We are celebrating our one year anniversary since we remodeled our bathroom (that’s a thing, right?). SO much has changed in this space so I thought I would recap the process, design and decisions we had for this project.
First, let’s start with what it used to look like.
She was a beauty! My favorite part might just be the old shower glass door frame that we couldn’t move since all the walls were tiled and the tile was cut around the frame. I used to bang my legs on that solid brass thing and have bruises for days because of it. It was so painful!
Aside from that, we’re pretty sure the last time the bathroom was remodeled was in the 90’s when the kitchen was done and the addition was put on the house. Plus it would have definitely fit the motif of the decade! Our bathroom wasn’t pretty, but it was functional, which is why it was one of the last rooms we renovated.
Our plan from the beginning was to keep the layout. We went through some discussions early on with several contractors (I recommend getting bids from at least three to five, because they will all tell you something different) to see what was possible to move and what wasn’t. At the end of the day the only thing we could actually move was a little bit of a wall leading into the second closet in our master bedroom to make room for a larger vanity. Moving major plumbing lines would have been very expensive and would have altered the rest of the house because it is a second floor bathroom, so we thought let’s just look for ways to improve on what we have.
We had a single sink 48″ vanity with matching medicine cabinet that stuck out of the wall. The storage was lacking big time and that is what we desperately needed. We upgraded to a custom 60″ vanity with double sinks so that we could feel like we could have our own space and stand next to each other in the bathroom at one time – something we couldn’t do before.
I was honestly surprised what 12 inches did for space. At the time it did’t feel like it was going to be enough or enough to make difference, but it really does make the entire bathroom feel so much bigger now.
To maximize the vanity itself we went with two large cupboards under each sink with one large drawer underneath the cupboards. The large drawers are my favorite and I honestly don’t even have enough stuff to fill them! We picked Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore for vanity color. The countertops are white quartz. I was lucky enough to find a remnant of it, which saved a lot of money because I didn’t have to buy an entire slab for just 60 inches.
Instead of doing one large mirror, I decided on two, inset medicine cabinets. I know they are not everyone’s favorite thing, but honestly it just came down to needing more storage for all the little things. So we went with these ones and I could not love them more, plus I love not having to share to my cabinet. Personal space goes a long way sometimes!
Our bathtub was teeny-tiny. I think it only came up about 13 inches from the ground, so a deeper soaking tub was in order, one that was at least 19 inches tall. It was still the same size as the old tub, but those extra soaking inches really make a big difference.
We knew we were going to spend some money on tile and that we wanted it to be a feature in our bathroom. Considering our house was built in the 50s we didn’t want to lose sight of the of that and chose classic tiles, like beveled subway and porcelain hexagons. Things you see time and time again and never go out of date. Plus they are VERY affordable. The design of the floor was something that I saw when looking through tile designs and knew that was the one when I laid eyes on it. It totally makes the space and I could not imagine anything else in here.
We also upgraded the window. The old one was in bad shape and I hated the blind that was on it because you never got any of the natural day light in the bathroom. We decided to go with an obscured glass window, one that you can’t see in or out, but still allows for the natural light to come in.
The toilet also got an upgrade. The old one used to teeter-totter back and forth when you sat on it so there was NO way I was bringing that thing back, plus it was nice almond shade and wouldn’t go with the black, white and navy theme we had going.
Construction itself took about six weeks (four of those weeks we were showering at the gym – yuck, yuck and yuck) and we, thankfully, didn’t have too many hiccups with budget. We had one major unplanned expense, which was having to move a drain line for the tub and that came in at whopping $1,500 price tag. But thankfully our contractor planned for about $2,000 for things like that in our budget so we weren’t too surprised by it when it happened.
At the end of the day, the total budget for the bathroom (supplies and work) was $20,000, which was exactly where we thought it would end up. If we didn’t tile or design a custom vanity with quartz countertops we probably could have saved about $6,000 or more from the budget, but I wanted to make an impact on the small space so we saved and saved in order to get exactly what we wanted. And one year later I would not change a thing!
You can see a complete resource list here for our bathroom.
