My Frugal Bathroom Makeover for under $200

We have lived in our house for five years now, and every time I walked into my downstairs bathroom I wanted to puke. That is a pretty long time to hate a part of your house, but I just didn’t have the time to do it. I’ve been planning and searching Pinterest for well over a year now, trying to come up with the perfect idea to makeover our downstairs bath and laundry room for less. My budget was $200 and I went just a tad bit under!

My downstairs bathroom doubles as our laundry room. It is small and we have storage issues, so I had a few problem areas to tackle in this room.

Here is a before picture – can you say UGLY?  I took this picture after I had already pulled our washer and dryer out. I can’t believe how dirty it was behind and under them!

Here is another before picture – this time as a view of the other side of the bathroom.  This was after I started tearing it apart and getting everything out of the room.

The main issue I had was the ugly bathroom floor.  Not only was it a dirty tiled floor but there were cracks in between the tiles.  The colors were an ugly blue/white and they showed every speck of dirt. I’ve had to look at that blue and white floor every day for 5 years!

I decided to paint the floor gray.  I had to fill in the cracks with a cracker filler first, then I primed it and painted it with porch paint. Next week, I am going to do a follow up post to tell you step by step how I painted this floor.

My next issue to tackle was the wall color – the brownish paint that was on there was originally painted when we first moved into the house. We had planned to put a different earth colored floor down in there, but never got around to it.  The brown made the bathroom feel dark and dingy, and I knew I wanted to brighten it up.

I decided to paint it a soft off white and then do a fun accent. The wall that is there right when you walk in is pretty large, I always wanted to put some art work up on there, but felt the wall was empty. I found this AWESOME paint roller on Etsy, it basically paints a pattern right onto your wall.  I was looking at wall paper and stenciling prior to finding this, but this method seemed to be a better option and easier.

Man was I wrong – this was the HARDEST part of the project. I actually made Mark do it because I was terrified of messing up. You basically roll the bottom role with paint, and the bottom roller provides paint to the rubber part of the roller. You would think it would be easy, but the roller kept on slipping all over the place! The directions said to use flat paint on the roller, the only kind of paint we had was satin and we think that may have been the issue.

Looking back, I would have used a stencil because it was just too much work to fix all the issues we had with the roller.

After we painted the scrolling detail on the wall, we installed a chair rail (and by “we”, I mean Mark).

It definitely put the finishing touch on the wall.

I am not completely done putting up the accessories yet, but I have a punch of yellow that will be featured in some baskets about the washer/dryer. I also hope to get some artwork to display on the wall above the chair rail. I wanted to get some bible verse signs from Hobby Lobby, but haven’t been able to make it there yet. More pictures coming next week!

Want to see the finished product?  Here are some pictures for you. The total cost was around $180, which beats having to get a whole new bathroom.

Breakdown of cost:

• Gallon of Paint for wall – my sister in law gave this to me leftover from her house. FREE
• Gallon of Porch Paint $25.00
• Carpet from TJ Maxx $19.99
• Cabinet for over the toilet at Lowe’s for $79.00 (This is where most of our budget went to)
• Chair Rail $13.00
• Paint Roller – $40
• Total price = $176.99

Here is a before and after picture of the room…

Here is another before/after picture – looks pretty good!

We have another bathroom in the upstairs of our home that is in worse shape. The previous owners put Corian Countertops as the walls of the bathroom. Ya’ll – it is the strangest bathroom I’ve ever seen!  The walls AND ceilings are covered in Corian.  That job is going to be one that we have to hire out, and because of how difficult it is to take down, we will have to leave the house for a while.

Because I am a nervous wreck, I thought about what would happen to our house while we weren’t staying there with our insurance coverage.  I turned to Allstate to get their opinion.

When it comes to insuring a home under construction, the issue usually centers on the home not being currently occupied and the increasing value of the home as it is being built or remodeled.

They said that if the home needs to be vacant during a remodel, the existing insurance company should also be contacted. Depending on the length of the vacancy, coverage modifications or even a new, temporary policy may be needed that addresses the vacancy.  If a home is being remodeled but not vacant, most companies will continue the existing coverage and even include theft coverage of the supplies on site being used as a part of the remodel. Once again it is important to contact the existing insurance company, to make sure that your coverage is adequate for the remodeling improvements.

I had no idea that we could include theft coverage on the supplies – WOW!  So, before we start our upstairs remodel we will call Allstate and get a temporary policy put on the house to keep everything covered.

Another thing I learned from them is that you can get a construction homeowners policy. These policies usually last only during the construction period and then are converted to a regular homeowner policy when completed.  Also consider adding optional coverage for theft of building supplies on site while the home is under construction and vacant.

Stay tuned for our upstairs bathroom renovation – that one is going to cost us a lot more than $200, but with all the mold growing in between that Corian it has to get done!

This post was written as part of the Allstate Influencer Program and sponsored by Allstate. All opinions are mine. As the nation’s largest publicly held insurance company, Allstate is dedicated not only to protecting what matters most–but to guiding people to live the Good Life, every day.