One Day Bathroom Remodel

We've been using the upstairs bathroom to shower, and the downstairs bathroom for everything else. And just the ten minutes I have to spend in the upstairs bathroom every day has given me major headaches. I've had them since the day we moved in and nothing relieves them.

So Ryan decided that we should use our one work day this weekend to remediate this (I think it was mostly to shut me up about my headaches). We could do some simple cleaning and cheap fixes to the bathroom to make it usable. 

First was removing the carpet. Surprisingly there wasn't a forest of mold underneath it. There was a disgusting black pad though that had basically become one with the plywood subfloor though. That thing was not coming off, no matter how hard we tried. So we decided to put down 1/4 luan plywood right over it. We'll tear it up when we redo the bathroom correctly in a couple years, but for now, it just wasn't worth it.

Over the luan we put down some inexpensive vinyl tiles. It's not the most stylish floor, but it's about 300 times better than what was there.

We then painted the walls and ceiling with Kilz 2 to help seal in some of the bad smells and stains on the plaster. The walls were in pretty bad shape and it was amazing to see what just one coat of Kilz did. I also painted the vanity cabinet with Kilz... it went through an amazing transformation! This picture shows the nastiness that was the cabinet right next to the newly painted cabinet.

The existing yellow toilet looked really old. We know that the last people to renovate the house did so in the mid 1950's, but we were still surprised to find out that the toilet was manufactured in 1956. A 54 year old toilet. They just don't make them like that anymore.

We bought the toilet at Lowe's, which I would not have done if this were a more permanent remodel.  We decided on the Jacuzzi Maxima Elongated Two Piece Toilet. It was only $5 more expensive than our other option, an American Standard, and this one looked a lot nicer. 

The existing sink faucets were also replaced with some inexpensive Home Depot faucets. Nothing fancy, just better than what was there. A repainted vanity, new cabinet hardware and new paint on the walls, and we're done.


A brand new countertop was not in our budget for this room. Like I said, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this because I'm planning on re-doing in the entire room in a couple years. So rather than spending $80 on a new countertop from Lowe's I re-did it for a mere $2. How you ask?