When we purchased our house, it came with a small 3/4 bath downstairs, which is nice to have the second bathroom, but to be honest, this bathroom reminded me of a truck stop. The sellers loved dark colors, especially forest green, and the last thing you want is dark colors in a small space. Can you imagine the walls a burnt red with the dark murky tile? That is exactly the color I found painted all over the edges of the shower. For the past year and a half, I have not gone down into this bathroom because honestly it grossed me out. It needed a major gut in my opinion but when you have other life events that hit you out of no where, we can’t always demo everything. My husband always jokes and says he will never buy an older house again and from now on we will build. Maybe I get a little “demo happy” Maybe he isn’t joking? ;0)
With my husband’s diagnosis, sometimes it’s hard for him to go to work even though it’s what he loves to do and drives him stir crazy sitting home. Little projects around the house helps him to keep his sanity. So a few weekends ago, we went to work on a the 3/4 bath in the basement.
The bathroom before:
While he tore out the vanity and medicine cabinet, along with the lovely shelving unit behind the toilet they gifted us, I gave the bathroom a thorough cleaning with bleach and a scrub brush.
Having left over paint from some bedrooms upstairs, I gave the walls a fresh coat of paint and repainted the ceiling. We tore out all the stained wood trim and removed and replaced the shower head because it was leaking. I had thought about keeping the forest green shower curtain and rod (Mad props to whoever hunted that gem down – took me forever to find a brushed nickle one) but decided it’s best place was the dumpster.
I’ve been looking around for flooring for our laundry room and fell in love with vinyl planking because it is water resistant and won’t bubble up when water drips on it like laminate flooring. We haven’t been able to remodel/finish off the laundry room yet, but I was able to get some of the flooring and try it out in the bathroom. About $40 and we had our floor down.
This flooring is really easy to install – it’s all floating, no glue or nails, just cut to size with a knife and snap together. We had extra base laying around, so James trimmed out the room with new white trim. We replaced the old oversized vanity with this smaller inexpensive one. I removed the old dirty curtain and replaced it with a new one I made.
Last stop was HomeGoods. If you’ve read any of my other posts – I. Love. HomeGoods. I was able to pick up a nice white shower curtain, mirror, small table and a pop of color with the vase of flowers. The table I was able to get on an extra discount because it was damaged and paint chipping. I gave it a coat with silver spray paint to change the color and touch it up like new. Our end results of our bathroom on a budget:
Down the road, the last thing we will add to our remodel will be a sliding door. A sliding door will solve the issue of space and preventing the door from swing into the shower. Sometimes running high on cost, we are contemplating on building our own door for a fraction of the cost it would be to buy one.
I’m pretty happy how the bathroom turned out. Here’s the before/after picture to see them side by side:
Who would have thought something so dark, dingy, and dirty could turn out so bright, clean and spacious without a total gut. I’m happy with the results but I still love to demo. Onto the next project!