A few posts ago, I talked about remodeling our old-ish house in a way that makes all the rooms livable and presentable before tackling the nit-picky details of each room. In keeping with that theme, I slightly remodeled the powder room on the main level since it gave me the heebie jeebies going in there before. It was bland and dirty (no matter how hard I scrubbed, the walls looked dirty!). The prior homeowners hired a painting company who, I swear, watered down the paint because when I scrub the walls even lightly, the paint rubs off. And I HAVE to scrub because they also used matte paint and with three kids, matte paint doesn’t work!
Anyway, here’s the bathroom before:
The space looks a lot like the kids’ bathroom that we recently remodeled. Beige walls, beige sink, outdated vanity, and lots of wood. The only new thing in the bathroom is the toilet that I replaced a few months ago when it was running 24/7 and driving us crazy. So, that’s new, but that’s it!
I didn’t want to do a whole lot to the bathroom because I wanted the remodel to be manageable. In my pie-in-the-sky remodel, I would rip out the vanity and replace it with a pedestal sink, rip out the floors (marble baby!), and also have a half wall of marble tile all around the room and a cute little glass shelf above the toilet. But, in the interest in just making it presentable, here’s the low-cost remodel:
I replaced the dated, frameless mirror with a mirror that I got from Home Goods which is my favorite place to find bathroom mirrors of any size. They’re cheap and well made. Even if you need a huge bathroom mirror, you can buy one of their full length mirrors and just hang it horizontally. I bought a wood colored mirror that for now goes with the wood floors and wood vanity, but I expect to paint it white when phase II is ready to go.
I also replaced the light fixture from that ’80s bar light to this glass and chrome one. It made a huge difference! And of course, I painted the walls. I love painting small rooms a crazy or dark color since there’s not a lot of space for your eyes to get overwhelmed. Imagine this color in a huge room…. Too much! The color I used was Wrought Iron my Martha Stewart at Home Depot.
Here’s the breakdown for the cost of the room re-do:
Mirror: $40
Paint: $20
Light fixture: $120
Total: $180
More pics:
It’s a small makeover but the paint really makes a difference and now the walls are CLEAN! I still have a big list of to-dos for this room but it will have to wait until our other “getting the house up to snuff” are finished. Patience… sigh…
