Library/Restroom Wallpaper

Where do you do your reading? Admit it, sometimes it’s in the john, if only because that’s the room with a lock on the door. Or perhaps the tub. When I’m having bowel issues a good book or magazine always helps me relax.

I’ve turned my entire bathroom into a library. The haphazard way of just putting books and magazines on the back of the toilet was driving me crazy. So, I added a magazine rack next to the toilet paper roll holder.

But, the part I love most about my library/restroom is the wallpaper. It’s the pages of a real vintage book. I tore the pages out and modge podged them onto the wall and painted the molding pink.

My grandmother had a pink bathroom and my whole childhood I just loved that room. Since becoming an adult I’ve always painted my various bathrooms pink.

While using the guest bathroom at someones home I was taken with their wallpaper. It was expensive, I’m sure. What I loved about it was that it was all poetry. But, it was poetry about Time. Every poem was in relation to time. Time, and running out of it, I decided, was not going to help me do my business.

I loath most poetry. Say what you have to say. Don’t make me critically deconstruct it to figure it out. But, rhyming poetry is much, much worse. The one poet I truly adore is Dorothy Parker. So I took an original Not So Deep As A Well printed in the 1960s that I already had and glued the pages to the walls. Because the book was over 40 years old it gave the walls a really romantic aged look.

I accented with signs and towel hooks that say things like ”When train is in station, please do not flush” and “Bath 5 cents, Towel 10 cents.” I kept the cameo pink and white cut-outs (honestly I haven’t the slightest idea what they are really called) for art. 

But, alas, my daughter is starting to read and Dorothy Parker is more suicidal, morbid and maudlin than is appropriate for small children.

Razors pain you, drugs cause cramp, acid stains you, rivers are damp, guns aren’t lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful – might as well live.

I thought perhaps the bathroom should be just a tad more optimistic and uplifting. So, I found a Leaves of Gold book, also printed in the ’60s. This time the pages are encouraging thoughts and affermations about life. My favorite is the one about Abraham Lincoln’s resume, which includes a lifetime of failure after failure and then BAM President of the United States. Dig that. I pasted these pages right over the top of the Parker pages.

I adore my bathroom. It’s probably my favorite room in the house. I love words and this bathroom reflects that. It also functions as our library or reading room, so I dig that it reflects that. And it was cheap, the book was $3.50 and the liquid starch I got at the dollar store.