New Bathroom On The Cheap

Today I thought I'd share with you one of my most favorite rooms in my house, so far. But first, let me give you a little back history. When MW and I were looking for a house to buy upon returning to Indiana after nine years in Florida - well, let's just say it was not a quick nor easy process. I'll save the details for another day. Anyhoo, we learned our lesson financially (the hard way) early on in our marriage and decided that we didn't want to be strapped to a huge house payment this time around. We decided to buy a home where the payment left us plenty of breathing room each month and we could fix it up with cash as we went along. So, we settled on a cute little repo. It had great bones, but had suffered severe neglect. The carpet was trashed and the furnace quit working immediately, along with the whole onslaught of things that you deal with when you buy a repo. Thus began our journey of making this little house a home on a shoestring budget.


This is what our bathroom looked like when we bought it. Notice the nasty carpet, broken mirror on the medicine cabinet, mildew on the top of the wall, and that brick. A friend said that going into my bathroom felt like walking into an alley. The brick was broken and not applied in a decent manner. And it was beyond filthy. I spent 7 hours with a toothbrush just trying to get the crud off of it. My hand looked like a claw for days.

The first thing we did was strip off that awful wallpaper and border, Kilz everything and paint it out white. Even the brick got a fresh coat of white paint. It was all of the same paint that we used to paint the rest of the house upon moving in - so I don't really count that as an added cost.

The foul carpet was ripped up and replaced with vinyl peel and stick tiles from Lowes. The tile runs less than a dollar per square foot. I don't remember how much it cost us, but I don't think it was very much because our bathroom is so tiny. You can close the door from the toilet, which is at the opposite end of the room - if that helps you get an idea of what we're talking about here. :0)

My favorite part - and the reason I'm linking to the Frugal Decorating Ideas Party at The Shabby Nest today - is what I used to wallpaper the top of the wall above the bricks. Here's the equation I used to decide what to wallpaper with: music lover + wanting to have something unique + being cheap frugal = wallpaper from a hymnal. I had 3 old hymnals in my book stash, so I tore some of the pages out of one of them, bought a container of wallpaper paste for $5 (I still have a ton of it left) and went to town. When I was finished with it, I gave it a coat of the same polyurethane that we sealed our painted floors with to protect the paper from the bathroom humidity. It worked like a charm.


This picture was taken before it was sealed with polyurethane. You can see here where a little edge of paper is raised. Once it was sealed, it layed right down.



The final major thing that the bathroom needed was a shower curtain and shade for the window. I posted about making these out of burlap yesterday. I was able to buy enough fabric (6 1/2 yds.) to make both of these items for $15 using my 40% off coupon from JoAnn Fabric.


The last thing I need to do is paint out the rest of the wood surfaces white and it will be complete. Since I still have the paint for that, it won't cost me anything except labor.

All in all, for less than $100 I was able to transform this little bathroom from back alley to beautiful (with the help of MW laying the floors and ripping out detestable carpet). And most of the budget went into flooring. It's now one of my most favorite rooms ever.

Want to see it one last time?

This was before. This is now (almost complete).

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my little bathroom. Check out The Shabby Nest for more frugal decorating ideas.

Have a great weekend!