Guest Bathroom Renovation Budget Breakdown

Before we dive headfirst into today’s post about our bathroom renovation budget, I have some gushing to do.  You guys!  You guys are all so so soooooo sweet with our guest bathroom reveal last week.  I’ve been pouring over the comments and starting to thank you all individually and I’m on cloud nine with all the love!  Seriously…thank you!

A bold Anthropologie shower curtain is the star of this farmhouse bathroom renovation. A vintage mirror hangs above a sink sitting on a dark painted vanity base. Vintage first aid kits hang above the toilet.

And now for the greenbacks.  As we mentioned last week in the reveal, there’s a huge high low mix in this bathroom renovation budget.  We chose some places to splurge and balanced that with low budget items.  The mix (and flexing our DIY chops), really is what made this bathroom doable for us since we truly didn’t have much money to spend on the renovation.  While things like an updated bathroom are nice, we have some big ticket items on the horizon that we’re planning for.  Things like repairing (or replacing) a leaking slate roof (not cheap), replacing a 40+ year old furnace (also not cheap), and building a barn/garage (definitely not cheap).  Thus, we aimed to clock in around the $1500 mark for this project.  In the end, our all in budget on both renovation materials and decor, was $1,633.

Where we chose to splurge in our bathroom renovation budget:

Where to splurge in a bathroom renovation budget

Marble Subway Tile – $325

While this may not seem like a major splurge, it was to us considering the much cheaper alternative of using plain white subway tiles at about a third of the cost.  While white subway tile would have been okay, the marble made the space special.

Planking For The Walls & Ceiling – $300

Another not so major splurge but we could have spared this expense altogether if we just repaired and painted the existing sheetrock.  But again, the bathroom wouldn’t have been as special.  Our bathroom renovation budget may have been low, but we didn’t want it to look cheap.  So once we discovered the old beams of our circa 1781 country home, we had to expose them and complement them with some glossy white planks.

Anthropologie Shower Curtain – $70

Again, not a huge expense but we could have saved a ton in the bathroom renovation budget with a $15-$20 shower curtain from Target.  But can you blame us?  That shower curtain!!  It truly makes the space with all its loud and proud power.  Sadly, Anthro doesn’t sell it anymore.  I bought it back in November when they were having their big, Black Friday, everything 20% off sale.  I had been drooooooling over it for a year plus and finally pulled the trigger.  It was definitely worth the extra $50-ish spent.

Where we chose to save in our bathroom renovation budget:

Where to save in a bathroom renovation budget

We couldn’t have possibly afforded the things we chose to splurge on without balancing them out with budget friendly items.  If everything in this bathroom renovation budget was a splurge, we would have spent four or five times the amount of money we did spend.  Actually, I did a “dream bathroom” design at first.  I picked all my favorite things that I’ve been drooling over for ages, right down to swanky light fixtures from Rejuvenation and a Pottery Barn vanity that I LOVED.  Yup.  You guessed it.  It was an $8,000 remodel.  So I slowly started swapping budget items for the pricier, and loved the bathroom even more because those budget items and DIYs gave the space so much charm and character.

During this bathroom renovation, a sink base was chalk painted in Annie Sloan's graphite, finished with a dark wax, and accented with round white and gold knobs from Hobby Lobby.

Bathroom Sink & Vanity – $48

Seriously.  The project could have been even cheaper, at just $12, because I was using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint leftover from another project and just barely cracked into the new $36 can.  This vanity came in so cheap for two big reasons.  One, we know a guy who knows a guy who hoards old building materials.  And the guy who knows a guy also knew that we were in the market for a few things, mainly old window sash to build a greenhouse, but we also stumbled upon the old sink.  It’s a bit rough, but alas it was free, and oh so charming.  And two, we built a simple vanity base ourselves out of the old pine shelves that we ripped out of our dining room.  The rest of the twelve dollar spend was for the hinges and the pulls.  The vanity could have been a huge expense so these two things saved our bathroom renovation budget.

A vintage mirror found at a flea market refinished using Rub 'N Buff in Spanish Copper.

Bathroom Mirror – $7

Last summer I pretty much stalked the Waterbury, Vermont flea market.  I went at least every other weekend for the entire summer and rarely left empty handed.  I knew we had a big house to fill, a ton of renovations coming down the pipe and would eventually need things…you know…like mirrors.  So I became a hoarder.  Oh, who am I kidding.  I’ve always had hoarder tendencies.  Once a hoarder always a hoarder.  But one day I came across an old mirror with a frame that was chipping and falling apart.  It was a dollar.  After spending $6 for tube of Rub ‘N Buff, she’s looking (almost) good as new.

Toilet – $33

If you showed me before and after pics of our bathroom renovation, I would declare the toilet new.  Nope, we cleaned up our old one and reused it.  I thought for sure we were going to need a new toilet.  You see, our old one didn’t flush so well, has hard water stains despite obsessive scrubbing, and sported a wooden toilet seat.  Gross.  But it’s amazing what relocating said toilet to the yard (yup…we were those neighbors for a few weeks…toilet in the yard) and scrubbing the snot out of it with everything you own in your cleaning closet, would do.  As for the flushing issue, it just needed a new handle/lever combo.  And toilet seats are replaceable.  Good as new without the new price in our bathroom renovation budget.

White planked walls in this old farmhouse bathroom renovation with vintage accessories including a flea market mirror, salvage cast iron sink, and old metal first aid kits.

Shelf for Over the Sink – $0

This was literally an eleventh hour project.  Well, more like an 8:00 pm project.  We were hanging the towels and adding a couple of plants and I just felt like we needed more surface space for guests to leave their toiletries.  There really is no flat space to leave things.  Immediately I thought of those glass shelves that many bathrooms have under their mirrors but above their sinks.  So I dashed off to Home Depot where they had one option, in a finish I didn’t like, and it was $60.  So I called Colby about my dilemma and he offered to build a shelf out of scrap wood.  By the time I walked through the door after a 30-minute drive home, it was built.  For the record, Colby would like me to tell you all that it took him just 12-minutes to build the shelf.  #rockstar

How budgeting affected our bathroom plan

And now for all the dirty details, all of our renovation and decorating expenses for this bathroom renovation budget makeover.  It broke down to $1404 for renovation costs and $229 for decor costs and important bathroom things like towels and the shower curtain.

Budget Bathroom Renovation Costs:

  • Framing lumber – $28
  • V-match pine planking for walls and ceiling – $300
  • Paint (Benjamin Moore White Dove in semi-gloss) – $0 (leftover from other projects)
  • Durock cement board – $40
  • 4.5′ porcelain on steel tub (from Home Depot here) – $199
  • Tub drain kit – $27
  • Various plumbing supplies that we didn’t already have (piping and connectors) – $100
  • Various electrical items that we didn’t already have (switches, outlets, boxes, covers) – $30
  • Shower hardware (a Home Depot clearance find) – $87
  • Marble subway tile (from Home Depot here) – $325
  • 5 gallon bucket of tile adhesive – $39
  • Tiling tools (spacers, trowel, float, tile saw blade, etc.) – $53
  • Grout (we used two boxes of unsanded grout from Home Depot in oyster gray) – $26
  • Industrial light fixture (from Home Depot here) – $30
  • Grout sealer – $25
  • Tub caulking – $8
  • Shower curtain rod – $6
  • Sink (salvaged find) – $0
  • Vanity base (built from old shelving we removed from the dining room) – $0
  • Annie Sloan Chalkpaint in Graphite for vanity – $36
  • Dark wax to finish vanity (already had) – $0
  • Brass hinges for vanity doors – $6
  • Brass & stone knobs for vanity knobs from Hobby Lobby – $6
  • Toilet handle – $13
  • Toilet seat – $20
  • Renovation Costs: $1404

Budget Bathroom Decor Costs:

  • Shower curtain from Anthropologie – $70
  • Shower curtain hooks from Amazon – $5
  • Towel hooks from an antique store – $9
  • Two Turkish bath towels from Amazon – $40
  • Picture frame from Target – $19
  • Print from free prints printed at Staples – $2
  • Mirror found at a flea market – $1
  • Rub ‘N Buff in Spanish Copper to refinish the mirror – $6
  • Shelf above the sink built out of scrap wood – $0
  • Small tray on the back of the toilet built out of scrap wood – $0
  • Anthropologie jars (bought with a coupon) – $50
  • Soap pump gift – $0
  • Julep cup wedding gift from Pottery Barn – $0
  • Pair of vintage first aid kits from an antique shop – $20
  • Hand towel (Nate Berkus for Target) – $7
  • Plants, vases, and wood sand piper already had – $0
  • Decor Costs: $229

Grand total: $1633

Old farmhouse bathroom renovation with salvaged wide pine floors. Marble subway tile surround is accented with a bright Anthropologie shower curtain. A dark painted vanity base supports a vintage cast iron sink. Turkish bath towels, vintage mirror, buffalo art, and vintage first aid kits accessorize the space.

I’m sure there’s something I missed, so if you do have any questions either email me or leave a comment.  I’m slowly catching up on those!  Now…what shall our next project be?!?!

5 Comments

  1. I don’t want to like this, but love it!! Kudos to your#rockstar hubby and his shelving skills. Seriously this bathroom on a budget reno is positively breathtaking.

  2. I love finding out how much beautiful rooms cost. You guys did such a great job, and I can’t believe you got that mirror for $7!!

  3. I recently stumbled upon your blog and have loved reading about your bathroom remodel progress. It turned out beautifully! My husband and I bought a fixer-upper about a year and a half ago in NH and it feels like we’ll never be done. Sometimes it’s so hard to keep the momentum going.

    You mentioned scrubbing your toilet in the front yard to get all the stains out and I wanted to tell you about a product I found on Amazon (This isn’t a spam comment, I promise!) that worked great at getting rid of that impossible-to-remove ring that seems to appear in every toilet. It’s called Pumie. Here’s the link:
    https://www.amazon.com/Pumie-Toilet-Bowl-Remover-TBR-6/dp/B000BPRDCW/ref=pd_nav_hcs_bia_t_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=YRMBT6VECYYSJSCJNRRE
    I hope it helps! Thanks for taking the time to share your remodel progress!

    1. Ack…that’s such a great tip! I totally just ordered some as we’re starting to work on another bathroom! Thanks so much!!

  4. Looks awesome. Now I need some of those towels. You said amazon but I can’t find them on Amazon. Help.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *