I promised this last part of the Remodeling Series so long ago, I’m sure some might not even remember there was a remodeling series. But there was and I am finally ready to finish it by showing you the bathrooms and then doing a closing post on what I learned throughout our whole remodeling process.
However, when I was putting the bathroom pictures together I saw how long it was becoming and realized I needed to do a separate post for each bathroom. So today I will highlight the main bath and tomorrow the master bath.
Come back on Friday for The Top 10 Things We Learned about low-cost, do it yourself renovating plus a fun new video about the bathrooms from Brian.
Main Bath Before
You know how you tell yourself to remember to take lots of pictures before you start a renovation? Yeah, me too. But since this is the only before picture I can find, I , uh, guess I didn’t. So let me see if I can walk you through this bathroom:
- Honey mustard/yellow-gold fixtures…every one of them. Please, please, if you are going to build a house I beg you to use only white. Literally… beg.
- Vinyl floor to match the yellow-gold, and in a fun 1982 pattern to boot!
- Tile counter to match the yellow-gold
- Walls painted to match the yellow-gold (ugh…just too, too, much and the palm tree wallpaper border did not make this better).
- 6 ft. long cabinet with one sink (that’s a lot of counter, people…what do you do with all that in a bathroom?) and one of those large plastic pull-up faucets circa 1970s.
- Giant mirror to match the cabinet (no one needs to see that much of themselves…it’s either too depressing or narcissistic, and I didn’t need either)
- Like the rest of the house, nice cabinets, but dark brown. There’s also a huge built-in cabinet behind the door that’s wonderful to have, but also dark brown.
- Brown aluminum frosted window (the bathrooms were the only windows like this in the house, thankfully, and they sweated like the best of the aluminums)
- And last, but not least, let’s not forget to mention the lovely wooden toilet seat and matching towel/TP holders, complete with their gold parts and peeling finish.
Basically every surface needed to be replaced. However, we couldn’t afford to replace the tub in this room and the surround, while a fake marble, wasn’t gold but an off-while color so we decided we would leave it and cover it with a shower curtain.
After replacing and redoing every surface but the tub, here’s how it looks today:
Main Bath After
We started with a new window and then brought this cabinet in from the master bath, cut about 3 feet off, painted it and topped it with a wood counter from IKEA stained to match our floors.
Then we laid the tile floors. I originally wanted little octagon tiles, but they were cost-prohibitive for us so I went with the smallest square tile I could afford. They came in 12×12 sheets, so I thought it would be relatively simple.
That was, until I laid a section down with the beadboard we had installed. Uh…no, it was just too square and angular. Really, it wasn’t just me, either, Brian totally agreed. It just didn’t look good. So we needed to lay it on the diagonal.
With a lot more cutting involved and a lot more little triangles. A. Lot. Brian did all the cutting while I was laying the tile.
I never want to tile again. And I’m serious.
We installed beadboard in sheets and topped it with a simple 1×3 and a 1×2 installed on top of the 1×3. We copied the window trim from the rest of the house (inexplicably, the trim was different in the bathrooms).
As for the decor, I love my overhead cabinet and it came with us from our old house. The beadboard is “Creamy White” by Behr (I love it- bright, but warm), and I went out on a limb for me and painted the walls a periwinkle blue (“Silent Ripple” by Behr). And I do like it- depending on the light, it looks blue at times and purple other times which was just what I was looking for.
In order for the periwinkle to not look too sweet I accented with black, using a toile for the valance and tub curtain and black accessories. I found a vintage piece of linen and just folded the top over and sewed across for a rod pocket to make the cafe privacy curtain which I put on one of those cheap expandable rods inside the window frame.
To hide the tub and as much of the surround as I could, I made the shower curtain extra tall and mounted it close to the ceiling.
It was super simple to make because I used curtain clips to hang it, so I didn’t have to make any holes in the top like traditional shower curtains (I have a lower rod that holds the liner inside).
I wanted to show you what we did at the bottom of the tub so that the yellow wouldn’t show. We ran the baseboard across the front, attaching it with Liquid Nails and caulking where the tub meets the baseboard to protect it from water.
I wanted to show you what we did at the bottom of the tub so that the yellow wouldn’t show. We ran the baseboard across the front, attaching it with Liquid Nails and caulking where the tub meets the baseboard to protect it from water.
Our friend who was helping us didn’t think it was a good idea to run the wood across the tub, but I’m happy with it and so far (a year and a half) no water has gotten behind it- and that’s with two teenagers using it!
Here is a shot of the built-in cabinet behind the door. It looks so much better white.
The previous cabinet went all the way to the toilet. This cabinet was in the master bath and had another double door section on it that we cut off. We faced the cut side with beadboard and corner molding and now we have a place for the towels. They were under the window before and your knees would touch them as you sat down. I like the extra space, too. It just makes it nicer.
Here is a shot of the built-in cabinet behind the door. It looks so much better white.
The previous cabinet went all the way to the toilet. This cabinet was in the master bath and had another double door section on it that we cut off. We faced the cut side with beadboard and corner molding and now we have a place for the towels. They were under the window before and your knees would touch them as you sat down. I like the extra space, too. It just makes it nicer.
Our one “hindsight is 20/20″ moment came when we saw how ridiculous the outlet looked in the molding on top of the beadboard. It would’ve been easy to move it when the wall was torn up. Ugh.
The sink is “Antiquity” from American Standard and the faucet is by them as well. The mirror is vintage. I hung it there while I was deciding what I wanted and found I liked it, so there it’s stayed.
The sink is “Antiquity” from American Standard and the faucet is by them as well. The mirror is vintage. I hung it there while I was deciding what I wanted and found I liked it, so there it’s stayed.
I found the light fixture on clearance for $13 a few years before and stored it until we needed it, but it didn’t come with shades, so I had to buy those. I found some at our local home store for $7 each. It’s exactly like one of my favorite from Pottery Barn, but at $35 is less than half the price.
So, how frugal was our bath redo? I read in a magazine around the time we were doing this about a “budget” bath remodel for $10,000. *cough* Um, no, that’s not exactly my idea of budget.
Our budget? We came in at just over $1,000 and we redid every surface but the tub. That’s for the tile floors (tile, cement board, mastic & grout), new toilet and sink/facet, new window, wood counter, light fixture, beadboard and molding, paint and knobs/hinges. Since we did all the work ourselves, there were no labor costs which really goes a long way to keeping the costs down.
We didn’t fare quite so well in the Master Bath where we learned the shocking cost of hiring a plumber.
Stay tuned.
-Jami
This is linked to:
Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch
Trash to Treasure Tuesday at Reinvented
Get Your Craft On at TCB
DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land
I believe a cottage can be anywhere or anything (condo, ranch, farmhouse) as long as you have a "cottage mentality" which puts people above things, celebrates imperfections, embraces simplicity, and finds joy in everyday life. Thanks for joining me!
It looks so good! We still have to do our upstairs kid’s bath. How do you think the IKEA counter would hold up in a kids bath? 5 kids- 5 messy kids that don’t care they dropped some water on it. We have the ugly marbled built in sink so this would be so pretty.
It looks great! We need to redo our main bathroom sometime too, it’s got the awesome gold flecked countertops.
And on what planet is $10k a budget bathroom? That’s what we spent to gut and redo our whole kitchen!
Awesome makeover!
Aww…that looks SOO much better! I love your choices. Someday I will be brave enough (or have enough money to repair whatever mess I could possibly make) to do that to my bathroom.
lovely! I am right there with you. We are about to have a finished bathroom ourselves! Just the finishing touches on the bead board and paint (the hubby is going to be building a cabinet soon too..)Ours has been an 8 month process due to finances and I can’t wait to have a finished room! Can’t wait to see you Master bath redo…
Thanks for the comments! I should’ve stated that we started the makeover with the window install an entire year before we actually finished. But taking that long allows you to spread out the costs, so it’s all good. So I totally understand 8 months, Erin!
And Southerner- I LOVE wood countertops! We had them for more than three years in our old kitchen, which gets a lot of use and water and I only had to touch up a couple areas by the sink with poly. This counter has been in a year and a half with only two teens, but it looks just as good as when we first installed it. I used a water-based outdoor/indoor poly to seal it and put four coats on. We also caulked (with clear caulk) the sink. I would definitely recommend it.
Being a fellow Oregonian automatically makes you awesome.
Yellow fixtures?
Er….I’m a bit speechless.
I’ve seen pink and even purple (!!) but never yellow.
The “after” is STUNNING! I love it all! The cabinet, the mirror, the toile!
I love the difference! It’s do light and bright. Nice work!
Oops, I meant to say it’s “SO” light and bright…
SO pretty! Good job!
It makes me wonder what people were thinking when they make and install these horrible colours.Your reno turned out awesome, I love the cabinets.