Before and After: Someone Pulled Off a $6K Bathroom Reno in 5 Days
This before photo is beautifully lit, but don’t get distracted by the lovely highlights and shadows: there were a lot of issues with this bathroom. And in the span of an average work week, the entire room was utterly transformed.
Let’s check out the full-length view while we get a little behind-the-scenes info:
We moved into our 1920s Portland, Oregon bungalow [in] September 2017. We have been moving at full speed to turn this little house into a beautiful space. The worst offender was our 1970s bathroom. It had peeling linoleum, a horror film shower, and a vanity that was literally falling off the wall. We hated showering in the space to the point where we would keep the lights off to not see our surroundings!
As this is the only bathroom in our house, we wanted a space we felt great about and weren’t embarrassed to show guests.
CJ Alberts should be immensely proud to show this bathroom off to guests now! I love the oversized honeycomb floor tile; as great as the classic tiny hexagons are, these beefy tiles have a fabulous graphic impact. The black grout in the shower is a nice counterpoint to the white grout on the floor. I also appreciate how perfectly yet simply coordinated this new bathroom is: it’s all black, white, and walnut. This is not an especially large space, so sticking to a restrained palette is a good way to go. The mirror and light fixture are elegant and cute at the same time, and this might be the first time that someone’s made a shower cubby that actually seems to be a practical size. CJ, I salute you for that—and for this timeline that blew my mind:
The process was seamless! From demo to completely being finished, it was about five days. We hired the best contractor and his team was amazing. All in, this renovation was about $6K including labor!
Sometimes it’s worth spending the money to work with a professional. While we have done many other things in our house ourselves (refinishing the hardwoods, trim, painting, etc) I can’t even imagine how long it would have taken us with a learning curve to tile our only bathroom.
Five days! I realize they were working with pros, but that still seems to be incredibly quick. I suppose when you only have one bathroom, you are particularly motivated to Make It Happen.
I’m so glad CJ included this closeup of the vanity, because it’s really special—the walnut is gorgeous and the whole thing is a big improvement over the previous falling-down vanity with its mysterious cut-out. Here’s how CJ feels about it, and the renovation as a whole:
I love how fresh and clean this space feels. It’s truly night and day from the before. In retrospect, I’m not sure black tile was the best choice for someone who owns a very furry corgi, but I love the contrast. I also wish we could have splurged on my dream vanity from Rejuvenation but as this won’t be our forever home, I didn’t think it was a smart purchase. We used an IKEA vanity and replaced the doors with walnut ones from Semi Handmade to get a more custom look.
The vanity/sink is the Godmorgon/Odensvik from IKEA (which we recently saw in another Before and After), the doors are these from Semihandmade, the faucet is Kingston Brass from Amazon, the mirror is from Target, the stool is from Serena & Lily, the floor tiles are Merola from Home Depot, and the wall tiles are Jeffrey Court from Home Depot.
Thank you, CJ Alberts!