One of the best returns on investment when selling a house is a bathroom remodel. We are happy to report that our latest bathroom remodel project is complete and ready for its unveiling!
We found ourselves with a 4-day weekend during the Independence Day holiday after Steph’s company decided to give employees the 5th off as well as the 4th. We talked through a bunch of options of what to do with this time. We talked about going to Dallas to visit family, but Texas in July is sweltering. We even looked into renting an Airbnb with a pool right here in Kansas City for a little mini vacation.
In the end, Steph decided it was a perfect time to renovate the kid’s bathroom. It’s a very small bathroom and, in theory, four days was plenty of time to knock this project off our list.
A little history
When we bought this house, three of the four bathrooms were carpeted. The kid’s bathroom was actually the first one that we renovated about ten years ago when our middle kid spilled a bottle of shampoo on the carpet. Have you ever tried to get shampoo out of carpeting? Yeah, neither have we. We took that as a sign and ripped the carpet out the next day.
We put in ceramic tile that we thought would last the lifetime of the house. Here we underestimated the ability of Middle Kid to completely destroy a bathroom over a ten year period. Fast forward to 2020 when Middle Kid moved out and there were cracked ceramic tiles, dings and dents in every wall, and the vanity…oh the abuse this poor vanity lived through. Luckily, Youngest Kid is much neater than Middle Kid. To be fair, the bar was set REALLY low, but we do feel confident that this renovation will last for the 2 years we are left in this house.
The planning and pricing
As we assessed the bathroom in advance of this project, the plan was to replace everything but the tub. New flooring was obvious. We liked the laminate hardwood flooring we had used in other projects. It’s attractive, easy to install, and affordable. Paint was another no-brainer. It is by far the cheapest and easiest way to transform a room.
The vanity was another story. While still solid, it was pretty gross. But when we started pricing new vanities that would fit in that 43” area, we found that size to be pretty pricey. We were looking at $1200 for a new vanity and top. Our entire budget for the renovation was $1200! That wasn’t going to work, so we needed a new plan. Since it is still structurally sound, all it really needed was a facelift and a massive cleaning. We decided to sand it down and paint it, inside and out.
The process
If you’ve ever started a renovation project, you know that on day one you are full of optimism. Then Steph got poison ivy (still itching, by the way), and we discovered that the adhesive we used under the ceramic tile was of the industrial strength variety. The tile actually came up pretty easily, once we got the right tools. But that adhesive wasn’t going anywhere.
Of course, this is also the point in the renovation when you realize that you are committed, so you better figure it out. Enter lauan plywood to save the day. We just added a layer of lauan, raised the level of the floor by 1/8th of an inch and carried on. (This is, of course, an oversimplification. Laying the lauan took almost a whole day and involved lots of grunting, groaning, and cursing. We have old knees.)
The vanity painting went much better than expected. We bought cabinet paint, which dries harder than regular latex paint, since this paint job will be getting some day-to-day traffic. New knobs helped elevate the look quite a bit. The vanity top cleaned up nicely with some elbow grease, a steam cleaner, and some new caulking.
As a bonus, painting the vanity saved us some serious money! This entire renovation came in at less than $800!
Before and After
The overall vibe is much more mature than the original bathroom. This is also the de-facto guest bathroom, so we decided to lean that way on the style choices. Also, the kid is getting too old for cutesy bathroom décor. Classic design was the vibe here and I think we nailed it.
Things we’ve learned:
- Measure twice and cut once is not how we roll
- We are both terrible at caulking. But caulk is paintable, so – salvation!
- If you want to test your marriage, work together in a tiny bathroom on a time deadline. If you can survive that without coming to blows, you can survive anything.
This house has four bathrooms, two of which have now gotten a complete facelift. We talked a few posts ago about leaving the basement bathroom for last. The only other bathroom is the master, which will happen next year. For now, we’re happy to cross “bathroom remodelers” off our list of job titles for a little while.
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