The "Paint Everything" Bathroom Refresh | The Reveal

Last year we hosted our very first Thanksgiving with about 20 family members. Most of those 20 family members have been to our house before, have seen the progress we’ve made over the last almost 2 years, and have witnessed the slow transformation our home has undergone. But for some odd reason, a week before Thanksgiving I had this brilliant idea to give our guest bath a little love as if I was trying to impress people who needed no impressing AND right before all the chaos of prepping for a party of 20. #genius

You see…our guest bath is probably the worst room in our entire home – the most outdated and abused. It had definitely seen better days – yellowed walls, peeling laminate, need I say more? – and this was the very reason I added it to our 2017 House Goals list at the beginning of the year. We had the best of intentions to give this little room a full overhaul – tub, tile, the works – but then life got in the way and our money tree out back stopped producing which meant that all plans we made just fizzled out.

Case in point:

Also…paint swatches I painted on the wall like week 3 of homeownership still here almost 2 years later.

 

With December just weeks away, I kinda knew we weren’t going to get to the bathroom this year. So I started looking around and saw that even though the floor and tub were (still are) in desperate need of replacement – a little paint could go a long way and at least make it look OK. Lucky for me, I had tons of leftover paint from other house projects just lying around. So I decided – 6 days before Thanksgiving – to refresh our guest bath using stuff I already had on hand.

Here’s the result:

The very first thing I did was paint the entire bathroom – Super White by Sherwin Williams – left over from this project. The original color – a very creamy / ivory did nothing for the bathroom except make it look and feel old and outdated. The fresh coat of bright white paint brightened everything right up and instantly made the room feel bigger and cleaner.

The original bathroom vanity was fine. It looked like it was painted with nothing more than primer but I decided to paint it a light grey – probably the 1st decent paint job this thing has ever had. I took all the paint samples I had when we were trying to choose the perfect shade of grey for the living room, mixed them all together, and went after the vanity with my batch of paint. It turned out great and it was free.

At the last minute I changed out the hardware for these champagne bronze drum knobs and guys…new hardware is always a good idea. Trust. I grabbed 5 of these knobs at Home Depot and BAM! So much better…

The cultured marble top on the vanity looks even yellower than it did before against the fresh white walls and it’s a bit more obvious now but that’ll all get remedied this year. Until then, it’s fine people. It’s fine.

The mirror above the vanity is your typical builder grade mirror but instead of extending across the entire back wall and behind the toilet like most do, it’s just a giant square that someone took the extra time (not me) to frame out with some simple trim. Thank you who ever you are. It could totally be worse and it could absolutely be way better. After I shot all these photos, I realized how much better it would look if I painted the frame black – which is an easy fix and I have plenty of black paint lying around so that’s still something I want to do in here.

We swapped out the old light fixture for the one that was already living in our master bathroom. Not my dream fixture but it was the right color, nice enough, and free. Imagine the look on Sikmon’s face when I asked him to swap fixtures. A giant eye roll and a look of pure annoyance. His response afterwards? “This light looks awesome in here.”

Well…duh.

I also think I might eventually swap out the frosted shades for some clear ones – another super easy, inexpensive way to update what you already have without spending tons of money. I saw these in store the other day and thinking they might look great in here.

We spent about $40 to add some much needed interest to the once plain and very boring back wall. It was easily the biggest transformation (other than swapping the light) of the entire bathroom and the best $40 we ever spent. The new trim work got a fresh white coat of paint too – Extra White by Behr (same paint used on all our trim work throughout the house – and we added 3 black hooks to hold some inexpensive Turkish towels and give this wall some purpose.

 

We did absolutely nothing to the shower area except hide it’s ugliness with a shower curtain that we already had. It too looks yellower than it did before much like the vanity top but its days are numbered.

Other than that, the updates we made were all in the form of accessories. We removed the old towel bar in favor some new art, threw a new rug down and called it good. Crazy how much a space can change in 6 days, right?

Come back tomorrow for all the sources where I break down how this room refresh cost under $150!