PublishedMar 19, 2025 1:20 AM EDT
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Domino Reno: Glowing Transformations, Questionable DIYs, and Wisdom From People Who Actually Know Stuff
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When Michael and Lisa Fine, the duo behind bathroom accessories brand Quiet Town, recently moved into their dream house in Northern California, major renovations weren’t exactly in the budget. If they wanted to make changes, they’d have to go the DIY route—and that’s exactly what they did in their kids Indie and Sunny’s brown-on-black bathroom of doom.
“As you can imagine, a bad bathroom is a deep personal and professional cut,” Fine says. “I couldn’t even pee in our kid’s bathroom without fantasizing about taking a sledgehammer to the sink.” Relatable content.
Removing the dated tiles and adjusting the tub or shower location was firmly off the table, but Fine could see the potential in the ’80s-coded sink they’d inherited. She decided to use the bathroom’s neutral palette as a canvas for colors that popped on the washstand. First up: those metal flowers on the front had to die. Armed with a Dremel tool, pickleball goggles, and yellow kitchen gloves, she and son Indie filed them off like tiny surgeons.
Then, her daughter Sunny and a friend picked out paint colors for the project—because nothing says “fun family activity” like painting drain pipes. By using Benjamin Moore’s Sheer Romance on the sink frame and O’Reilly Green on the drain pipe, they turned a drab fixture into a sherbet-hued centerpiece. “I was careful not to paint over the hardware that might need to be removed if there was a problem,” she adds. Smart lady. Then, they slicked the window frame in the same green to connect the dots.
To finish off the refresh, Fine yanked the wall sconce in favor of an Allied Maker pendant over the mirror, laid down a few of Quiet Town’s Lost Coast rugs to riff off the faux stone tiles with decorative waves, and then added hooks everywhere to hang their colorful towels like functional art, she says. She swapped in a lighter color of the Spot shower organizer, too. The renewed space is the definition of “work with what you’ve got—and make it fabulous.”
“There’s definitely beauty you can pull out of your existing bathroom—you just have to squint a little,” Fine proclaims. “If you inherited a color, no matter what it is, dig in!” In her case, with earthy hues underfoot and a window looking out onto trees, why not make it feel practically outdoors? Worst case, you have a painted pipe. Best case, you have a design moment.
Samantha Weiss-Hills runs the editorial show at Domino. She's the friend whose texts about glasses, couches, and sheets you actually save. Based in Brooklyn with her husband, Alex, and a beagle-corgi named Elsa who runs the household.
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