The Upcycled Bedroom Sink
One of the small but mighty features I was most excited to include in the design of our new cottage is the sink in our primary bedroom.
Our ~900 sqft home has one bathroom for the four of us, which we believe is enough since the kids’ grandparents’ home, which has multiple bathrooms, is a lovely one-minute stroll away. Plus, a key concept behind this “ADU” cottage and our French Farmhouse is to live with less stuff by sharing more resources.
One of my clients overseas has a sink in her bedroom, and it’s a design feature I enjoyed often when staying at her home. I found the opportunity to keep select self-care routines within the intimate cocoon of the bedroom to be beneficial in terms of both logistics and mental wellbeing.
I personally don’t function well when I’m rushed, and having (wonderful) children tugging on my clothes while I attempt to capture two minutes for myself at the bathroom sink to be stressful, but not reason enough to add a costly and largely unnecessary second bathroom.
Per usual, our aim behind the design of this sink was to use up as many existing items as possible, rather than sourcing newly-manufactured goods. However, I do intend to acquire a decorative switch plate cover and electrical outlet plate via Buster & Punch, as those standard white plastic ones make me cringe.
The sink is an antique, wooden French bowl (via Elsie Green). It’s coated / waterproofed inside with Rove & Dwell finish coat.
Much of the copper piping was salvaged from local, small business that was modernizing their interior.
The pedestal is a handmade plant stand I found on Etsy,
The mini cabinet was a second-hand find.
The ledge is a spare, river-recovered pine floorboard from The Goodwin Company.
The hooks and folding mirror were leftover from a previous project.
Clay candleholder is vintage via SSS Atelier.
Lime paint in “Cobblestone” by Color Atelier.
Vintage-style rotating soap holder via Vivi et Margot.
Our friend Danny helped us bring this to life, and we’re thrilled with how it turned out. It’s one-of-a-kind, meaningful, and ever-useful.
Bringing the Garden Inside through Earthy Linens
I love being inside our home— I do. But I’ve found that, in this time of far-reaching, heightened stress, being outside works wonders on my attitude.
I’ve been testing out ways of bringing the feeling of being outdoors into our bedroom to help counter the spike in anxiety I feel overnight.
We have windows in our headboard, so I trained the grapevine to run along the wall behind the bed, where its bright, wide leaves brush against the glass beneath the trailing plants on our built-in bookshelf.
The greenery continues on the other side of the room, where trumpet vines spill from an overhead living canopy just beyond the French doors.
To visually connect all of these elements throughout the bedroom, we added 100% linen sheets in this Earthy green hue. So far I’m enjoying how it unites this small space without visually cluttering it.
I always prefer linen sheets. First of all, they’re breathable (which helps, as we have no AC here in our tiny, coastal home)
Additionally, they don’t cling to dog hair as much as other fabrics seem to.
They get softer with every wash, and they line-dry quickly, helping us cut back on energy usage and costs.
Lastly, I find them simply beautiful.
West keeps saying, “Mom— I love our new bed!” (So do I, West.)
Note: This blog post was not sponsored, but the sheets were gifted as part of a paid partnership with Brooklinen on Instagram. As always, a portion of the income my small company earned from the collaboration will be donated to The RightWay Foundation.