Bathroom Makeover in a Weekend

This house was built in the late 90’s and the bathrooms are in need of a little (or a lot of) refreshing. This drives me a little nuts, but renovations or major updates won’t be in the budget for a long time, so I tackled a few small projects in our upstairs hall bath as a starting point. These little inexpensive changes made an enormous difference. I completed everything over the course of a weekend by myself (with a drill as my only power tool and a husband working all weekend), so this is truly a manageable undertaking for just about anyone.

I’ll be honest, the photos of this project aren’t what I dreamed them to be. This was a very tricky room for me to photograph, but I love this project so much I still wanted to share it.

Here is a short description of what I did and why….

FRAMED EXISTING MIRROR: The huge unframed builder grade mirrors in our bathrooms really bother me, but the thought of removal, major wall patching and hauling home large framed replacement mirrors in my little car also sounded completely awful. I decided the process of framing the mirrors already up would be a lot more reasonable. Did I mention I also don’t have many power tools (like any – other than a sander and drill!) Once I found this really helpful post with detailed instructions using a miter box and saw (which I do oddly own), I knocked this out in the matter of a couple hours (plus overnight drying time.) Simple, inexpensive and made a huge difference.

NEW VANITY LIGHT FIXTURE: Well you saw the nasty, off-centre light fixture before! We could only go up from there. The existing sink and shower hardware is chrome, so to keep things simple I chose this inexpensive, but sophisticated chrome fixture from Wayfair. Changing the fixture was the single most impactful aspect of this project and it was also the easiest.

EXTENDED SHOWER CURTAIN: I have started hanging our shower curtains as close to the ceiling as possible. In my opinion, it just looks so much nicer having something that goes all the way up and gathers a little at the floor. I didn’t have any trouble finding extra long shower curtain liners (at both Amazon and Bed, Bath and Beyond), but it was virtually impossible for me to find a nice 100″ shower curtain. I needed the few extra inches so it would be long enough to avoid the high water look at the floor. I chose to extend our existing black shower curtain with some fun gray and white fabric. If you don’t sew, don’t worry…this can easily be accomplished using iron-on hemming tape. I’m still learning to sew and want to cry every time I attempt a project, so the hemming tape approach was required to avoid a meltdown. Virginia at Live Love DIY has a great no sew curtain tutorial here I followed. I also replaced the super cheapy white plastic shower curtain rod with a nicer chrome one, which was obviously money well spent.

PAINT: The prior owners painted every inch of our walls with the same light beige. It’s okay for larger areas like the hallways, but in the bathrooms it sort of conjures up a yucky hospital feel to me. I stuck with a pretty neutral warm grey (Allen + Roth – Skyline Shadow) which looks a million times better. The new wall colour makes everything look so much warmer and more updated.

I am so pleased with how this bathroom makeover in a weekend turned out! If you are looking for a quick, frustration free update with major impact, this is for you. I have three more to tackle, so I would love to see your bathroom projects too!