This Weekend, Last Year

It's hard to believe that we've been in the house long enough to say that..

Last year on this weekend (the 16th and 17th), my cousin got married on Saturday, so we wanted to find a project that would only take roughly one day. The upstairs bathroom.

At the time, we were not willing to use the toilet in there, so in the morning, we'd wake up, go downstairs to use the toilet, come back upstairs to take a shower, then go back downstairs to brush teeth, brush hair, etc. Kinda a pain in the butt. Plus the upstairs bathroom was carpeted (seriously.. who thought this would ever be a good idea??) and soaking wet all the time, even when it wasn't being used, which meant that it smelled horrible in here and the mold was not good for my asthma, even though I'd take the quickest showers on record. The sinks and counter had become my paint station and this was where I would store everything and wash out my brushes and rollers while painting upstairs. So it was pretty gross. Plus the previous owners left a bunch of stuff in here.

We started by removing the carpeting and putting down some inexpensive vinyl tiles (on top of a new 1/4" subfloor). We then painted the walls, trim and ceiling (wallpaper was stripped a month ago) first with a coat or two of Kilz to hide any stains and enclose the mold and then with a coat or two of white on the trim and cabinets and green on the walls (leftover from our guest bathroom in our apartment). New knobs, faucets and a toilet finished out the project.

Since then I've also refurbished the mirror, added temporary curtains, rugs, and organized everything in the cabinets/drawers and decorated a little. It's not a beautiful bathroom that belongs in a magazine, nor is it a bathroom we plan on keeping forever. In a couple years we want to add on to the house, and the upstairs will get rearranged slightly.. laundry will move to where the Twilight Room is and this bathroom and the laundry space will become the new bathroom (the addition will have a master bedroom and bathroom). As a result, we didn't want to spend a lot of money on this.. we just needed something functional and not smelly :)

Because I was able to re-use a lot (paint, curtains, rugs)... we ended up only spending $250 on the total room makeover.