Kids' Bathroom Reveal!

Are you ready for this reveal?  I feel like I've mentioned "we're making progress in the bathroom" one too many times and probably deserve all of the eye rolls for taking so dang long to finish it.  The last we left off, I told you I was trying to find a cheap solution to frame out the builder-grade mirror.  The good news is, I found it.  The bad news is, we didn't get every single thing done we had set out to do in this bathroom according to our inspiration board.  I'll explain in a minute.  More goods news though - we only spent $112 on this whole makeover.  Folks, get ready to feast your eyes on a major difference in aethetics brought to you by a relatively small amount of cash.

 Before:

Like many of the other rooms in this house, this one was wallpaper laden.  Luckily, and probably with the help of bathroom humidity, the paper in this room peeled off pretty easily once we had started.  For months it sat with bare drywall as we worked on other rooms in the house (however, we did seal the drywall in close proximity to the shower to protect those walls from H2O).

Eventually we removed all of ceramic towel rods and those big metal support bars, leaving us to fill in a whole lot of holes.  

We also replaced the light bulbs to get rid of that orangey glow.  If we were into fake tans, that wouldn't be the fake tan we were looking for.

Now:

It's super simple but much better, no?  We'll call it minimalist since that's so in right now...apparently?  Or was that 2019?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Before:

Now:

She decided right then and there that she needed to brush her teeth and I'm all for realistic renderings so, I pushed aside my ideas of showing this bathroom in the cleanest state it's ever been in for the sake of reality.

Also in the post with our inspiration board, I mentioned that we wanted to strip the wood vanity of it's peeling paint and keep it close to the natural wood color that's underneath.  But another thing that happened to come up when I started planning that out was switching out the hinges.  Right now they're the old exposed kind and we'd really love to get some hidden ones up in here.  Great but 1) we have no clue how to do that...yet and 2) it's something that has to be after we strip the paint but before we seal the wood because we'll have to fill in the holes left behind by the existing hinges.  It's too big of a project (even though it doesn't seem so...replacing hinges) for us right now but one that we'll get to, I think, when we swap out the same hinges in the kitchen for hidden.  It'll be one big, hidden hinge party.  Every cabinet will be forever changed in one foul swoop.  So, eventually, we'll still get that wood tone in here with the cabinet.  That didn't stop me from, at least, swapping out the knobs though. 

I wanted something small and simple and love the ones* I ended up using.  They're the prettiest brushed gold and they seem like they're great quality - pretty heavy for being so small, solid, and have held up to our daily use of them over the past five weeks fantastically.  

P.S.  The rug is this one* by Loloi.  I've heard of them before but never bought one of their rugs and I have to say, we're really happy with it and the quality, especially for the price. I saw some very similarly-made rugs for sale at a local home decor store that were over $150 for this size!  Being in a bathroom, it obviously gets walked on multiple times a day and, in our case, also sees a stool set atop it a lot but it still looks like new!  My options on rugs were limited because of the odd size I needed (5' in length but still narrow) and Loloi made the prettiest ones I could find.  I actually purchased the same rug in the tangerine/blue color* because I liked it a smidge better but it ended up being much darker in person than it is on Amazon.  

Before:

Now:

Team Extra-Long-Shower-Curtain for the win!  I used the existing rod (though we set it inside these brackets* just to make sure it's extra secure...you never know with kids) and stole the shower curtain out of our master bath because the old striped one seemed too add too much pattern, taking away from the new art and floors. This "new" curtain I made out of two of these* - I found them both at Dirt Cheap and cut the bottom off of one to extend the other.  (Here's a similar plastic liner* to the one we use.  It's slightly shorter than the shower curtain. We've been using ours for three years now and toss it in the washer with bleach every few months.)

Before:

Now:

How about that framed mirror, huh?  It really deserves a whole post to itself (coming) but I'm so proud of it because I built it all by my lonesome; no help from the pro (Anthony) over here.  My budget to frame out the mirror was $15 and I came in at $6!!!  How?  Well, the wood was $16 but I found a Lowe's gift card in my wallet with $10.03 left on it from a rebate we had received months and months ago.  You can just about imagine my surprise and delight at check-out when I thought I'd "just try it" to see if anything was on it.  B.I.N.G.O. 

A few things in the bathroom got a coat of spray paint...surprising, right?  The acrylic towel rings in my inspiration board were $70 each (ouch) but really the existing ones led me to the expensive ones which lead me to the spray paint and rehabbing what we already had.  You follow?  You can kind of see what they looked like before in this photo I took so we could remember the wallpaper:

After:

The robe hook on the wall got the same treatment.  What now looks like this:

Once looked like this:

So, Phase I?  Checked off.  I almost painted a design on the wall above the toilet and above the mirror/vanity to create a fun accent wall but then I decided to hold off until later.  Aaaaand then there's the closet.  That was another thing I wanted to gussy up in Phase I but I didn't quite cross that finish line yet.  

I smell a Phase 1.5.  ;)  Phase 2 will have us replacing the counter tops and adding double sinks along with replacing the tile in the shower - probably to a simple tile that goes all the way to the ceiling.  And then, speaking of the ceiling, we need to cover up that popcorn that won't budge.  We're thinking tiles?  Maybe planks?  We'll see...  Last, the doors (along with the rest of the doors in the entire house) need to be repainted.

  

Budget breakdown and sources:

-primer* - $20 - but still have half a can left

-paint (China White) - $25 - bought on sale and still have 1/4 of a can left

-rug* - $25 - Amazon warehouse

-frames (similar*) - $4 - thrift store plus a little makeover courtesy of me

-art - $5 in paper and paint - used only 2 sheets of paper in a 10-page pad (bought with a coupon)

-wall hook (similar) - $1 - Dirt Cheap

-towel rings - $4 in spray paint - still have 3/4 of the can left (Psst...if you want to paint your own, here you go*.)

-towels - Project 62 from Target found at Dirt Cheap last year

-mirror frame - $6 - would have been $16 but I used a $10 rebate gift card from buying all that paint we buy

-shower curtain* - $0 - stolen from the master bathroom

-knobs* - $13.50 - Amazon Warehouse

-light bulbs* - $3 - found at Dirt Cheap 

-shade light fixture - $5 - DIY (click link <-- for details and tutorial)

-branches - $0 - backyard finds ;)

-basically everything on the bathroom counter - thrifted long ago

Grand Total = $111.50

Three important points about this big impact/small budget - 1)  We take full advantage of sales 100% of the time and we are really lucky to have a lot of overstock/used/customer return-selling stores around us which we search for what we need before going to the Big Box stores.  Our thrift stores are ok but still turn up some good finds regularly.  It takes a little more patience to hunt things down and/or wait until the sales roll in but it's worth it.    2)  That $112 is a generous budget since many of the things I used still have leftovers to be used on another project.  Still, while $112 sounds really good, all of the hours of elbow grease we put into this room is really what we should focus on.  I think a small budget and a good amount of hard work are pretty much synonymous, right? 3) We had some good features to start.  Things like the hexagon tile on the floor, the existing brass fixtures, and the solid wood, modern-looking (even though it's 30+ years old) vanity sold us on this house and allowed us to not have to start from scratch.

I hope, as I always do, that this makeover inspires to you take a little bit of cash and see what you can do with it.  It's challenging sometimes but, equally, just as rewarding in the end.

Happy almost weekend!

+                +                +

*These links are affiliate links which means that, if you click over and/or make a purchase through the link, we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.  I am an Amazon affiliate and also use other sources to link to products.  All of these links will lead you to things we actually paid for or that are similar to the item we paid for in case ours is thrifted/sold out/secondhand.  This extra money helps us with the costs of running the blog and buying paint.  Thank you for your support and for fueling our love to share all things DIY!