DIY: Bathroom Renovation on a Budget!

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The oldest pictures I could find of the original bathroom

If you’ve seen my post on our kitchen renovation, you’ve probably guessed by now that our condo wasn’t the nicest place when we bought it. The previous owners hadn’t spent much time maintaining (much less improving!) the condo, and we had our work cut out for us. This post is going to center on our renovation of our bathroom. The kitchen and bathroom were the two biggest essentials for us as far as improvements to our property, because if you know anything about real estate you know that the two best bang-for-your-buck areas in a home to improve are the kitchen and the bathroom. Most other rooms of the house are nice to improve, but you won’t get your money back.

We allowed ourselves a budget of $1,000 to completely gut and redo our bathroom, which is a very small amount if you know anything about tiling and bathroom fixtures! But with a little creativity and a lot of hard work, we made it happen.

image Original tile vs. New tile
Our first hurdle was the tile. Not only was I not crazy about the original tile, there were some cracked and chipped pieces in several areas. We knew we had to take it out and start afresh, so we used the remainder of the tile from the kitchen to tile the bathroom floor. It lightened the room up considerably, and made it feel larger and cleaner!
imageOld bathtub tile, project in process, and new tile before washing grout off

The next step was the bathtub- again, cracked pieces, mold, and an interesting section of tile at the base of the tub that tilted out to meet the bathtub. Apparently, the original builders felt like getting creative instead of buying a proper sized tub! We were able to find tile clearanced at a local building supply store, which was a huge blessing for our budget. So we pulled out all the old tile, installed new cement board, and tiled in top of it. In the process we also bought new fixtures for the bathtub and built out a box in the tile for toiletries. We also extended the tile to the ceiling to make the bathtub feel larger- it worked!

image Original vanity vs. New vanity
Our final decision to be made was how to solve the conundrum of the bathroom vanity. The old vanity was much to large for our small bathroom, but we didn’t want to sacrifice storage space by choosing a smaller vanity. So, we got creative. We opted for a small vanity with two storage towers on each side ($30 each, Target!) that matched the vanity. We ended up with more storage space, but also a more open feeling to our small bathroom.
In the end, here is what we spent:
Vanity: $250 (Lowe’s)
Tile (floor): free- leftovers from kitchen
Tile (tub): $100 (Mazier)
Fixtures (tub): $180 (Lowe’s)
Plumber: $125
Cement board for bathtub: $100 (Lowe’s)
Towers: $60 (Target)
Total spent: ~$850

Now that’s a bargain for a bathroom re-do!

Coming Soon: Turning a porch into a dining room!

To see more DIY projects we’ve done check this out!

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