A month-long project and my bathroom is finally finished! No more yellowing floors! Follow along as I share with you my process, tools, and products used for this transformation!
My plan was to spend the least amount of money on this transformation. Thanks to us planning this all at the right time, we don’t have much of our own money for this project. These last two Christmases we have just asked for Menards gift cards. This year we got lucky. Dustin got a gift card from work and then my family gift exchange we got one, and his mom and stepdad gave us a one, and then we had some Christmas cash as well. We ended up paying for the trim and the decor out of our own money about $180.
Ceiling Painting in the Bathroom
I started this bathroom transformation by painting the ceiling. Looking at it now and looking at before pictures, I can’t believe I looked at the off-white almost yellow ceiling for over a year. Since the upper part of my walls were staying white, I didn’t have to worry about keeping the white paint off the walls. And since I was replacing the flooring, I didn’t care if paint got on the floors. Now I want to paint the rest of the ceilings but that is going to take a little more effort and to be more careful since I have grey walls throughout the rest of the house. I still “cut in” where the roller wouldn’t really reach.
Up next, 2 weeks later, was painting the walls and vanity. And to take down the medicine cabinet. Also, I took down the doors to paint the hinges and doorknobs. I figured I would get the majority of the work done during my little four-day vacation for my birthday. Since I had all the supplies, paint, everything I needed to start.
But by that Sunday I was starting to feel like I got run over by a truck. We did manage to get the medicine cabinet off the wall. I don’t think I was successful with much else. My four-day vacation turned into a seven day. I was just not having a good time, I was so sick. But, I did pull myself up for a few hours a day and got the bathroom taped, holes filled, and it painted. I was a lot slower than normal but I got it done.
Bathroom Vanity Makeover
The mirror I got from a local thrift store for $11 and just painted it gold. I repainted the vanity with Dutch Boy “Moonpie” I just love this creamy white! Also I plan on painting my kitchen cabinets the same color. I attached cabinet magnet closers to the vanity doors to finally keep them closed. They are about $3 apiece at Menards. The hardware and faucet also came from Menards. Vanity doorknobs and drawer pulls. I saw this faucet and just knew it was the one I wanted for the bathroom! Can’t forget about my new $25 vanity light, also from Menards!
Painting the Walls
My wall paint I kept the previous just plain white I had painted after we bought the house. The cute green color is “Jade Jewel” by Pittsburgh Paints at Menards. If you haven’t started seeing a trend yet, we shop at Menards a lot hehe. I originally almost went a shade darker and at first, I regretted my decision but once I started painting, I loved it! Having some color in the bathroom makes a world of a difference!
Out with the Old!
After all the painting and the touchups were finished. When the vanity area was finished it was time for flooring. Let me tell ya, I was so excited! But I was a little scared because I had some flashbacks of pulling up the floor in the laundry room. That was rough. But the bathroom wasn’t like that at all! So easy to pull up it took me about 15-20 minutes total to pull up. I had to get the floor transitions up which was a pain but I got it all up. And the floor wasn’t sticky or anything. The difference between the old laundry room floor and the old bathroom floor is that the laundry room was the peel and stick tiles and the laundry room was just a sheet of vinyl.
I just used my crowbar to start to pull the floor up and then just finished pulling it up with my hands. I think the adhesive for the old flooring was causing the flooring to yellow. There was a section where it wasn’t glued down and that section wasn’t yellowed.
In With the New!
I was going to start putting down the new flooring but Dustin beat me to it and I didn’t even have to say anything to him. He was in a groove and he had a decent amount of tiles down and then we realized our dishwasher stopped working and that ended the fun for the night. Dustin started back on it a couple of days later but gave up trying to go around the toilet. The man has zero patience and it drives me crazy. It took me a good 3 hours with cutting and tracing and messing up and repeating the same steps but I got the pieces done around the toilet. I got compliments that it looks like the toilet is sitting on the tiles and not that I worked around the toilet. So that is a big win for me!
Our flooring is these Armstrong peel and stick vinyl tiles from Lowes. (I just switched it up on ya, just this once)
In all the pictures the old sellers and their realtor posted of the bathroom they never turned on the overhead lights, just the vanity light. And I definitely know why, after looking at my pictures versus theirs. They were trying to hide all bad the floors were!
Trim Work
The last big step and hardest was the trim work! It was more getting the correct angles. None of our walls are straight and none of our corners are true 90 degrees. We didn’t do terrible but we did have a few tiny gaps I filled in with wood putty. So to do our quarter round around the floor we enlisted the help of my dad. We wanted this process to go a lot smoother for us. Sometimes it is just nice to get reassurance that you are doing the job right.
My dad shared a couple of tools and tricks to help us find the right angle. This video is a great explanation of what he should us. This is the tool that you can use along with a square. It is a great alternative to the tool in the video. This is the trim we used in between the two paint colors. Cove molding for the trim around the floor. My dad informed me it is not a true quarter round but I liked this look better than the true quarter round.
Final Touches
The last final touches were to paint the rest of the cove molding from where it was sawed down. Then I filled in the nail holes and little gaps of the trim with this wood filler. I bought the grey to match the trim in between the two paint colors. I did use this on the cove molding and just painted over it! Worked out great in my opinion.
Decorations for the Bathroom
All of my decor came from amazon! I wanted to incorporate the gold throughout the house and not just in the vanity area.
Wrapping the Project Up
The total cost for this project with about $500 -$325 of which was our Christmas cash and gift cards! I am so glad I got this room done! There wasn’t a time limit that I put on this. And I am so glad I didn’t! I was able to just enjoy the process and not stress so much about it all! I still hated having the bathroom a mess in the process and everything not being in its right place. This was our second time doing flooring and it went so much easier having some experience in our belts!
But we all have to start somewhere and it is possible. That is what I told Dustin when we were doing the trim work. He was getting so frustrated that it wasn’t going the way he hoped. But we had never done trim work before, I knew it was going to take a minute to get a groove. I love turning my house into what I have imagined, if you are thinking of starting a DIY project in your house, do it!
You can watch the reels posted for this awesome project here! Bathroom Refresh 1, Bathroom Refresh 2, Bathroom Refresh 3, Bathroom Refresh 4, Bathroom Refresh 5, and Finale Reveal.
Thank you for following along! I love sharing all my projects with my chickadees!
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