Our bathroom renovation on a budget

For the longest time (basically, since we bought our home) we’ve wanted to tackle a bathroom renovation or two. They were old, dated and dark, and really didn’t spark joy of any kind. Well we finally tackled it and I am so thrilled with how our bathroom renovation on a budget turned out!

In an ideal world we would have ripped everything out, rearranged the set up and everything would be brand new… but this is a bathroom renovation on a budget so we had to work with what we had. We decided that we could live with the grey bath, toilet and basin (plus they actually matched which was a win) but the one thing that we desperately wanted to change were the tiles. If you remember seeing the before video in my “Bathroom Revamp” highlight, we had powder pink/powder blue, floor to ceiling tiles. Not a vibe. So that was priority number one.

Our other priorities was adding some modern touches to the dated bathroom and breathing some new life into the vanity. As much as we wanted (and actually really need to) replace the shower glass and door, it just wasn’t in the budget this time around.

Lets jump into how we tackled everything.

Brand new tiles… kind of

Chipping out all the existing tile and laying down brand new tile was out of the question for our bathroom renovation on a budget and so we opted for the next best option… painting the tiles.

I’ve seen this everywhere online and my mom actually did it once a few years ago too so I knew that it was definitely possible. Off to the paint counter at Builders I went to pick up my supplies, turns out, it’s a pretty simple process. First of all you need to make sure that your tiles are nice and clean so make sure to give them a good wipe. Next, we applied two coats of Duram PrimeX, this is to ensure that the paint would stick to the tiles. After that we applied a coat of Duram Bathroom & Kitchen paint. You need to make sure that you use a paint that can withstand moisture, if you don’t, your hard earned work will more than likely go down the literal drain.

I showed you all the tile transformation in this reel here, I still can’t believe how much of a difference it made! But we weren’t quite done with the tiles just yet… As much as I loved the white walls, it just felt a little bit clinical and lacking character to me so after quite a few of you sent me the same idea via DM and some good Pinterest-ing, I decided that we should do some stencilling in the shower.

Guys, this stencil showed me flames and I almost gave up. Luckily I gave it one more bash and it worked! I tried a few times to use a foam roller but the paint bled no matter how much excess I rolled off. In the end, what worked best was a sponge. I dipped it very lightly into the paint, scraped excess off on the side of the paint tin and then very very lightly dabbed it on, the stencil held in place with masking tape. Personally I don’t think you’ll every get a perfect stencil with paint, but with this specific pattern that I chose, I feel like the imperfections add to the whole feel I was going for.

Vanity makeover

Our initial thoughts were to replace our entire vanity but we quickly realised that it was near to impossible to find a vanity as long as we needed it to be to fit underneath the mirror. Over and above that, the wall was only plastered, not tiled behind the current vanity and so we were worried it would look a bit odd having a random patch of wall that wasn’t tiled. Our only solution was to work with what we had, basically the entire theme of our bathroom renovation on a budget.

We decided to paint the vanity the same dark grey as the stencilling on the shower wall. Again, this was done with Duram Bathroom & Kitchen paint and then adding a tint to it. It went on like an actual dream and it made such a massive difference!

Adding some modern touches

The painted tiles and refreshed vanity had already made such a massive difference to the once outdated bathroom but it still lacked that glam modern touch that we were after. After giving it some thought, we decided that one of the best ways to add some modern elements was to change all of the bathroom fittings from silver, to matte black.

The first of those were all of our tap fittings. We chose to go with the Builders Muse Short Body Bib taps for the basin, the Builders Muse Extended Body Bib taps for the bath and the Builders Muse Undertile taps for the shower. The problem was that we couldn’t find these in black… so we decided to spray paint them! Dan did such an amazing job and the two coats of Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover truly took our taps from “meh” to magnificent! We used the shade “flat black” and ended up also spray painting our new Lusso showerhead as well as the handles on our bath. As much as we wanted to spray paint the silver parts of the shower, we realised that it just wouldn’t be worth it as the shower doors are so damaged already.

To keep with the modern black theme, we put up this gorgeous Lusso Bianco glass shelf in the shower. It looks so chic and all of our (and by our, I mean mostly my) shower products fit perfectly. We also bought two of these Lusso towel racks in mahogany. I really like how these work to hold some decor items while still being functional for our towels at both the shower and basin.

For the final touches, I added some lovely trailing plants on both the towel racks, next to the bath and in the shower. It’s amazing what a huge impact this makes! To hold our toothbrushes and toothpaste, I used a little grey pot and together with the string of beads plant, put them on a silver tray onto the towel rack… next to another plant of course! I added a simple nude drawing in a black frame as well as a pothos to the towel rack next to the shower, it’s such a statement as the first thing you see as you walk in.

I cannot tell you how absolutely thrilled I am with how our bathroom turned out, truly, for a bathroom renovation on a budget it really exceeded any expectations that I had!

What’s your favourite part of this room now?