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Re: Bathroom remodel

haverwench — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:47:30 GMT

Hi, everyone! This is almost a year late, but I thought you might like to see how the bathroom finally turned out. This blog entry dating from last March shows the bathroom in its "almost finished" state. Since then, we have finished the doorframe, installed the threshold, and replaced the towels in the picture with some nicer ones. We also refinished an old corner cabinet to provide us with a bit of storage space in the room; you can see it in this later blog entry. In total, we spent just over $900 on the bathroom remodel (including the toilet, which we replaced before starting on the rest of the room). That's way more than I originally expected it to cost, but considering that Remodeling Magazine puts the average cost of a bathroom remodel at over $16,500, I'd say we didn't do too badly spending less than six percent of that amount. And as I note in the first blog entry, the bloggers at Young House Love, who have made a full-time job out of remodeling their home on a budget and bragging about it online, spent about twice as much on their full bath remodel and were thrilled about it--so I think $912 for ours isn't too shabby. (Oh, the first of the two blog entries also shows the "before" picture, so you can see just how bad it looked before we started.)

Anyone wanna help me come up with some frugal ideas for landscaping our back yard? :-)

Re: Bathroom remodel

haverwench — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 21:35:09 GMT

zohnerfarms:
I think it looks great. Thanks for posting the pictures!

If you check out my blog entry for February 27, you can see how the new vanity turned out, as well.

The room isn't quite finished yet—we still need to do the door and floor moldings and install new "jewelry" (towel bars, toilet paper holder, etc.) —but we have all the big pieces in place, including the new vanity that my husband built with his very own hands. :-) We also took the mirrored door off the old, ugly medicine chest and refinished it with the stain we bought for the other woodwork, so we got a nice mirror for free. So far, we have spent $860, and I estimate we will need another $30 or so for the "jewelry." At some point we will probably add a few shelves as well, but for now we are making do with an old corner bookshelf that has been sitting in storage since we moved in. I'm very happy with how it has turned out, and fairly happy with what we spent on it.

Re: Bathroom remodel

zohnerfarms — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:40:10 GMT

I think it looks great. Thanks for posting the pictures!

Re: Bathroom remodel

LWolfT — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:00:25 GMT

Looks very nice. For what you've done, I think coming in under $1,000 is great!

Re: Bathroom remodel

re-tired — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:37:50 GMT

I'm so glad you have been able to find things you need and like. Our bathroom repair work has been a nightmare! As our only bath, it has been slow progress. I'm so tired of taking showers in a plastic-enclosed space (protecting the tile surround since DH hasn't finished grouting). We don't have a Re-Store so I'm stuck paying retail prices for a new vanity and flooring.

re-tired

Re: Bathroom remodel

haverwench — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:56:06 GMT

So, just in case anyone was wondering, the bathroom remodel is now moving rapidly forward. We ended up getting tile at the Habitat ReStore in Morris County for about $170 (probably could have found it cheaper at Home Depot, but I like the stuff we got) and sponge-painting the walls in two shades of yellow. You can see pictures on my blog. So far we have spent about $730, including the cost of the new toilet that we put in last year. I am expecting to spend another $150 or so on the remaining stuff: a faucet for the new sink; lumber, stain, and hardware to build a new vanity cabinet, shelves, and covers for the radiators; and a few miscellaneous pieces, like a towel bar and toilet-paper holder. I've heard of bathrooms being redone even more cheaply, and probably we could have done it for less if we had to, but then again, I've also heard of bathroom remodels taking ten or twenty times as much, so I think we've done pretty well.

Re: That's more like it

zohnerfarms — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:23:26 GMT

haverwench:
On a hunch, I checked to see if there were any more Habitat ReStores in our area. I found one in Morris County, which is a rather upscale area. Based on the website, this seemed to be a much bigger store, with a much wider selection of stuff. So we made a trip today to check it out. Here we finally found what we'd been hoping to see at the other stores--not just furniture but paint, tile, sinks, cabinetry, plumbing supplies, and even hardware (nails by the pound!).

That sounds more like my ReStore! Way to be persistent to the point of success.

Re: That's more like it

seaturtle — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:22:38 GMT

Good going, haverwrench! What a find - I wish we had a Habitat Restores in this area.

That's more like it

haverwench — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:42:09 GMT

On a hunch, I checked to see if there were any more Habitat ReStores in our area. I found one in Morris County, which is a rather upscale area. Based on the website, this seemed to be a much bigger store, with a much wider selection of stuff. So we made a trip today to check it out. Here we finally found what we'd been hoping to see at the other stores--not just furniture but paint, tile, sinks, cabinetry, plumbing supplies, and even hardware (nails by the pound!). They had several boxes of Italian ceramic tile for $11 a box (about 15 square feet per box), but I didn't see a color I liked. They did have a few surplus tiles with a slate-like pattern, but not enough to do the whole floor--so we picked up just one of those (for 25 cents!) to see how it looked in the room. But our real find was a like-new sink with attached vanity top, 19 by 24 inches, in white cultured marble. This is smaller than the vanity we have now, so by buying the new sink we have committed ourselves to building a new vanity rather than trying to refinish the old, cruddy one. That's fine by me, since the old one was made of pretty shoddy wood to begin with, so it wasn't clear how well we'd be able to clean it up. I'm sure that at $30, this sink plus the materials for a new cabinet will cost us less than the $100 or so we would have had to pay for a new sink to fit the old cabinet.

The best part is that now that we know the store is there, we can go back again in another few weeks and probably find a largely new selection of stuff. It's like a yard sale that never ends.

rolo:
Flooring--not knowing how large the bathroom is--how much of the floor will actually show? I might be tempted to put down a good quality vinyl in order to spend a bit more on the more noticeable items--just a thought. Just remember, ceramic tile grouting eventually needs to be redone, and anything breakable dropped onto it will break. How about trying an inexpensive paint for cement before deciding on the flooring?

It's a pretty big bathroom. There will be over 50 square feet of floor surface visible, so I can't really think of any other item that's going to be "more noticeable." Maybe the sink, but we already found a bargain on that. I think if I'm going to splurge on anything, I'll splurge on the flooring. I just don't like the look of vinyl, and I think it would actually be more of a pain to install. If we use a tinted grout, it won't show the dirt as much.

Re: Bathroom remodel

zohnerfarms — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:37:49 GMT

I'm sorry the ReStore didn't work out for you. On the other hand, this is spring, & construction/home improvement things should be on sale soon.:D

Re: Sigh

rolo — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:46:13 GMT

Flooring--not knowing how large the bathroom is--how much of the floor will actually show? I might be tempted to put down a good quality vinyl in order to spend a bit more on the more noticeable items--just a thought. Just remember, ceramic tile grouting eventually needs to be redone, and anything breakable dropped onto it will break. How about trying an inexpensive paint for cement before deciding on the flooring?

Re: Sigh

slk2042 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:01:51 GMT

haverwench:
Well, that was a huge waste of time.

I'm sorry. On the upside, you got to spend some quality time with DH!

Sigh

haverwench — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:44:25 GMT

Well, that was a huge waste of time. This morning we set out to visit the nearest Habitat ReStore, which is about half an hour away and is only open a few hours a week. When we got there, it was basically just a couple of rooms full of crappy secondhand furniture. So rather than just turn around, we decided to keep going and visit the next closest store, another half hour or so in the same direction. That one turned out to have a much larger selection of crappy secondhand furniture, plus a few seriously beat-up appliances. No tile, no paint, no lighting fixtures I would want in my house. So we spent two hours traveling and found nothing of any use at all. Sigh. I guess we're stuck paying retail.

Re: Bathroom remodel

kb999999 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:19:37 GMT

Hi ... time to look for yard sales, newspaper ads, online like Craigs-list - purchased two sinks for mother's bath a few years back, brand-new for only $10.00 each. Also, a Habitat resale store would be a good place, maybe a local contractor with extra products? Look for plain colored tile and use patterened for the borders, spend the extra now for long-lasting flooring and sealers.

Re: Bathroom remodel

Anna Marie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:39:03 GMT

The suggestions of trying the Re-Store, checking "bone piles," and using multiple colors are all excellent. I would offer the idea of using several colors such as slate, taupe and ivory. If the room's edges are not even and parallel, I've seen a pattern applied to the greater part of the room then an edging made by making a mosaic of broken tiles from the edge of the patterned portion to the wall. AM