I recently took on a new project: our guest bathroom. This was more than a project though, it was a challenge. It ended up being a kind of case study on what impact you can have with very little time and money (since I have little of both these days).
I challenged myself to give my guest bathroom a new look with only $300 and 5 days of work. I’m happy to say the challenge is complete and I like this bathroom so much more than I used to!
Take a look at what the bathroom originally looked like…
And here is what it looks like after 5 days and $300 invested…
I hope everyone had a great holiday! We had a busy but nice time that included a family road trip to Florida. Nothing like the four of us crammed in an SUV for what ended up being a 13-hour drive! Fun!!
I had a new makeover I was going to work on in December, but then a friend of mine who owns an Etsy shop asked me to help her out with some seasonal work so I ended up pushing this project back until the holidays were over. Now that my schedule has settled down, I’ve jumped right into this project—a project I actually started planning about a year.
It was about a year ago that I was cleaning our downstairs guest bathroom in preparation for some guests who were arriving later that day and not surprisingly, my mind began to wander to all the things I could do to change the look of the bathroom…. new colors, new molding, a new mirror, new tile, and so on. I hadn’t done much to this bathroom since we moved in 12 years ago. Before I knew it, I had prepared a complete design overhaul plan in my head! And then I stopped myself because my time and budget have been so limited these days that I wasn’t sure I could pull off yet another total room makeover. But then I decided instead of surrendering to my limitations, I could take them as a challenge! I asked myself, Could I give this room a new look on a small budget with limited time invested?
Hmmmm… Challenge accepted!!!
So I gave myself some parameters:
one bathroom
three hundred dollars
five days
I would need to complete all the work in five days and all with a max budget of $300!
I can do that (…I think)!! To make this happen I would need to focus on good preparation which all begins with a good design plan. With a limited budget I would not be able to turn this into my dream bathroom, but I was determined to change the overall look and feel of the room while addressing the problems.
Let’s start by taking a look at how the bathroom used to look:
Pretty blah, huh? So here are my goals for this makeover:
update the outdated look
try to conceal the unattractive bathtub since I can’t afford to replace it
add some interest and character to a very boring room
Back in May I started a new makeover for my foyer and upstairs hallway and I am happy to say that I’m finally finished!! I’ve been sharing the changes I’ve made as I’ve gone along so please check out my previous updates on this makeover:
With my third and final phase of this project, I mostly focused on updating the banister on the stairway in the foyer. Take a look at how it looked at the beginning of this phase:
As you can see it is quite dated and blah looking. My goal was to improve the look of all of this railing without going over budget. As I brainstormed ideas, I immediately gravitated to this:
Ever since Joanna Gaines revealed the makeover of her bed and breakfast I’ve been in love with this black iron railing!! I love the clean modern look, and I knew it would look great in my house.
However, it didn’t take me long to realize this was simply not a possibility for me because of the steep price. Turns out I have about 44 linear ft of railing in total and to hire a professional to make and install that much railing was going to be incredibly expensive! I realized that with my limited budget, my best option would be to focus on altering what was already there instead of completely replacing it.
I decided to stain the railing black, paint the newel posts white, and replace the balusters with a more minimal tapered style baluster. Here’s the final look:
I like that there is less of the oak wood in the foyer now, but the color of the floors still really bothers me! Eventually when we have the money, we’ll have the floors sanded and stained a different color and I think that will be a huge improvement.
With the banister finished, I only had a couple other quick changes to make.
I replaced all of the polished brass door hardware with matte black hardware. This has been on my to-do list for a while and I finally got around to changing all of the doors in the whole house.
I also changed out the two dated builder grade chandeliers in the foyer with more interesting modern ones.
Then it was time to bring in all of the accessories and I was finally done with this makeover!!!
The work on my foyer/entry continues! If you missed my phase one reveal then go check it out first. Today I’m going to share phase two of this makeover…
I started off this phase by fixing an area of our foyer that wasn’t quite right. When we moved into our home I noticed that there is an area of molding underneath the main staircase that looks unfinished. Take a look:
I believe it was built this way, and it looks like the builder maybe ran out of materials and just threw on what he had left instead of buying what was needed to finish this correctly. Who knows?! But it was time for me to finally make this area look the way it was supposed to look to begin with.
I added two pieces of wood below the stringer and then continued the base cap molding all around the edges. I also installed new taller baseboards in this area. So now the whole area looks like this…
(this is after we painted the walls and before we painted the trim)
Looking better… it just needs to be painted which I’ll do later.
With that area fixed, I then continued with the baseboards. I installed new taller baseboards through the entire entry area and the upstairs hallway. Fortunately, the baseboards on both staircases were already 5 1/4” tall.
Next, it was time to get painting! My husband helped me prime and paint all the walls in the entry, upstairs hall and back staircase.
This is what it looked like before:
And after the paint:
I went with a basic white and I was surprised by how much brighter the rooms instantly felt after changing the paint color.
Painting all of the trim was the next step, but first I needed to do another project…
I wanted to do something with these decorative pieces on the end of each step on our main staircase in the foyer. These are officially called stair brackets. I am personally NOT a fan of these. I guess they are an added decorative feature, but in the area I live in these are nothing special. They are a standard builder grade element in the typical suburban house. I personally feel like this particular bracket design is very colonial looking and our home is not a pure colonial style. They just don’t fit! I’d prefer a very clean minimal look to these stairs.
