A DIY Bathroom Makeover For Under $250 – A Guest Post

Apr 30 | Money Saving Tips

The following is a guest post by Jessi Snow.  Enjoy!

While it may not be the biggest room in the home, the bathroom is certainly one of the most important, especially when you live in a little house like ours. It’s nice to have a space that’s welcoming and organized because sharing is the only option – whatever we see, our guests see too.

Over the past few years we have gradually transformed our boring bathroom into a room I’m happy to let others use. It’s filled with earth tones and beautiful blues, and best of all, the whole project cost us less than $250 bucks! Here is how we did it.

New counter top – One of the biggest changes we made to this bathroom was the counter top. The original one was plain white and totally lacking character. For $80 from our local home improvement store, we were able to pick-up a piece of laminate counter top in a warm brown shade.  We cut the hole for the sink ourselves and the whole installation process took less than two hours. You can find a great step-by-step on how to do this over at the DIYNetwork.

Shelving unit – Next up was the tiny little cupboard and shelving unit above the toilet. It served its purpose, but we knew we could achieve the same thing with something a whole lot more attractive. We found this dark wood piece for a little less than $100 and it was exactly what we were looking for. It has three shelves inside, three hooks below and looked great against the counter top.

Paint – We added a couple coats of paint to spice up the white walls, and went with a neutral green shade that we could match with a lot. The can of paint put us back about $30 but we had a lot leftover, so we could have purchased a smaller can and saved a few dollars.

Mirror – The small mirror above the sink was simply not big enough to be shared by two people. We’re often both in the bathroom at the same time, getting ready for work, brushing our teeth, etc., so something that size just wouldn’t do. Lucky for us, a friend of ours was getting rid of a large piece of mirror he had leftover from his basement bar. This new piece covered the whole area about the vanity and totally changed the look of the room – and it was free!

Accessories – It took me a long time to figure out exactly which direction I wanted to go in when it came to accessories. My decorating style tends to be heavy on the blues and turquoises and in the end, the bathroom was no different. I loved the turquoise against the green walls and dark counter – browns and blues are made for one another. The shower curtain is actually a soft material with a hint of shine, it looks much different in person. I also added a neutral bathmat, a picture I had hanging around, a basket and a candle, bringing the total cost of accessories to around $40.

All in all, our mini-bathroom makeover cost us around $250, but we made sure that money went as far as possible. By taking the project into our own hands and reusing items we already had, we were able to do a lot with a very limited budget. To put it into perspective, had we brought in a professional to install the new vanity, paint the walls and hang the shelving unit, we probably would have paid out an additional $200. That’s almost enough to makeover a whole other bathroom (if we had one haha)!

My bathroom is small banana’s compared to Taya’s beautiful new baby room she DIY’d, but I hope it helps to show that you don’t need a ton of money to make a big difference around the home. A little time and some creativity will go further than you think!

Thanks to Taya for opening up her blog to me today.

Jessi is a fellow Canadian living on the East Coast. Her interest in DIY and home improvement started when she began working as a Community Coordinator for PartSelect, and she now writes to help encourage others to take household projects into their own hands.