One of the most important rooms in the house is the bathroom! Everyone uses it, every day.
Over the years, this bathroom was shown some love and had a shower installed and the walls had the bathroom wall panels. The ceiling was pieced together with drywall but didn't have any texture. The floors had linoleum and the vanity was missing a piece. Behind the wood is the water heater.
Wish I had taken better pictures as better angles. The white definitely makes the room feel bigger!
This house is located in the White Mountains in Arizona and we use it as a rustic cabin. We want to modernize it but we also wanted to do this in a way that is unique...and thrifty! We completed a bathroom remodel and completed this room (except the shower) for under $500!
Before and After
Here is our price list:
I wanted to share how we made this happen because with some patience, anyone can do this!
The four major items needed were the wood for the walls, the metal for the wall and ceiling, vanity, and then tile for the floor.
Pallets: We asked the local building supply store in Springerville if they had any scrap pallets and they were generous enough to provide most of what we needed to complete this project!
Metal Panels: My husband searched Craigslist and found someone who was trying to remove a structure that had a metal roof to cover horses and he paid about $200 for 50 panels but we only used like 9 of them for this project and they were already had a nice patina!
Tile: Someone had donated a few boxes of tile to the local St.Vincent De Paul in Springerville and we scooped that up for $60! That is a little over $1.22 per square foot which isn't too bad!
Vanity: Another Craigslist find! We found a cabinet distributor who was moving their displays/warehouse location and needed to take down their old displays and instead of moving them, decided to sell them at a seriously discounted price. Search for things like: vanity moving warehouse or kitchen cabinet warehouse or even just moving warehouse and you get some interesting results. We purchased a full kitchen display and bathroom vanity, including counter tops and sinks for a total of $700! Check out these babies:
Keep an eye out for the kitchen remodel in a future post. I will be the happiest person on the planet if we can get that done this year!
Here are the steps we took:
Step 1: After collecting everything needed, we cleared out the bathroom. The toilet was removed, the vanity was removed, and any borders or trim was removed. We left the linoleum and the plastic walls. You can add the new material right over that existing material.
Step 2: Prepare the pallets. We wanted to do this as fast as possible so we just cut down the edges on the inside of the nails and then used a sawzall to cut between the slats and the middle to just cut the nails. I did not mind the nail heads showing on the wall and this saved us hours! After I got the wood removed from pallets, I put them into piles by size. This helped when working on installing the wall so that we already had the right sizes and could move pretty quickly.
Step 3: Install the pallets. Use a brad nail gun to affix the pieces to the wall. Some of the wood already had blue and other colors so we tried to make sure they were spread around but other than that, no pattern was used. But you could...and that would look neat!
- Make sure you use a poly or sealer over the pallet wood so that the steam from the shower does not ruin the wood over time. This also smooths out the rough pine!
Step 4: Install the vanity. We wanted this placed so we could tile around it because it was already pretty tall but you had time, and tile, you would tile then put this on top.
Step 5: Install the metal. My husband made sure that the edges overlapped which gave it a really nice look. His grampy did a fantastic job with the materials he had available but the walls are not square and the floors are not level which added a new challenge but Jeremy made it work and so he had to measure and cut every piece but hopefully, normal houses wouldn't have this problem! We just used screws to hold the metal up! We didn't use any trim because we like how it looks against the other materials:
The metal was installed along the one wall but the ceiling as well and then over the water heater so we can easily get to it if we needed to! The tones in the patina, the floor, and the pallets all went nicely together!
Step 6: Install the tile. We had installed one side just so we could measure out the wall and then once the metal was totally done, we completed the rest of the tile. There are several mini steps for this one that require lots of measuring and cutting:
- Install the cement backer board by screwing this to the existing floor (measuring and cutting around walls, shower, toilet, and vanity (fun, not).
- We laid the tile out and then cut the pieces that go around all of those same things. This took forever (well to me, since I am super impatient but to Jeremy it felt like just a couple of hours) and then we piled the tiles so we could put the mortar down and place the tile for real. Mix the thin set mortar but do not make it too watery. Use spacers to ensure that there is a nice, even, uniform grout line between each tile.
- Allow tile to set overnight...
- Then grout! This is my favorite part of tiling. It is messy but creates a wonderful finished product. I just use a float to smooth the grout over and into the grout lines, let it set for about 30 minutes, then use a bucket of water and a microfiber towel to get the extra grout off. In about 2 hours you can go over the tile again with the towel and the film will come off!
Step 7: Finishing touches. Install the faucet, place the toilet back where it was, we put our shelves back on the wall.
Step 8: We still need to do this one step but it would be to do final trim (we will use rough pine) and reattaching the door!
Check out these pictures:
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| #3 was so excited for the new bathroom!! |
Hope you keep checking in on the progress we are making in rebuilding this awesome, handmade home!
