By Katie
2 years ago we bought an old house. Old and ramshackle. Old and dirty. Old and dilapidated.
You get the idea.
But the point of this post was not to disparage my house. It was to tell you that we have 2 bathrooms. Both were kinda unpleasant.
My story is about the the upstairs bathroom which is a full bath that had a glass partition sliding door for the shower. No matter how I cleaned it, it was dirty. Mildew and crud and nastiness were in all the crevices and I couldn’t get it out.
Will decided to take the partition down, completely out of the blue, after I complained about how gross it was for 14 months.
The change was incredible. Unfortunately, you will have to take my word for it because I didn’t take before pictures because I was convinced that the bathroom could never been improved. Just call me Mrs. Optimistic.
After it was removed, I decided we should do a bathroom makeover, just real quick-like. My parameters were that a) it would be done by the end of August (2017) and b) we wouldn’t tackle any other home reno project until it was finished.
It is now April 2018, and we have refloored and repainted our entire upstairs and {almost} completed the twins room. We are real good at setting down limits and following them.
(This is why I always have a million projects going on that never get completed by their deadline. )
Anyways. I also wanted to do the whole project for $1000. We weren’t going to change the tub surround or the vanity, but everything else got a makeover.
Here are the before pics:
Ok – so kinda before. More middle-of-starting-the-update pictures. (Our whole house was a variation of those 2 greens. Sometime the walls would be the darker green and the trim the lighter green. Sometime it would be vice-versa. It has made painting wonderful because the improvement is immediate.)
The bathroom was a Jack-and-Jill to our bedroom which we closed off because there were doors every where and no wall space. Wall space is useful in both bedrooms and bathrooms. That’s your free tip for the day.
We bought new bathtub fixtures and toilet – both are water savers which is a money saver (and water conservation is just a good idea.) We redid the floor for obvious reasons; the other floor was pretty beat up. We got the floor from Action flooring, a local flooring company. We choose a high quality floor that was on sale, because that’s how I shop: the best quality for the cheapest money 🙂
I painted the vanity with chalk paint in Valspar Indigo Ink from Lowes. It took a bit of work, and I put a lot of layers of wax on it because kids, but I love the result. The handles are from The Home Depot.
The light fixture was found on Wayfair.ca. I quite like Wayfair, though there is a ton of choice, which can be daunting.
I almost blew the budget on Wayfair though because I couldn’t find brackets that I liked for my shelving, so I ordered these. They are nice but at $27 a pop they added $108 to my bottom line. But when Will and I were at Ikea buying crib because we have 2 babies (maybe you haven’t heard?), I found these for $2 a bracket! Its definitely worth saving $100 to have wood brackets instead of cast iron ones. Will agreed. (He doesn’t really care about design choices, but he cares about budget choices.)
The shelving is from a local timber yard called Cards. I first got behemoth pieces of cedar and then, after I got home, realized I had a small bathroom . I went back and got these pieces of ash for $5. The cedar shelving was used the in the twins room, which is slightly larger then the bathroom.
I found the towel racks and toilet paper holder from Amazon. The mirror was a Home Sense find.
And I got this little stool from Home Sense. This was to save my handles from kids climbing on them. And its cute.
So did I stay on budget? You bet your buttons I did!
Floor – $200
Toilet – $120
Light – $140
Paint – $50
Water fixtures – $166
Towel Racks – $60
Mirror – $70
Cabinet Pulls – $42
Shelving – $5
Brackets $10
Extras – $100
Total: $962
The extras include the shower curtain, the cute stool and some decor.
The nice thing about projects taking 8 months is that you can really shop sales. That helped me to stay in my budget. Its also nice because things you thought you absolutely needed to do, (i.e. paint the counter top) you realize that, nah, you really don’t.
I am so happy with my nice and clean bathroom. I make all my guests use it, because the downstairs one looks like something out of a horror film. Or a really old house.
I mean, come on! They are adorable. They are sweet. They are crazy. They are my favorite! And, disclaimer, they are not just my recent favorites but have been top of the list since each one of them made their first appearance :). Also, don’t let this sunshine fool you – these pictures were from early March…before Spring disappeared. #wherehasspringgone
Mark and I purchased this house and get to move in in about a month. Its a definite fixer-upper in need of 
These are really cute and actually comfortable! And (added bonus) I wore them for about 2 hours the other day and received 3 compliments! Win-win! Its nice to brighten up my wardrobe a bit right now since everything outside is so grey (#wherehasspringgone).
5. Some of you might judge me for this one…but it was my life saver and I would do it again in a heart beat.
Ick. That’s a horrible picture. You are going to have tojust trust me…its looks amazing.
Three Teas & A Coffee 