Budget Bathroom

As promised, I am going to try to post some before and after photos of the work we did on our house this summer. Remember my cotton-candy, bubblegum pink bathroom? Here, this will refresh your memory:



Well, the first thing I did was remove the ugly medicine cabinet and light fixture you see here:


And then stripped off the wallpaper.


Which revealed really disgusting stuff lurking on the walls underneath the wallpaper:



Then I scrubbed and scraped and bleached like crazy:



Then I primed the walls, and once I got it all white and clean looking, I found I rather liked it that way. Every other room in my house has colors on the walls. The crisp, clean white is refreshing. I decided to go with a black and white and chrome (or brushed nickel) color scheme. I was aiming for something that sort of looked retro and worked with the pink while reducing the overwhelming "pinkness" of it all.

Now I needed a nifty light fixture, a big mirror to go over the vanity and really cool black and white shower curtain. Fortunately, I found this awesome light on clearance at Lowe's...originally about $100, I only paid $20!


Then one of the fellas involved with the work on the house offered me a mirror, for FREE! He had just taken it down from his bathroom and all I needed to do was have it cut to fit my space! A new mirror was going to cost me $70-$80, but instead I spent less than $10 at a local glass company to have it trimmed down. Photos can not convey what a BIG difference the large mirror has made on this small bathroom.

Unfortunately, that is where my luck ran out. I could not find a fabric black and white shower curtain ANYWHERE. I found solid black and LOTS of brown in my local stores. Nothing like what I had envisioned. I also found a couple of vinyl ones, but because I wanted to hang a matching curtain on the linen closet instead of the ful sliding doors that were always falling off, I really wanted fabric, not vinyl. And yes, I could have searched for some fabric and sew one myself, but that would require finding the time to actually sew and I was realistic enough to know that was not going to happen in the near future. Oh, and may I mention here how totally ASTONISHED I was at the cost of shower curtains?!? Yikes! Finally, at K-Mart I found something that would fill the bill and I ed them up. They were not exactly what I wanted, but they were black and white, there were only two left, and the clincher on the deal, they were on sale as well as buy one, get one 50% off. So, for less than $30, I had two matching curtains for my shower and closet. After experiencing such sticker shock at shower curtains that ran $60 and up, I knew this was a good deal!

I added a small, black cotton rug on the floor and the transformation is almost done.



Here are a few more views from different angles. First, a shot from inside the room looking towards the vanity:


And here I tried to get a shot of the mirror over the vanity which shows the curtain on the linen closet opposite the mirror as well as the shower on the other side of the room. May I just mention how tricky it is to take a photo of a mirror and avoid getting flash reflections or my own reflection in the shot?



Light fixture $20
Shower curtains $30
Mirror less than $10
Primer and Paint about $50
Rug $15

Total cost for cosmetic makeover done by me: $125

This does not include the cost of the electrician putting a new overhead light fixture that includes an exhaust fan and heater. Nor does it include the $475 we spent to have the tub and sink reglazed because the finish was so worn and etched it was impossible to make them look clean. However, if you have perfectly good fixtures that do not need professional help, those expenses would not be necessary.

I thought some art or photos framed in black, or something else of interest on the walls might look nice, and I would like to change the knobs on the cabinet doors and drawers to compliment it better. But otherwise, I am satisfied. What do you think?