We’re going to be starting on the entryway floor renovation pretty soon, which is great because it’s been gutted since the spring… ha! When we did our main floor renovation, we gutted most of the entryway so that we could throw it in those dumpsters. We also had quite a few things that tied into the main floor renovation, like the stairs remodel and some drywall work, that just made it easier if we gutted the entire floor at once.
As part of that gut job, I demo’d our bathroom way back in April of this year and it has been sitting empty and sad ever since. It likely had not seen a renovation in 50 years, and I’m not exaggerating. It was NOT cute. Old high school bathroom-style tile everywhere, an old squeaky sliding glass door, tiny old vanity, even an old laundry chute above the toilet! It had been spruced up with new paint for resale, but that’s likely the extent of the updates it had seen for quite a while.
I have a (somewhat lofty?) goal of finishing it before Christmas this year- ideally as soon as possible. It is the main guest bathroom, and I don’t love having guests over and having them need to use our main bathroom off of our bedroom. We have some plans to entertain for the holidays and I’d really love to have it finished before then. I actually designed this bathroom last spring and purchased almost everything then as well. We have everything sitting in our home, waiting to be installed, so it’s just a matter of doing it at this point!
Demo
Over the course of a weekend, I removed all of the plumbing fixtures and tile, with the exception of the shower floor tile which we still have to remove. It was really hard for me to get it all off so I left it… and now almost 8 months have passed somehow, whoops!!
Thankfully I didn’t run into any major issues while demoing other than the shower floor tile. In the shower itself, we will install new backerboard or Kerdi Board to protect from moisture. Originally, the tile was just glued right to the drywall!
The Plans
I love the idea of some wood paneling on the wall for both nice texture and the added bonus of hiding any rough drywall spots (behind the vanity, the laundry chute, toilet paper holder area) on the walls outside of the shower. I plan to paint it, but exact color is TBD. I’m thinking possibly a gray-green, warm beige, or slate blue, but we’ll see!
I’m going outside of my usual “black and brass” metal fixture zone and going with a black and chrome combo in here. The chrome is a little bit of a different look and I think it will be a nice change from the rest of the house.
I’ll also incorporate some warmer wood tones to tie into the rest of our home, and keep the overall palette relatively neutral with a possible pop of color in the paint.
We’ll carry the black slate floor tile from the hallway into the bathroom, and I found a white penny tile for the floor of the shower. The wall tile is a soft greige subway tile that we’ll stack in a traditional subway brick format. The faucet, showerhead, and lighting will be chrome, while the towel bars, mirror, and cabinet knobs will be black.
Because the bathroom is pretty small, there isn’t much storage at all, so we’ll have to maximize what we can use. The bathroom vanity will store extra toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and shower toiletries. We’ll install a shelf (or two?) above the toilet that will have some extra towels. Realistically, this bathroom shower is hardly ever going to get used, since there is no bedroom on this floor, so I’m not too concerned about needing a lot of towel storage.
I’ll be reusing our Parachute shower curtain from our previous bathroom (I still love it!). I would have loved to do a glass shower door, and maybe we’ll do that down the road, but right now we have plenty of other priority areas to allocate that money to. Because I’m not totally sure what will happen with that, we’re just doing a tension curtain rod for the time being so we don’t have to drill into the tile walls.
Finally, we did opt to replace the window in this bathroom with a white window that matches the rest of the windows that we replaced on our main floor. We figured since we were demoing the bathroom, it would be a great time to just get it over with and replace that window as well. We had already replaced the kitchen, dining room, and living room windows, and it wasn’t a huge hassle to tack that onto our contractor team’s to-do list (or our running total for all of that work).
The Budget
If you’ve followed along with other recent projects, you know we just did a major renovation of our living room, kitchen, dining room, porch, and stairs (and not all of those spaces are even fully complete yet). We’re also currently working on the entryway area and creating mudroom-style seating and storage, replacing flooring and all interior and exterior doors, and creating an office/workout room combo.
That said, we don’t have a lot of money to spend on this bathroom renovation and want to keep costs down as much as possible, but still want it to feel cohesive with the rest of our home.
In total, I’d love to keep this space around $2000. Whether or not that is realistic is still yet to be determined, but so far we are on the right track (with the exception of the new window). I purchased the majority of the items last spring and have had it all sitting in our house, so we only have a few things left to purchase which is helpful to our bank account! The fact that we’re doing all of the work ourselves is a big money saver, too.
Here is the breakdown…
| ITEM | QTY | BUDGET | ACTUAL COST |
toilet | 1 | $175 | (not purchased) |
| vanity (20-22″ W, 16-18″ D) & faucet | 1 | $300 | $499.74 |
| mirror | 1 | $60 | 69.99 |
| vanity light | 1 | $125 | $91.68 |
| hardware (TP holder, towel bars) | 1 | $50 | $35.99 |
| floor tile | 18.4 sf | $75 | $75.81 |
| shower tile | 12.5 sf floor 62 sf walls | $65 | 319.99 |
| shower head & faucet | 1 | $250 | 146.71 |
| glass shower door | 1 (58″ W) | $400 | 22.99 (changed to rod + curtain) |
| paint | 1 gallon | $50 | (not purchased) |
| window shade | 1 | $75 | (not purchased) |
| shelving/accessories | N/A | $150 | (not purchased) |
| miscellaneous materials (grout, backerboard, beadboard, trim etc.) | N/A | $500 | (not purchased) |
| TOTAL | $2275 | $1262.90 (so far) |
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We’re hoping to get started on this very soon! Can’t wait to share the progress with you. Be sure to follow along on my Instagram account for the most up-to-date progress posts!
