Downstairs Bath Renovation: Final Budget and Source List

Well, this post certainly took a lot longer to put together than I thought it would! Be prepared for lots of links and lots of dollar signs. :)

But it was great to finally look back and add up all of our expenses for this project. I'm kind of surprised that we didn't end up too much over our original budget! And hopefully this post will be useful to anyone thinking about renovating a bathroom themselves. It wasn't cheap, or easy to DIY it all, but I think we would have easily spent at least twice what we did if we'd hired professionals.

Budget Breakdown and Source Links: Post-Demolition Rebuilding

• Subfloor - standard 1/2 inch plywood to match the existing flooring we left and new 5/8th inch over the entire surface

DIY Sunburst Mirror with Wood Shims

Today I wanted to share another art project that I did for our guest bedroom.

A 32" wide sunburst mirror that I made for about $43, using wood contractor shims like these.

Lowes

I've been in love with sunburst mirrors for a while now--pretty much as soon as they started appearing on design blogs. So it was finally time to jump on the bandwagon, although I wasn't about to spend $200-300 on a store bought one.

Cheap and Easy Guest Bedroom Art and Vinyl-Stenciled Bookcases

I spent most of my President's Day vacation on Monday working on the guest bedroom, arranging furniture, hanging curtains, and working on some of the decorative elements.

We're going for sort of a subtle beach cottage feel for the room, which will be expressed mainly through the accessories. I'm liking the idea of setting the mood with just the decorations, since the dark grey walls and warm teal blue headboard, paired with fluffy white bedding could work with a variety of accessories if we ever feel like changing things up in the future.

So, to set the beach cottage mood, that meant doing something with shells. They are cheap, they are pretty, and I actually already had a bunch on hand. So I set out to make some shadow boxes, based off two pieces of inspiration.

This photo I snapped on my phone in Bed, Bath and Beyond about 6 months ago, of a framed starfish and sand dollar. I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but these were marked at $24.99 each.

And this photo that I'd pinned a while ago, a similar idea, with bright blue matting.

Source

So with those ideas in mind, I ordered four of these shadow boxes from Target for only $9.99 each. When I was painting the headboard, I also painted the back panels of the shadow box frames the same teal (Surf Blue by Benjamin Moore).

Guest Bedroom Furniture Updates

So. This happened.

And then this.

Wait, didn't I already make a board and batten headboard months ago?

Yes, yes I did. But it ended up needing to be redone.

Downstairs Bath Renovation: It's Done! The Big Reveal

I can not tell you all how proud I feel. Our bathroom renovation, which we started at the end of July and did all by ourselves, is finally done!!!

Well, almost done, I am still waiting for our trash can to arrive in the mail, and I haven't hung the fabric covered cornice I made for the window yet (still trying to decide if the window needs it). But it is close enough to call it DONE!

If you've been reading this little blog for a while, you've probably been following the long, hard road we traveled to get here. Originally we were just planning to take down the ugly wallpaper, and bring in some new accessories to cover up the "snot yellow" tile until we were ready to rip it out in a few years. But then when we actually went to take down the wallpaper, we found mold, and decided to just move forward with the full reno. So we we ripped pretty much everything out, saving only the tub and toilet, and one wall of drywall. That came with its own issues, and we had to do a bit of regrouping and mold clean up, and take things down even further to replace the sub floors. Next came redoing the shower, sink and laundry plumbing in the shared wall, followed by putting up drywall, tiling the shower and rerunning the electrical, and then tiling the floors and putting up beadboard. Painting came next, and then we were ready to install the vanity, faucets and caulk every nook and crack in the whole room. Then came a whole lot of little touch ups, painting more trim, caulking even more. And about 400 million little things that I'm forgetting to mention. But after that, really all that was left to do was accessorize.

I'll do a follow up post, with a budget breakdown and a source list for everything in the room, but I just couldn't wait to share the transformation first!

Get ready for picture overload, because I couldn't resist showing off every aspect our beautiful new bathroom!

In Progress

I haven't had a chance this week to get caught up on posts, because we've been working every single night! I seem incapable of comprehending that things always take longer than we think they will. Or rather, I understand this fact, build in extra time in my schedule, and then still fail to ever complete something on time.

But here's a little look at what we've been working on, lots of things in progress, but nothing actually done yet!

The fireplace, two weekends ago:

The fireplace facade progress, at almost midnight last Saturday, right after we got the new fireplace glass doors and TV mounted.