Bathroom Facelift #1

We are in the middle of facelifting a bathroom in our new house, but I wanted to talk about the very first one we did in our old house. 

Our old house was 1980s builder-grade, and the bathrooms showed this more than the other rooms. Our hall bathroom, used mostly by our children and guests looked like this when we started:

It hadn’t been touched in 30 years and was definitely a prime place for us to up the house value. 

The thing was, updating bathrooms can be pricey, and we had very little experience. 

We started with the floor, and purchased all the tile we needed in the clearance section of a Rite Rug flooring outlet. We purchase all the tile we needed for $49. My dad came and helped us install it. 

One thing we learned about tile is that it isn’t the tile itself that is necessarily expensive. The cement board, adhesive, grout, and tile saw rental plus new vent covers, transition pieces, etc probably brought the total closer to $350 for the floor. 

I was able to buy a new wood vanity with a marble top for only $450. The vanity was regularly over $1000, but I was able to get this one through a local online auction. The vanity we needed was not a super common size, so it was harder to find a great deal. 

I loved this vanity though, because it was very good quality and even had soft-close hinges. 

We purchased a new light fixture on Amazon Warehouse deals for $50, a new mirror from HomeGoods for $60, a new faucet for $90, $30 on some new towel bars and hardware,  and paint for $40.

After all was said and done, we invested about $1,100 into the bathroom, and it turned out quite nicely 

Before:

After

Before:

After:

Before:

After:


Eventually I changed out the shower curtain to add a little more color to the room, but this is the only picture I have of it 

We learned a lot from this renovation! We had set a budget of $1,000, but we didn’t anticipate how expensive all the little extras would cost. We also were surprised how much of a difference the changes we did make made to the entire room. We didn’t change the shower at all, but the white tile in there matched the new bathroom well and it looked great. The old outdated furnishings in the rest of the bathroom made the shower look worse than it was. 

Most of all, this bathroom project gave us the confidence to move on to facelifting the other bathroom, and made me excited that smaller changes can make such a huge difference. It doesn’t require a ton of money and complete gut job. 

I’ll update again soon with more reno fun!