Refinishing a {Small Bathroom} on an {Even Smaller Budget}

As you can see in the before and after pics in this post, our hallway bathroom looks different now than it did just a couple of years ago, but it obviously hasn't undergone a full on renovation. With the average bathroom remodel costing an average of $16,000, we needed to work with what we already had in place. Which wasn't much, by the way. This bathroom is a mere 5 x 7 feet, and that includes the floorspace taken up by the bathtub.

We had already installed new tile flooring throughout the majority of the house, so the outdated white tiles were long gone when we began working on refinishing, replacing and covering up the rest of the outdated 1970's atrocity.

We started by removing the old sliding shower doors, mainly because it was nearly impossible to give little tiny children a bath when you can only reach half of the tub. Once those were gone, we bought a bronze hardware set and set out to buy an adorable bohemian shower curtain I had been eyeing at Cost Plus World Market but had no use for before now. The shower curtain became my inspiration for the colors I would be using throughout the bathroom: Bright teal, deep blue and lime green offset by a stark, bright white.

Since I didn't love any of the colors on the curtain enough to cover my walls in them, I chose a color that would compliment them without being too matchy-matchy. (Which is a big problem for me at times, since I love matching everything!)

We chose Behr's Venus Teal for the walls, which is bright without being overwhelming. I honestly think the only reason we got away with painting a small space such a loud color is that we visually broke up the room by painting the trim and door a bright white that matched the shower curtain.

Now that the walls were painted, the old, rusty medicine cabinet was removed, those God awful mirror panels were popped off of the wall and the new hardware was installed, we replaced the funky light fixture with mix and match vanity lighting and pendant shades from Lowes. This was a great deal because both items were on sale when we bought them, so we got our 'custom lighting' for next to nothing - and believe me, something as small as changing out a light fixture can make a huge difference in the look of a room!

After picking out new white towels and a bath mat from Target (on clearance, of course), we headed over to Cost Plus World Market (again!) and found our accessories. They were deep blue and lime green and perfect - and they were on clearance! Swoop!

Now that the fun part was done (shopping), I had my work cut out for me with the cabinets. Oh, the ugly, worn deep cherry wood cabinetry that's in both bathrooms and in the kitchen - I can't tell you how much I hated them. I mean, the style of them is fine, but the color and the grime... Forget about it. So what's a girl to do? Paint 'em!

Luckily, we had a lot of our Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation kit left over from our kitchen restoration project, so I used the same color on the cabinets and they instantly looked amazing! The dark brown, almost black color made the space look so much more modern and clean, I couldn't have been happier.

We decided to forego replacing the fiberglass shower/tub because, hey, it works and we could cover it up with a shower curtain. We also kept the original countertop because although I would have preferred a bright white counter, we weren't about to pay out the you-know-what for something that was the least offensive part of the entire bathroom.

So there you have it - Our cheap, but cute, bathroom makeover!


Quart of Paint - $15
Vanity Light Fixture - $20
Pendant Shades - $22
Shower Curtain - $30
Bathroom Accessories - $11
Towels - $6
Bathmat - $6
Hardware - $40
Cabinet Paint - $10
Total Cost - $160 

That's literally one hundred times cheaper than the average bathroom remodel! Okay, so we don't take showers surrounded by glass tiles imported from Italy while being doused with water pouring from a rainfall shower head, nor do we have much storage space or the ability to fit more than one person in the bathroom at a time, but we are $15,840 better off. Yeah, I'll take the teal bathroom and the savings. How about you?