Downstairs Bath Renovation: Design, Timeline and Budget Plans

You know, it's times like these that make me really glad I have a blog. It gives me an excuse to really put together a solid vision for our projects, which not only is fun to share with you guys, but it really helps in forming the design plans too! I'm such a visual person that an inspiration board is always a lot more useful than just lists of plans or products in Excel.

So here it is, one big post laying out all of the plans we have (so far) for our downstairs bathroom renovation.

First, the main inspiration board. Now that we're set with our vanity with marble counter, we're ready to move forward with the grey floor and white with light grey veins shower surround tile we'd tentatively picked out. Our walls won't necessarily be this exact color of green, but they will be a medium green on the top half, and beadboard wainscoting on the bottom half.

For the floor tile, we're going with a matte porcelain that looks a lot like slate, since my husband wasn't really into white tile on the floor (it is our main bathroom for guests and he didn't want to worry about constantly cleaning an all-white floor). We're choosing porcelain over other materials like ceramic or a natural stone because it's rugged, it's inexpensive, it doesn't absorb water, and in particular, this color will be easy to clean and tie in nicely with the shower surround tile and our vanity counter top. And speaking of shower surround tile, we've chosen to go with a white tile with light grey marbling, which has a lot of variation between the tiles (checking for lots of variation is important when looking at these kinds of glazed, marbled tiles). It will be clean and bright, with just enough color to make things interesting.

Also to keep things interesting, we're going to do an oversized subway tile pattern in the shower. Similar to these inspiration photos.

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Not only will the oversized tile be a lot easier and quicker to install, but we'll have less grout lines to clean down the line, which will be great since I HATE cleaning grout.

And here's a photo from when we were shopping at The Tile Shop, holding the floor tile up to the oversized subway tiles, so you can get an idea of the scale.

Ok, the color is horrible in that cell phone picture. Here's a better one so you can see the tile up close and more true to life on the colors.

Much better than the 70's yellow tile we'll be replacing! Although I will admit that I love the old tile's shape...

So that's the basics of our bathroom design. Grey floors, white marbled shower surround, white vanity with light marble top, white beadboard, green walls.

But as far as the accessories go, things are still a little bit up in the air. I know for sure I want to have some airy accessories, like big fluffy white towels (the green lattice towels in the main inspiration board would probably just be hand towels) and glass canisters or apothecary jars.

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But as for the rest of the accessories, we could go either one of two ways. We could bring in some wood elements for more of a rustic chic vibe like so...

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Or we could continue the light and airy feel with more glass and more pops of green...

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One thing is for sure, I need a stool of some sort, shelving (either crate shelves or white floating shelves), and I really want to incorporate succulents somehow, to add more green in the mix. But I'm really torn between the two accessories inspiration boards at the moment, and am thinking I might just wait until we're a little further along with the main components of the bathroom before deciding.

So that's that, as far as the design plans go. Well, except for lighting, which is my current obsession that I can't decide on. I'm pretty excited though, and can't wait to see it come together over the next few weeks!

Which brings us to the timeline we've mapped out. Playing off of everything we've learned so far, that home projects ALWAYS take longer than expected, we should have a functional-but-not-fully-accessorized bathroom right around Labor Day, since we'll mainly only have time on weekends to work on the bathroom.

Here is just a quick summary of our timeline (since you know I've got a massive Excel list of everything broken down that would probably bore y'all to tears!):

Weekend #1:  Scrape popcorn ceiling, do a ton of research on DIY demo and tiling etc, test removing a few tiles, get new sink and washer valves and other supplies

Weekend #2:  Demo drywall on vanity wall, floor and shower tile, remove vanity and toilet, demo drywall in laundry room

Weekend #3:  Build up sub floor to replace concrete under tile, move/add electrical boxes for vanity light fixtures, replace all valves (sink, shower, washing machine, etc), install new drywall

Weekend #4:  Tile the shower

Weekend #5:  Tile the floor

Weekend #6:  Prime walls and ceiling, install beadboard wainscoting and trim, paint walls, ceiling and beadboard, caulk everything other than vanity counter

Weekend #7:  Put in the functional finishing touches, including install the vanity and caulk counter, install sink and tub faucets, hang light fixtures, hang towel racks, hang mirror, put toilet back in place and caulk

Weekend #8:  Decorate with accessories, TBD

Anyone tired just looking at even this scaled down to do list? Ha! There's a whole lot to do with an almost complete bathroom gut. I mean, the only things we're not replacing is the drywall on 3 walls, the tub and the toilet!

But we're a little further along that it looks though, since this weekend is actually weekend #2. Last weekend we scraped the popcorn ceilings (which only took about 20 minutes because we're my husband is an expert at popcorn scraping by now).

And we also had a little preliminary fun with removing some tiles, just to see how hard it was going to be. Which turned out to be pretty easy with just smashing the tile with hammers. It was a good thing too, because I wasn't looking forward to spending $80-90 on a rotary hammer with chisel tool that a lot of forums on tile removal recommended.

I know, this post is already getting a little long, but I wanted to cram one final thing in, our budget. We were very scientific in making it. Haha, just kidding! Really, all we did was list out the basic things we needed, drywall, tile, etc, and then check out a few sites like Lowes.com and HomeDepot.com and pick the high end of the average price range for the item...and that was it. Well, not entirely, we included a miscellaneous fund for all of the little things that will add up, like paint and caulk. And then we rounded up from there to account for anything unforeseen or random tools we'd need to buy (although most tools would be used on future projects too).

So we're going into this project expecting on spending $4,000, even though our true budget is just over $3,200. I'd always rather over estimate than underestimate though!

The preliminary bathroom renovation budget:

Floor tile - $300.00
Shower surround tile - $300.00
Vanity base - $800.00
Vanity counter top - $600.00 (and the actual total for the vanity base and counter was $899.95)
Sink faucet - $150.00
Tub faucet and shower head - $200.00
Drywall - $300.00 (this also includes drywall for the wall in the laundry room, on the other side of the bathroom that is moldy)
Beadboard wainscoting paneling - $75.00
Light fixture - $150.00 (although I already know we'll go over budget on this, thank goodness we're already under budget on the vanity!)
Towel Racks and toilet paper holder - $55.00
Misc (new valves, caulking, paint, etc) - $300.00

Total line item budget - $3,230.00

Total "to be safe and account for the unforeseen" budget - $4,000.00

So there you go. The total breakdown of our downstairs bathroom renovation design, timeline and budget plans. It will be interesting in a couple months to revisit this and see how on track with the timeline we stayed, as well as what our final budget ends up being!

And now for probably one of the most fun renovation weekends, other than decorating: the demolition weekend. Wish us lots of drywall and tile smashing luck!