to $7.99 per bath towel and $5.99 per hand towel. So I snatched up two bath towels and one hand towel for our currently lackluster bathroom. Here’s a grody before shot before moving in:

And here is how it has looked since moving in [and cleaning the horrible floors]:

We added a couple white rugs from Derek’s apartment for in front of the bathtub and sink which helped cover the stained floors and add a little softness to the whole institutional vibe. The only storage in the entire bathroom is a small cabinet above the toilet, which isn’t deep enough to hold towels without folding them into teeny rolls. Since I wasn’t using my spine bookshelf anywhere in the rest of the apartment I thought about using it for towel storage. As soon as I hung my new towels on the towel bar, it immediately livened up the bathroom. See how I left the tags on just in case? 

There was a lot of empty space between the spine shelf and the bathtub so I hung a couple orange frames I had lying around from a previous orange phase I went through. I wanted the artwork to be simple since the patterns in the bathroom were getting a little crazy, so I ended up choosing three of Derek’s flash cards he drew for American Architecture class.

The shower curtain was a fun West Elm find when our location closed and marked everything down 60%, making this baby about $30! I just love the scale of the waffles in the fabric. Speaking of West Elm, the space above the towel bar was lacking something as well, and luckily I had three floating shelves I scored at West Elm outlet last year for .97cents each! What? I know. It’s hard to tell in the photos but the towels have a slight mint color in the pattern, which just so happens to match my mint shelves exactly!

Image from my old apartment’s bathroom.

Because they have such an odd shape, and the mounting hardware is very specific, I used my trusty template method to perfectly space and align my three shelves.

Sadly though there was a stud or something crazy running horizontally exactly where I had lined up my templates, so I ended up moving my nail hole markers up 1″ to avoid the stud. DIY projects are rarely perfect!

The opposite wall was needing some art as well, and luckily I had these two framed Barbara Barry fabric swatches that were already framed in orange. Imagine that!

I love how happy and fresh the bathroom looks now, and gives off a nice Jonathan Adler vibe. Every time I walk in there now I don’t feel like I’m using a prison bathroom. Not that I know what that’s like or anything. But I’m pretty sure they don’t have pink and orange towels.