How to Remodel a Bathroom for under $800

I posted last week about finding a wonderful deal on a new toilet and replacing it in our "main" bathroom. In this picture you can see a bit of the old vanity.

Since we had a long weekend with no plans, we decided to go ahead and do the rest of the bathroom--with the exception of the floor and bathtub.

Here's some before pictures:


(we'd already pulled out the drawers before I thought to take "before" pictures)
Featuring that same ugly peachy-pink color that the toilet (and bathtub) share, and a really ugly formica vanity top, plus a HUGE mirror (that isn't a medicine cabinet and that is all scratched)


So we pulled out the vanity and top and spackled the holes (you can see the asbestos floor tile that covered the whole bathroom before we laid linoleum over most of it about four years ago):

and then we touched up the paint:

We left the oak light fixture there, but G. had to move it over a few inches.

We installed the new vanity (by the way, those walls do not meet at a 90 degree angle...), put on the new vanity top (all in one piece so no gunk to get stuck around the sink!), attached the new plumbing (I believe G. made half a dozen trips back to Home Depot for plumbing parts!), hung the new mirrored medicine cabinet, touched up paint again, and hung a new shower curtain that I picked up on a whim at Lowe's. (Our shower doors NEVER seem to stay clean and since there's a window in the shower, the light shines through and the soap scum/water stains look awful! this shower curtain is sheer enough to let light through, but dark and patterned enough to hide the water stains!)

Toilet: $209
Vanity: $209
Mirrored Medicine Cabinet: $68
Vanity Top: $158
Sidesplash (not yet installed): $21
New single-handle faucet $44
New shower curtain $20
Misc. plumbing and installation supplies: under $50

We were amazed at how the ugly pink-peach bathtub actually MATCHES/goes with the new swirly sink and the new shower curtain ties together the green walls, peach of bathtub, and red of existing rug and bathtowels and other accents!




These next two show where the sidesplash still has to be attached (but the one we picked up is so much lighter than the vanity top that we want to try to find a better match):Here's the one existing wall that we didn't do anything to:


All we really have to do is find/make something decorative to hang over the toilet (to hide the uneven plaster walls). Someday we'll tile the floor, but that's not even a big rush now, and the bathtub--which we thought we'd have re-covered someday--is no longer a huge priority either! As soon as the upstairs is finished and we can avoid using this bathtub a few days, I'll scrape out all the caulk and bleach the grout, then re-caulk and seal the grout, and it should be good to go!

And, as a bonus, we moved the old vanity (and faucet) down to the basement bathroom, which has always had a simple sink top "mounted" on boards screwed into studs but not finished in any way. It makes THAT bathroom look like a real bathroom! At some point we'll make a piece of trim to take up the gap between the vanity and top, plus hide the mounting boards. Since this vanity is more narrow than the sink top, there's some space on either side of the vanity--perfect for a garbage can, toilet brush, etc.