Before + After: Guest bathroom remodel

This was my first real bathroom remodel, and I’m extremely happy with the outcome. In my last house I did minor upgrades to my guest bathroom in an effort to make the most of the space, but ultimately I didn’t want to spend the money to fully redo it. You can view that project here, but essentially I didn’t want to get into re-tiling and all of that so I limited the changes to hardware, mirror, etc. In this house, however, I view things a little differently. This house is hopefully going to be our 5-10 year home, so I’m okay with spending some money to make it a place I love. Plus, we bought this house with the notion of remodeling certain spaces, aka we budgeted for it. Luckily, this bathroom didn’t require any structural changes, which makes a huge difference financially.

For this bathroom I once again did NOT use a contractor. I’m starting to feel like a little general contractor myself these days, as I have acquired a roster of sub-contractors I really like. I will give you a full breakdown below of the different people I hired for each part of this project, as well as the costs. The pros of not working with a contractor is you save money & you know where every dollar is going. The cons: you have to find all your own sub-contractors, schedule each one, organize the order of each job, make sure each person shows up / does the work correctly, and of course negotiate with each person ($$). At this point I feel pretty confident in my abilities but when I first started it was kind of overwhelming. However, if you’re organized, on top of your shit, and AVAILABLE you should be able to do it.

Okay, onto the bathroom. As you will see in the before pictures, it was a mess of different styles. There was a rustic / DIY “vanity” with exposed pipes and no real [concealed] storage. The stone in the tub was masculine, dark, and I later found out, terrible for showers. It absorbs water, which as you can imagine is not ideal in a bathroom (or any space for that matter). The floors were a warm-toned stone, which I didn’t hate, but it matched nothing and didn’t fit in with my vision for the new bathroom aesthetic. Since this bathroom is our guest bathroom AND babygirl’s bathroom I wanted it to be simple, neutral, functional, and clean. I did endless Pinterest perusing before deciding on the final look. I went back and forth on brass hardware, printed tiles, etc. before deciding that I would keep it more “neutral,” aka black, white, wood, and chrome.

While I could have had more “fun” in this bathroom with the printed tiles and brass, I didn’t want to do something trendy that I would be over in a year or so and have to tear up again. You guys probably don’t even know this because I never show it, but we also have a powder room off the laundry room, which is where I intend to do a printed tile and any other little details that were just too much for this bathroom. Stay tuned for that project. Below are images of the before & after, as well as the breakdown of everything involved in this remodel.

GUEST BATHROOM REMODEL:

1) Demolition. It took 1.5 days to prep my house and demo the bathroom. This part is the messiest and often requires you to rent a trash bin to dump everything. I really wanted Paul to attempt the demo to save some money but I learned that it’s not just about swinging a hammer and destroying everything. There is an actual technique to the way tile is demo’d to ensure you aren’t wrecking any plumbing, drywall, etc. All in all with the materials, dumpster, and paying the workers the demolition cost about $1000.

2) Tile. I went with a simple subway tile and white grout for the shower. Subway tile is super inexpensive, usually in stock, and just looks really clean. For the floors I did a matte white hexagon tile with light grey grout. It’s not a print, but the shape of the tile with the darker grout gives it a little something. My tile guys took 2 full days to prep the concrete and lay the tile. They also built out the little shampoo niche, which didn’t exist before. The total cost of the tiles and labor came to $2600.

3) Drywall. After the tile was done my drywall guys came in to fix / perfect the walls. There was some damage behind the old mirror and of course the edges weren’t all straight along the bathtub so they straightened all of that out. It took them 1 day to do the work and 2 days to dry. The cost of this came to $700.

4) Paint. I have a fabulous handyman that can do it all so I had him paint the bathroom after the drywall dried. The space isn’t that large and I had leftover paint from when I originally painted when we moved in so I spent around $100 on this.

5) Vanity. I moved the vanity from my master bathroom into this bathroom. I’m not in love with it, but I wanted to save some money and also it’s a pretty functional vanity. I ended up removing the existing countertop from the vanity, staining it a darker walnut (it was originally just raw / unfinished), and also trimming it down about 2″ on the sides to make it fit into the guest bathroom. If you needed a vanity from scratch it would obviously cost a lot more so this part is a little unrealistic if you’re looking to remodel, but I was lucky to have this resource available to me. The total cost of these changes to the vanity cost $500.

6) Fabricators. I used Rose Gold Builders for the countertops in this bathroom. I wanted a pure white quartz countertop so it would be durable and clean. At this point I’ve used them for the countertops in my old house (see the marble here), the countertops in my current TV room & laundry room, as well as the hearth on my fireplace. They are easy to work with and know my style. I didn’t even have to leave my house to look at slabs, I trusted them to bring what I wanted. They installed the countertop and sinks and it took about 3 hours total. The cost came to $1200.

7) Plumbing. Well, my dad owns a plumbing company (Vardi Plumbing) so I get hooked up on that, BUT I will break down how much I spent on the plumbing fixtures. The sink faucets, toilet, bathtub, and bathtub fixtures (shower head, handheld, drain, controls, etc.) all got installed last and the cost of these materials came to $3000.

8) Decor. After all work was done I had my handyman come back and hang the mirrors and hooks. If you or your significant other is handy you can definitely do this part yourself but Paul is known to hang things a little crooked so….we let the handyman do that stuff 😉 Between the mirrors and hooks and time to hang, I spent $300.

Bringing the grand total of this bathroom remodel to: $9400. In my head before getting into it I had honestly thought it would cost more like $6k-ish but that’s the thing with construction. Things cost more than you think, you can’t plan for the unexpected, and often it takes longer than you think / your told. The quality of work is also important to me and I can honestly say that I’m really happy with the way everything turned out. The guys all worked really hard and are so nice to work with that I feel it is all justified. I hope this post was helpful for anyone interested in tackling a bathroom remodel.

Next up: my master bathroom remodel. Wish me luck!