Mirror Refurbished

The previous owner left the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. It was old and ugly.. stained brown, with the wood chipping and peeling from being in the bathroom for so long. And the back was covered in paper, which was disintegrating. But, we needed a mirror in there.

I found one at Ikea that I liked and that matched the glass shelf and candle holders in the bathroom (the picture is the shelf, not the mirror... apparently they discontinued the mirror. It was only $20 though). However, when we were actually in the store, R hated it. Not sure why. He just did. So I didn't buy it. That was months ago. The mirror had been taken off the wall when I was painting and rather than hang it back up (and resign to the fact that it was staying), we had it propped up on the counter.

Back in December I tried painting it white, just to see what it would look like. With a coat of primer and a coat of paint, the stain still bled through. And you could see the cracking. It looked horrible. So now rather than just an ugly mirror, we have an ugly mirror that is half painted white.

Finally I had had enough of it. The rest of the bathroom is done except for the stupid mirror. I took it outside, put newspaper and painters tape over the glass and spray painted it black. And I have to say, I love how it came out! It looks almost identical to the Hemnes mirror from Ikea, which I liked, but was $50.

Our $250 Total Room Remodel

That almost sounds impossible. Especially when you remember what we were dealing with. But we made it happen. 


Toilet - $179
Faucets - $20/ea ($40 total)
Countertop - $2
Floor - $25 (vinyl tiles and luan)
Wall Paint - $0
Primer/White Paint - $5
Cabinet Knobs - $10

Second Bath Faucet

These faucets were actually one of the first purchases for the house. Immediately after closing we went to Home Depot to buy a bunch of things (most importantly, new locks/keys). While there, we bought these two faucets, intending to use them in the upstairs bathroom. However, once we got back to the house, we realized that the bathroom was in worse shape than we remembered while at the store. So for 2 1/2 months the faucet boxes were used as door stops. I kept meaning to return them... we weren't remodeling the bathroom, so why keep them?  I'm glad we didn't return them, because we decided to re-do this bathroom after all, and they look great! My only complaint about them is that to get the water coming out at a good pressure/decent amount, you need to turn them as far as the handle will go. I know that this is a problem with the faucet, not our plumbing, because this didn't happen with the old faucets. But for $20, I wasn't expecting the world.

Manufacturer: Glacier Bay
Retailer: Home Depot
Model: Constructor 4 in. 2-Handle Low-Arc Bathroom Faucet
Finish: Brushed Nickel
Price: $20

New Toilet

The major purchase for the bathroom was the toilet. After a lot of discussion at Lowe's, we settled on the Jacuzzi Maxima White Elongated Toilet for $179. We had an elongated toilet in our apartment and fell in love with it. We just couldn't go back to a round toilet, even though they were slightly cheaper. It came down to the Jacuzzi or an American Standard. The American Standard was $5 cheaper, but the Jacuzzi looked so much nicer. And for only $5 more, you might as well go with the nicer looking one right? Guys just don't understand stuff like that..


There are a couple negative reviews online about this toilet, regarding the flushing and amount of water involved. It's a water saving toilet, so it doesn't use very much water. Duh. We've had the toilet for about a month and a half now and haven't had any trouble. Once. Once R had to flush twice. Not bad when you consider how little water it uses. And the box claimed it's clog free... and so far it has lived up to that.


We had a little trouble installing it, because we had to slightly raise the floor. Even the extra jumbo wax ring R got from Lowe's wasn't tall enough. But luckily he found one at a local plumbing supply store. Other than that, it went in pretty easily!

$2 Countertop

A brand new countertop, for $2, purchased at your local cheap-o store (aka Big Lots, which often has a lot of good house necessities, for really cheap. Wouldn't ever buy food there, but other stuff is good!).


A client of mine at work mentioned to me that 10 years ago when they bought their house, she couldn't stand the Kitchen countertops. Because the huge remodel we're now doing for them wasn't in their budget at the time, she bought a couple packs of contact paper and covered the countertops with the contact paper. I was in that house for months, measuring, designing, meeting with them, etc. and never realized it was contact paper! So when cleaning our lime green countertops just wasn't working, I went digging in the bag of contact paper that the client gave me. While the brown color she used wasn't exactly my style, it was still a good idea. Rolls of contact paper were only $2 at Big Lots, and I found one that had a granite-ish pattern to it, and was really the only option they had (everything else had flowers or fruit).


I tried to do some research online, but nothing seemed really helpful. So one night after work I just decided to go for it, and if it didn't come out good, I'd suck it up and go buy another $2 roll.


Turns out it's pretty easy! First I cleaned the countertop as best as I could. I didn't want any of the dirt or paint that was on the countertop staining or causing bumps in my new countertop. I started in one corner, with the backsplash, and very slowly and carefully rolled out the paper. I would peel off about 3" of backing, and then using my fingers push down the paper as flat as possible (and I'm a perfectionist, so it was definitely flat!). The hardest spots were the backsplashes and corners (corners were almost impossible!). When I got to a sink, I just rolled right over it, and then when I was done took an Xacto Knife and cut around the edge of the sink. It only took about 3 hours. R was shocked when I finally let him in the bathroom around 11:30 pm... he had been waiting outside the door wanting to see our "new" bathroom! I was so proud of myself! You can't see any seams and there aren't any bubbles (though my client gave me a good tip... if you do get a bubble, use a pin to pop it and then smooth it out).

Countertop Before

Countertop After

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?

Second Floor Bathroom

Our Second Floor Bathroom was scary! It had a moldy, constantly wet yellow (or at least it was yellow at some point in it's long life) carpet (yes, carpet), yellow sinks, mustard yellow wallpaper, and lime green countertops. And a yellow tiled shower, which was almost black with mold. There was mold all over the ceiling and plaster walls (underneath the wallpaper) as well. The faucets had clearly over lived their life expectancy. One of them was missing a drain (it was just a hole in the sink) and leaked no matter how tight you turned the handle. This picture was taken during our first walk-through, back in May. Everything you see there (including the wet, dirty towels and other disgusting personal items underneath the sink, and the full garbage barrel) was left by the sellers for us.

And this is the mold underneath the wallpaper.

The bathroom currently shares a space with the washer and dryer. The room was split in two by a previous owner, and you have to walk through the laundry area to get to the bathroom. When we eventually put on a Garage/Master Suite addition, the laundry will be moved to the other side of the house and this whole space will be bathroom. For this reason, we didn't want to spend a lot of money on the bathroom. In fact, we weren't even planning on using it. Ever. We'd just close the door and ignore it until time came to demo it.

But, nothing ever goes according to plan. The night we moved in, we discovered that the downstairs shower didn't work. So for the first month or so, we would shower in the nastiness that is this shower (no amount of bleach or cleaning could get rid of all of the black mold) and then use the sink and toilet in the downstairs bathroom. It was a huge pain! The carpet would squish under your feet, we had to bring in a free-standing lamp to light the shower area, and the countertop was unusable because it was my paint station, and was covered in painting supplies and dried paint (like I said, we weren't planning on using it, so it was a good place to wash brushes!).

So when a one day weekend presented itself to us, what better to do than tackle this bathroom and make it at least usable!