The Budgetiest Bathroom

There are a couple of rooms in this casa over here that I haven’t visited via the blog in many moons.  One of those rooms is the master bathroom.  I’ve tweaked a few things here and there since the last you heard about it and I guess none of them seemed newsworthy (not like anything on this blog is though) until last week.  I added a few little somethings that made a world of a difference and it only cost me $16.  I’ll get to that in a minute.  First, let’s get up to speed by starting at the very beginning.

Here’s what the room looked like when we were touring as potential buyers:
Too much plain and too much brown, if you ask me.

Then we bit the purchase agreement, moved in, painted all the doors and trim bright white (doors were all wood-toned and trim was off-white), trashed the old mini-blinds for some faux two-inchers, and added faux flora:Still too plain and still too brown.

Things started looking up when we scored some really cheap (but quality) ceramic tile at Dirt Cheap to replace the rubbery-smelling peel-and-stick tiles with, painted the vanity and countertops, added a faux shade, and stenciled that wall:

And then the last you heard about it was 2012.  Since then, it’s changed even more:

One little thing that’s changed that I feel like has made huge difference are the drawer pulls!  That update strikes again!  And for only $16!  I mentioned back in this kitchen post that I was eyeing some brass bar pulls for the bathroom and I finally grabbed them a few weeks ago and installed them last week.  I’ll have all the details on those in a separate post but for now, what a difference, right?  It’s the little things, I tell ya.
And speaking of little, the $$ we’ve sunk into this room is just that.  So far, our grand total is lingering at around $120 (including the buying and selling of the mirrors).  That’s with paint, flooring, the whole shebang.  I know it’s nothing extraordinary or magazine-worthy but I’d like to think it’s a pretty good ‘after’ or ‘so far’ considering the money we haven’t spent on it.  And maybe I’m just delusional which is likely but either way… 

I snagged those cool geometric mirrors on super clearance at Old Time Pottery for 75% off making them $17 each and sold our old mirrors for $50, coming up $15 on top. 

Their only downfall is their color.  Yes, they will get painted eventually.  The big mirror in between them is the mirror that belongs to the thrifted dresser we semi-recently found for the girls’ room.  The dresser doesn’t need it so I had an idea to set it on top of our counter and loved it at first sight.  Our countertop is crazy long and we needed something to break up that big expanse of wall and this does the trick.

Speaking of the countertop, because it’s so freakishly long, it’s so hard to style.  I think what I need is to make a big, long but shallow tray maybe?  And fill it with some knick-knacks…candles?  Apothecary jars?  Someday I’ll get on that.  For now, the big geometric vase actually belongs to a thrifted light fixture ($15) I took apart.


I stuck a candle in it and called it a win a few weeks ago.  It’s crazy how small it look in the bathroom pictures though because it’s actually pretty big…that’s how long our countertop is.  It dwarfs everything!

Moving over, I’ve got this vase that a friend handed down to us filled with black beans at the bottom (though I’m thinking I need to swap those out for coffee beans, yes?) that I set all of my quick grabs in.

There’s also this magazine basket that I grabbed from a local resale site for $5, in which we store paper de toilet: It’s bamboo with a woven panel around the outside.  I had to remove an inner panel so that the tp rolls would fit.  Here’s what it looked like before:
Removing that panel was super easy to do; it just involved removing a couple of small nails.  I love the natural texture the basket adds to the space – something I’ve been trying to incorporate more of into our house with wood tones and air purifying plants.

If we were staying in this house for the long haul, I’d put a skylight in this bathroom to add more light.  The window to this room opens to the screened-in porch so it’s fairly dark in here throughout the day.  I’ve thought about combatting that by painting the walls white but just haven’t gotten around to actually doing that yet.  If and when I do, I really want to add a light or medium gray stencil to the walls, reconfigure the sconces (wait until you see my plans for those!), swap out the boob light for a hanging pendant, and we really want to make a concrete countertop to replace the painted laminate that hasn’t held up as well as we would have liked.  So. Much. To. Do.  But so much fun.  I swear, this is like therapy to me.  Some of you probably think I’m crazy.  ;)

Anyway, the whole point of writing a whole post on decorating a bathroom is for my usual reason – to prove that decorating doesn’t have to be expensive.  Pretty is possible on a budget.  :)
I’ll be back next week with all the details on those drawer pulls!  Until then, have a great rest of the weekend! 

.           .           .