🌟 AMAZING DIY BATHROOM MAKEOVER ON A BUDGET

Today I am sharing one of two bathroom renovations that my husband and I have been working on. This bathroom currently serves as my master bathroom for my husband and myself. I'll be sharing some money saving tips, some unique DIY projects, and some ideas on how to pull it all together. And don't forget, if you've been waiting for the Look for Less challenge invitation, stay to the end of the video so that you can get all the details on how to join, for the Look for Less at the end of this month. So back in March, I shared what our current bathroom looked like that Nelson and I have been using. And I was a little nervous to show you all what it looked like because it was that bad. Three, two, one. The bathroom that we had been using as our master bathroom has a little bit of a weird layout. It looks like it was added after the house was built by the previous homeowners. It had a standard shower slash tub combo. The floors were a very dated vinyl with lots of stains on them. There was also some unfinished areas on the floor and the cabinet was pretty old and it was already experiencing signs of wear over time. You can't tell from afar, but up close you can see the damage on the wood. And the faucet above was already peeling and it looked pretty bad. And I shared in my last video that we really didn't do anything to this bathroom ever since moving in because we wanted to wait till we had the opportunity to fix it up before doing anything. So this is kind of what we've been living in this entire time. So I created this really pretty mood board on what I wanted to do to this space and we got to work. However, our very first project ended up being an absolute disaster. I wanted to try my hand at reglazing the countertop and sink since it was a one complete solid piece, but it ended up not coming out the way I had expected. And I shared everything in a previous video that I'll link to it, kind of letting you all know how we did it, what we encountered, and what you shouldn't do if you do attempt to do this. So I'll make sure to link to it below if you haven't seen it yet. So clearly we had to get a new countertop and while we were waiting for it to be replaced, I started work. And one of the ways we decided to make up for some of the cost of the new countertop was to use some supplies that we already had on hand. Right here, I am mixing two paints. One of them was left over from the upper portion of the fireplace makeover that we did last year. Now at the top of the fireplace, when I asked the guy to mix the paints, he mixed a gallon of it when I only needed a quart. And he only charged me for the quart though because it was his mistake. But I had a huge gallon left over and I thought, why not use this paint? And so I added a little bit of white that I had again left over from a previous project and I mixed it just to slightly lighten it up for these walls. They were the same sheen, so it was perfectly fine to do so. And I just mixed it very well to make sure both colors were incorporated. And this also helped make sure that I had enough for these walls. And then I began to paint. Now the countertops haven't been replaced at this time. I just started painting around here just so I can get a head start with everything else while we were waiting. And you might be wondering why I'm not using any painter's tape. Truth be told is that when you paint as much as I do, you get used to it and you start getting pretty good at cutting those edges. So we hardly ever use painter's tape. You can see right here the difference in the two colors. Mine was a little bit more neutral and lighter than the previous color. And here is the only area where I did use painter's tape and that's because I decided to bring the paint all the way up to the top portion of the ceiling. Like we did in our master bedroom. The way the back wall was currently painted, it really shortened that wall and I wanted to bring it a lot higher making the room feel a little bit taller. And usually my husband and I split the painting job. I like to cut the room and do all of the edges and he comes back in after me with a roller and gets all of the walls. After the walls were painted, my husband removed all of the drawers and a door from the cabinet and primed the cabinet on the wall so that it was ready for me to paint. Okay so I'm in my master bedroom right now and I wanted to show you all really quick what we're going to be installing on the floors. Now originally in my mood board I shared that I was going to be doing vinyl plank flooring that would look like a wood. That was going to be the plan the whole time. However when we went to Home Depot we were introduced to something new and it's vinyl plank. However it's supposed to look like marble tiles and this is what it'll look like once it's installed. We thought this was kind of fun because it's a fairly new product. We wanted to try it out to see what it would look like and also we just thought it would give the bathroom a little bit more of a high-end feel. Now this is actually just 50 cents more per square foot than we would have bought so we thought why not pay the additional 50 cents get a really nice look on the floors and just kind of see what this was all about. And this is kind of what the back of it looks like right here. If you look at it it's got really nice padding underneath already. You might see my light flicker so ignore that. But this is it looks like underneath. It's pretty thin just like you know that fake vinyl plank flooring and it's got the same system where it pretty much just clips in and locks in place like you see down there. You can barely even see the seam. It just has this faux marble finish and it actually looks really nice up close. I know it's kind of hard to tell in our bedroom right now because of the lighting but this is what we're going to be using and we're really excited. Nelson's going to try this for the very first time and we're just going to put it right on top of the vinyl that's already there because it's pretty solid. It looks like it was installed pretty well. We're just going to lay this right on top click it in place and have our shoe molding and back in in no time. So let's hope that this goes as smoothly as we hope. And so Nelson began to remove the shoe molding from the floor and this was the end of our easy ride because honestly this was the first time that we did this snap click vinyl system and it took us a little bit of figuring out how to install these and how to cut these properly and how to make it all work. So I don't have a step-by-step tutorial on this because honestly we were learning ourselves. Now the snapping of them was a little bit tricky because you had to make sure that you cut the vinyl or the padding behind it after you snapped it just to make sure everything cut cleanly and then installing it was also had its learning curve but we did it. It worked and it ended up looking really nice in the end. Of course we had to remove the toilet so that we can install it underneath and have it go on over smoothly but it did absolutely look gorgeous and it did lay very well on top of our already installed linoleum. Now while Nelson was finishing up the floors and installing new shoe molding I decided to go ahead and clear out all of the drawers that were in that cabinet. They had this really terrible looking contact paper that was pretty gross at this point and so I began to remove all the contact paper. I cleaned out the insides of the drawers and then I cut out some new contact paper. This contact paper was already left over from a previous project so I didn't have to go any additional out of pocket for this to get them nice and relined and looking like new again. Then after that was done it was time to prime the faces of those drawers as well as the middle door. I used the same method that I used for my kitchen makeover and how I painted those cabinets. If you've ever wondered how to paint kitchen cabinets or bathroom cabinets for them to last I do have a video that basically tells you every single detail and product that I use in order to make that happen so if you haven't checked it out I will make sure to link to it in the description box below. Once the primer is dry you want to apply your paint and of course for quick reference I still use the emerald urethane trim enamel from Sherwin-Williams. It's still the best paint for cabinetry and again in order to save money we use leftover paint from my son's bathroom makeover. Now we use this color for the board and batten and the cabinetry in his bathroom and it does look a little dark however in this application it will only go on this cabinet and you'll see at the end that it really does look different in this bathroom and honestly the best thing about using this urethane trim enamel on your cabinets is that as it cures over time it will harden and I always use a semi-gloss finish and with this finish you do not need to put a top coat so it eliminates that step entirely and I have never been so satisfied with a paint and I use this paint for all of my trim and all of my doors and baseboards and window trim as well. Now during this process I took a look at the bottom of the cabinet and decided that I wanted to cover all of those yucky stains up so I decided to cut more of my contact paper and apply it to the bottom of the cabinet and honestly whether or not your cabinetry underneath your sink is stained or not I always think that you should apply contact paper to the bottom of your cabinets in order to protect them. If there's ever a leak or any kind of spillage underneath it will prevent your cabinet from absorbing that water and swelling up or buckling and of course it will give you a nice pattern for the bottom of your cabinet making it look a little bit nicer but again if you can do this I definitely would regardless of how nice that bottom of that cabinet is. The next thing we did to save some money is I decided to reuse the hardware that was already on there. It wasn't my first choice but since again we had to spend some money on that quartz countertop and a new sink I decided to just use some gold paint that I already had on hand and give everything a couple of coats to update them. The next thing I spray painted was this light fixture. Now I had originally bought it in a silver color thinking I was going to do silver hardware for this bathroom but then I decided to do brushed brass and I'm so happy that I did. Now I know it's kind of crazy I am spray painting it black right now and even I was doubting myself at this moment but I want you to see what I end up doing to this because the effect is pretty awesome. In order to get like an antique bronze or gold looking light fixture for your bathroom or any fixture at all you want to spray paint it a matte black first and I would obviously spray paint it because it gives you the smoothest finish. Next you want to apply a gilding wax and I'm using the one from DIY Paint that I have in my shop online that you can purchase from me as well. Now what I'm doing here is applying it with an old sock, one of my kids socks actually. No socks with holes go to waste in my house because I use them for projects like this and what you're going to want to do is just apply it all over that matte black as you see me doing here and what this does is the black creates a beautiful undertone to this gold making it look super rich and antique and you can see it up close right here. Now don't worry I didn't spend too much money on this light fixture it was purchased in one of those after stock stores the kind that kind of sells Home Depot palettes like returns and stuff and people resell them for much cheaper. I think this fixture only cost me like 30 bucks if I remember correctly which is why I was brave enough to do this method on it but I'm glad that I did and as you can see the finish is just amazing and all that texture on the actual lamp itself is just coming to life on this fixture with that gold and I just love how this turned out. All right so back to painting the walls because there was so much painting. After the countertop came in and I painted the cabinet for the first time I had to go back and touch up all of the areas around the cabinetry on the walls and I went back in just making sure that all those edges were nice and crisp and what I like to do whenever I do this kind of come back in and fix edges is I like to do a nice straight line across the border and then I like to feather it out that way it blends into the rest of the paint that's already on the wall. If you kind of keep that one straight line across like that you're going to see that brush stroke after you're done painting this addition on your wall and again it was already painted but I wanted to make sure that that nice edge was crisp after they applied all the caulk and everything around that countertop and I wanted to make sure that it blended in to the rest of the wall. Then after the walls were painted I came in to do the second coat of the cabinetry painting. I applied that second coat to the cabinet as well as the drawers and the door and if you thought that was a lot of painting there's more. You see me painting the door in this part. Now the reason I have to paint all three doors in this bathroom is because these are brand new doors that we installed earlier last year and we installed them they were primed and honestly I just never painted them because this bathroom wasn't complete and I figured I'll paint them once the bathroom is done. So I went in again with that same type of paint that I used for my cabinets and I painted the doors and then with that same paint I went around and painted all of the baseboards including the trim that was at the bottom of the tub. Now this trim was in pretty bad condition I had to sand it and caulk it and make sure it was nice and smooth before I applied this paint and if you ever paint any of your walls in any of your rooms it is always best to go ahead and paint those baseboards because they make so much of a difference. This baseboard was wiped down and clean believe it or not and it still looked pretty disgusting and it wasn't until after I painted it that nice fresh white that it made all the difference and honestly just by doing this alone it really does make your bathroom or room look so much better because dingy baseboards really make a space look bad and it's always worth repainting them. Then it was down to the final things like adding the faucet, cleaning those light fixtures, making sure that they looked brand new again. Nelson installed the light fixture on the wall and I added the white glass pieces. You wanted to keep the area around the mirror clutter-free so we pretty much just added this nice towel ring. I also decided to put this mirror that I had done in a previous look for less dupe and then I found this beautiful curtain on Amazon and I'll link to it below because it really was of really nice quality and I was really impressed and does anybody else's arms ever feel like they're going to fall off when putting a brand new curtain up? It's a serious upper shoulder workout and again to save some money I decided to use some previous DIYs for the walls and some thrifted pieces for my decor and of course I had to add one of my very own candles which of course by the time you're done with this video I will have both Egyptian Amber and Vanilla Lavender back in stock. So to recap this is what the bathroom looked like before and here is the after. I really love how these floors came out. I'm really glad we went with them instead of a vinyl wood plank. Even though we weren't expecting to pay for new countertops I'm glad we did. It really does elevate the space and it will be a great return on our investment. Now if you noticed on my original mood board I wanted to create a full wallpaper treatment behind the mirror area however if you've been following along you just heard that we bought a piece of land and we'll be building our very own homestead so I decided to opt out from this and keep it a little bit more simple since we will be selling this home hopefully very soon. That trim looks so much better now. Now while this area is a little bit tight with the new cabinet I do like it there since it does give us a little bit of extra storage for our things. And I'm sure you're wondering where we hang all our towels and I did want to say that we do have an overhead rack that goes above our door and it works perfectly fine for our needs but obviously it's not that pretty so I didn't make a big deal about it. Now I do have an important question about this mirror you guys. When I list this house do I list it with the smear or do I put another simple one and take this with me to my new home? I need your help so let me know what you would do in the comments below. And of course I'd love to hear your thoughts on this bathroom makeover and what you think of the finished space. Of course if you like it don't forget to give this a thumbs up. All right and for everyone waiting on the look for less challenge details here they are. If you're not familiar with the look for less it's where I ask you to recreate an item from a high-end home decor store for a whole lot less. And if you have a YouTube channel you can add your look for less DIY projects to my playlist. I do this challenge every other month and here are the rules to participate. Rule number one your projects are due on Wednesday May 25th at 10 a.m. and so you have a week and a half to complete. Rule number two make sure to mention me my channel as your host and include the link of the playlist that will provide in the description box of my video on the day it goes live. This is a link where you'll add your video and you will also be able to see everyone else who participated in on the challenge. Rule number three your project has to be a home decor piece. It could be as small or as large as you want that one is up to you. You can also make more than one project. Rule number four and perhaps most important we want to see a side-by-side comparison of your dupe to the original because we want to see how well you did and how much you saved. And that's it. Thank you all so much for watching. Let me know what you think of today's video and I will see you all next week with another home decor and DIY video. Until then, adios!