Updating a dated bathroom


(Everything you see, we bought with our own money – nothing was sponsored or gifted). This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.


There was no doubt the bathrooms in this house had not been touched since the house was built in 1988, but thats okay. That’s not even that old, says the woman born in 1989. And just cause it needed to feel slightly more up to date, didn’t mean we had to pour a bunch of money into gutting it and starting new. If you haven’t caught on just yet, this lady enjoys refreshing rooms for the least amount of money and the most amount of impact.

On that note, lets see what we were working with at the beginning.

Disclaimer: Again, this room is lighted by florecents and has no natural lighting. Someday we will get rid of these dang built in florescent lights.

If I had learned anything from the last few room refreshes, Paint was the first thing to fix this room. BEIGE, again. And then.. that hardware. Things that couldn’t be fixed.. the almond tub, tile, and sinks. So on my quest to make these yellow, dingy dark rooms bright and fresh, I had to keep in mind that white would only draw attention to the almond color. Which in all honesty, I did not mind.

I decided that I wanted to keep the vanity wood, but not lookin’ like this. So what set this whole refresh into motion was my curiosity of what sanding down this vanity would look like. One drawer down, and I was all in! Look how good!!

To finish off the vanity, I was left with some odd spots to sand, so I decided to paint the kick board and underside of the counter, black, to match the hardware.

My original plan was to paint, refinish vanity, new hardware, and new mirrors and we would be in a good spot. But pulling back and seeing this space with fresh eyes this floor was horrific and needed to GO AWAY. Enter the most amazing peel and stick GROUTABLE (!) tile you’ve ever seen. Which meant I could prep this old, nasty flooring and stick the new ones right to it.

At first I was in such a hurry to make the old flooring disappear I had planned on laying it in a standard pattern. But then I slowed down (and Instagram polled, obviously) and decided getting more impact with this flooring, meant patiently figuring out how to lay this in a fun pattern.

It was all fun and games until we hit the toilet and figuring out 45 degree angles and toilet base curves. How i finally figured out how to cut the right shape was all in a sheet of printer paper. I would lay it down where I would place the tile, grout lines accounted for, and then crease the paper along the curve of the toilet base. That would be my stencil!

After grouting, we had brand new, gorgeous and easy to install flooring. New baseboards, new mirrors on a newly installed shelf to match the vanity, and some additional lighting over the mirrors, we had a finished bathroom. Or did we? Something was not looking right.

It was looking flat. So I decided that I needed to paint the wall behind the mirrors dark, to add some dimension to the room, it was reading way too vanilla. Paint and accessorize and we were done! 1988, meet 2019!

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  1. Pingback: kids bathroom remodel - a space fit for kids and guests!

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