Finally, a semi finished bathroom!

You never realize how precious having a working full bathroom is until, well, it is not a working full bathroom. Luckily we have a half bath off our bedroom, and since we didn't have it in the budget to replace the shower/tub right now, that was able to remain working most of the time during the renovation of the bathroom. :) But now the bones of the bathroom are complete, and I can finally relax knowing I won't encounter sketchy carpeting or scary faux marble paneling when I take a shower!

To refresh your memory:

The strip next to the shower shows the glue used to hold the paneling up, on top of a crumbling layer of drywall. I got ahead of myself the weekend I tore the paneling down in the rest of my house, and as a result we had to live with this for the next year, until it was time for the bathroom to have its turn at a face lift!

I'm convinced that the person who built this house was a a little person. Not only are the ceilings low, but the counter was so low I had to bend over to wash my hands. After pricing things out, we decided to raise the cabinet ourselves, and utilize the space to put in double sinks. My father-in-law was a huge help with this, since we have limited plumbing experience.

Work in progress:

I painted the cabinets "Tree Bark" by Olympic from Lowes. Its a true chocolate brown, and I love it!Since we opted for double everything, lights, mirrors, sinks, we still wanted a storage space without having to do a medicine cabinet. Once we had stripped the walls to the studs, we left a space to build a shelf box inside the wall, to keep must have things at hand.

Here's how it looks now:

I have to give credit to the hubs for suggesting the dark moulding. It really makes the room different from the rest of the house and makes the colors pop. What good taste he has!

This picture above is probably the best indication of the color. It is a very VERY light cloudy blue. In fact, I thought there was a mistake and it was really white when I painted it. Adding the countertop and dark moulding help bring out the blue.Don't mind the half wall, it still needs moulding on the top to cap it off. Also look past the lack of shutters on the window, I'm painting the plantation like shutters white and still need to distress them so they are a little rustic looking.


Here's a close-up of the granite tile countertop we did, it is called Bainbrook Brown. We found it on clearance at Lowe's!

I am very happy with how everything turn out. It may not be everyone's style, but I like the airy, clean and simple feel it has.I was so excited to tackle this room, so I would be able to tile, and I got to do plenty of it with the floor and counter. I wanted a spa like feel, until we are able to one day build a master suite. Still need to add finishing touches like art (plan on doing some photography down at the beach soon) but it will do for now!

I would really encourage everyone to attempt renovation DIY style. It feels like such an accomplishment to see the room transform like that. The only thing better is knowing we did it all for less than $500 I think. The mold resistant drywall and a new toilet were the most expensive purchases, and the rest we put my bargain shopping to the test and came out with mirrors for $10 each, granite tiles for less than $3 a square foot, and got the light fixtures for about half of what we saw most starting prices at, ending up with them for only about $30 each.

I'm not trying to flaunt it or show how much we spent, but it drives me crazy all of these renovation or decorating blogs that talk about how cheap they can makeover a room for when they spend thousands and shop at places the average person really wouldn't be able to splurge on. Renovating or updating a house can be expensive, but you can save a ton by shopping smart and knowing what you are looking for when you hit cheaper stores, because you never know when something will pop up!

At least now I am not embarrassed to have guests use my bathroom!