Bathroom Remodel

In March / April 2020, we decided to give our bathroom a facelift. This is the only bathroom in the house, aside from the lone toilet in the unfinished basement. As Covid-19 was on the rise, we were both home more and had more time on our hands. Why not do a bathroom remodel!

Here’s the before picture. An outdated bathroom, thick textured walls, and brown everything. The vinyl floor was terribly hard to clean and keep clean due to the slight texture.

First, we decided to skim coat the walls. They had thicker texture than the rest of the house.

This video from @Paul Peck DrywallTube was really helpful.

We ended up applying 2 coats of drywall compound to the walls over the course of a weekend. We let it dry for a couple days before sanding.

**QUICK TIP: if you decide to sand your walls, make sure the bathroom is empty. You want good ventilation (window + fan) and a respirator to avoid inhaling the small dust. Also, make sure the doors are taped off so the mess is contained. Rookie mistake here. I was finding drywall dust in my bobby pins for a while.

After the walls were sanded, we painted them Stone White. A cool tone light gray/ white to brighten up the small space.

I prefer to use this Behr Premium Plus paint. It is their middle grade paint, cheaper than Behr Marquee but still has great coverage. I usually use Eggshell for walls and Satin for trim. This runs about $28 per gallon.

Since this was our only bathroom, we wanted to do this projects in shifts. We didn’t want to disassemble the bathroom and leave it inoperable for weeks.

The second weekend, we removed the vanity. We had to skim coat behind the vanity. Since I was planning to paint the vanity and the sink top, it made sense to remove it the same weekend we were replacing the floors.

We disconnected the vanity and removed the sink top so I could paint it in the garage. I saw @prvbsthirtyonegirl update her bathroom vanity with this Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy Spray Paint.

I cleaned the sink top with a TSP cleaner, taped off the faucet and drain hole, and I was ready to paint. Use this spray paint in a well ventilated area. I would suggest wearing a respirator as well. This stuff smells and is VERY tacky/ sticky on anything it touches. You MUST follow the instructions on the can. Use light, even coats for better coverage. Make sure your spraying finger is not in the way when spraying or you will end up with some spray drops. I think I went over this maybe 4-5 times within the 30 mins. If you do not cover it within 30 mins, you need to wait at least a month to touch up so it has time to cure and it doesn’t bubble up.

While the sink top was drying, we cleaned behind the sink and skim coated the walls. After the joint compound was dry, we painted the wall.

I cleaned the dirt/ grime off of the vanity. I painted the vanity base Offshore Mist by Behr.

I also painted the frame of the medicine cabinet white. This is a small bathroom and this medicine cabinet offers lots of storage.

We decided the day we took the toilet out, we would try to remove the current sheet vinyl flooring, cut out the new flooring, and replace the flooring before re-installing the toilet. I didn’t want to be fully without a bathroom during the working week!

We found this Tarkett Sheet Vinyl flooring at Menards. It comes in 12 foot wide rolls, we only needed about 6 foot long and we bought the grey hex tile design. It took a couple weeks to arrive.

Since the current flooring was also sheet vinyl, I was able to use that as a template to trace for the new flooring. First, I opened the new flooring roll and placed it face-down in our living room. I put some chairs/ coolers to hold down the edges from curling up. Then, I layed the old flooring on top of it (both layers were face-down so my tracing marks would be on the back side/ underside and not the top). I traced the old flooring shape including the hole for the toilet and vent. Then, I used these Milwaukee Straight-cut snips from Home Depot. They cut through this vinyl like buttah’.

After the flooring was cut and installed, we cut our trip pieces for the back wall and behind the toilet. It’s a tight space when the toilet is installed, so I wanted to have the trim installed and caulked before we re-installed the toilet. Then we worked from back to front to finish installing the trim.

After we hooked up the toilet, we reinstalled the vanity base. Then, we installed the painted sink top and hooked up the sink.

Then, we measured for the last 2 pieces of trim to the left of the doorway.

Since this was a small bathroom, we found this double bath towel bar which could hold up to 4 towels.

Above the toilet, we added 2 shelves for storage/ decoration. I found these white iron shelf brackets and we purchased a 1x8 board from Home Depot.

We also added a single towel bar for hand towels below the shelves. Since we were mostly staying home at this point, I ‘shopped our house’ for decorations and styling items.

Overall, I’m so happy with this budget reno! It brightened up the space and made it feel so much nicer and ‘spa like’. I love this big deep tub we have so it felt like a true retreat in our own home.