Small Master Bathroom Makeover

I know you might be totally bored with our slow progress on our bathroom makeovers, but I promise today’s post will be worth it! After completing what I call “cosmetic updates” to our upstairs bathroom, we finally got a new floor, vanity and toilet to do a really complete and {hopefully} final makeover of the space.

Let’s back up to moving in day. This bath was really atrocious. With a yellow and brown floor {who picks those colors for a bathroom!?}, a shell sink and builder grade vanity that was WAY too large for the space, I hated it from day one.

Then when Mr. Decor Adventures went out of town for the weekend I came up with a master plan to redo the space and got started right then and there ripping out the floor.

It was one of my favorite moments as a homeowner, when I discovered original white hex tile under that old, ugly linoleum. See the before and after here.

Sadly though the floor was pretty damaged and very dirty, so we needed a solution. While I thought about what to do about the floor, I created a list of what I wanted to do in the space and the plan included the following projects:

• How to Sew a Fake Roman Shade
• Put up Window Film
• Vanity Makeover with Chalk Paint and Replaced Vanity Top
• Painted the Trim White and here
• Painted the mirror and sconces

But what we really needed was a new floor, new toilet and new vanity. Have I mentioned how much I disliked the current one, even with a chalk paint makeover? Since we are making over our basement bathroom too, we already bought a new toilet and just needed a new vanity and floor.

Our options for the floor were:

1. Live with it as is and keep it as clean as possible
2. Rip out the hex tile, and try not to cry too much during that, but deal with the unknowns of what was under it and the condition of the subfloor
3. Cover it

Over time I warmed up to the covering it idea, especially after I got to write about and see the options for vinyl flooring. We ended up purchasing a roll out vinyl floor with a hex tile pattern, and even though it’s not the original, or real tile, it was the best option for us now.  Here is how to install sheet vinyl flooring.

And since we had the toilet and floor, all we needed was the vanity. The DIY gods must have know because we found a special order that was not picked up at Home Depot one day and grabbed it up super fast. That meant we could get started on the makeover.

First we took out the toilet and vanity, then cleaned the floor.

Although I love that floor more than most people should naturally, I wasn’t feeling so bad about covering it up after a while. It was cracked and just plain dirty. The parts with the paper backing were where the vanity was. And the part around the toilet is self-leveling concrete, which we would have had to take out. It was easy to say we weren’t too on board with that plan.

Then Dan cut the floor in my office to install it and he put it in while I took pictures of course.

And soon enough it was like a new space, even with just a floor down and new toilet in. It was so much cleaner, and I was super excited about that. Here is a before of the original floor, the during of the uncovered hex tile and the new floor.

 

The toilet is a Cimmraon by Kohler from Lowes and the neat thing about it, which we didn’t know when we bough it, was that it has a slow closing seat and lid. The excitement of homeownership, I know. But it’s a really nice feature. You can press it hard to close and it still goes slowly and closes softly on its own. Plus it’s higher than our last one and the flush is really quick.

After the toilet, we got working on the vanity. I have a love/hate affair with this vanity. I love the look of it and am happy with the final product, but we had to cut it to make it fit around our pipes. It has these drawers that didn’t fit around our pipes so we knotched a part out of one of the drawers. I’m not sure how the water valves and pipe would fit into that small 6 inch space? But we got it to work.

It came with a nice white top and mirror that won’t fit here, so maybe I’ll use it someplace else. And we had to get a new faucet too, it’s the Peerless Apex Two Handle Lavatory Faucet in Brushed Nickel.*

Of course when you install a vanity, don’t forget to get your stud finder to be able to secure it to the wall. Mr. DA thinks he is funny when using the stud finder.

Oh, got one!

Then we did some trickery with the plumbing below. Actually I’ll write about that soon too, we used flex pipes since ours didn’t match up exactly {when do they ever?} and it works.

And here is the new vanity. It’s from the Home Decorators collection at Home Depot.

Here’s a look at the original vanity, the makeover I did on it with chalk paint and the new one.

And the tops of the vanities are much different too. We started with an off white shell sink and got a used piece from an architectural store and now have a pure white one, which is what I wanted all along.

I only have a little caulking to do on the baseboards, and then we will call this makeover done! I even put up new art above the toilet.

Here are some pics of the makeover.

 

I’m loving that this is all finished. Have you ever done a makeover in different phases? It’s slow for sure, but worth the cost savings if you can find items on sale.

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