Reveal, budget, and sources: $1,482 master bathroom reno

Reveal, budget, and sources: $1,482 master bathroom reno

• 8.31.2017

I checked back on my calendar--we began demo in our master bath on May 12. We finished it last week. That's 15 weeks exactly. For a good amount of that time the room was almost completely demoed so we didn't have a toilet or sinks, and all our stuff was in boxes on the floor of our bedroom! This was probably our biggest, most intensive room redo at the Stanley 90's Reno and it took... 6-15x longer than most of our other big projects!! But it's done and we are so grateful!

In contrast, we did the powder room and guest bathroom in about 5 days total (see video here!). But in this bathroom, we removed a wall (only wall in the house we ended up taking out, and it was a bigger job than we thought) and redid plumbing and electrical. The drywall was ripped up behind the vanity area for weeks and weeks! Those changes made this way more than the surface-level project we're used to at this fixer upper!

It also took a long time for us to pick the design, and the first vanity arrived cracked and getting the second one delivered by the moving company was a huge mess so that whole process took about 2 months. To catch you up on what the heck else we've been doing on this room:

• I shared our two really different design inspirations
• Demo progress, including demoing the wall (harder than it sounded)
• Major progress: tile and lighting

Oh, and you can see all of the bathroom in its glory in the before pictures here. Gasp.

The wall we removed separated the toilet room from the vanity room and closet (to the right). The only window is over the toilet so there was no natural light on the mirror/vanity. And, there was no actual door, just a frame, going to the master bedroom (see that lovely carpet that was continuous) so you couldn't turn the vanity light on without bothering the sleeping person in the bed!

By demoing that wall, we opened up the whole room and were able to put a 72" wide vanity in there (with only a minor issue I'll share below) and the toilet/shower area is still plenty separated. The only very slightly weird thing is now you enter the closet through the full bathroom, and there's laminate in the bedroom and closet but they're not connected/separated by the tile, but it doesn't bug me!

If you look at the progress posts here and here you'll see the electrical and plumbing work we had to do. Thankfully my dad is skilled and available and was a lot of help. We were able to get the glamorous two-sink look we decided on when we chose this design and get two beautiful light fixtures, one above each sink. Such a difference from the builder basic multi-bulb fixture!

Here's the only lasting issue we had. I measured our max width for our vanity when the wall was still in place, and it seemed like we could do about 70", but I didn't think about where the edge of that would be exactly. As it turns out we got SUPER lucky, cause look where the edge of the vanity is. Right against the window opening, not overlapping onto it at all.

We did have to carefully trim the window sill, and we cut the backsplash with my uncle's intense saw (we cut the wall end so the cut edge doesn't show), but really... it's just super efficient this way, right?!

Our budget and scope didn't allow for replacing the shower unit/doors, so we covered them up with a clean white waffle curtain (see in the mirror?). Totally brightens things up!

I love, love, love our vanity lights. They're very similar to the one we used in our powder room which is a Schoolhouse Electric Princeton Sconce look-alike, but the globes are slightly different. I love the antique brass against the white and black!

I also love our faucets. I bought returned/repackaged ones so they were actually really affordable, but are so trendy! It's really hard to find actual black fixtures; most are actually oil-rubbed bronze and while I love mixing metals, I didn't want to add that in as well.

I had at one point planned to reuse the huge mirror that was in the space before, but build a frame for it, but once we added the double lights and new electrical, there wasn't room on the wall. Plus, I was too tired for that kind of DIY project. We got this one for only $50 at IKEA. 

Okay, one more secret/issue. I mentioned the first vanity arrived cracked. The backsplash was also cracked. They sent me a separate backsplash, super carefully packed, but then ended up needing to replace the whole vanity anyway. So, we've received three backsplashes, and I was sure the carefully packed one was fine. Jason went to unwrap it and take it to my uncle's to cut it one day and learned it was cracked, in THREE places. I'm sure I could have complained and they would have sent me another one, but it probably would have been cracked, too, right?! I didn't want to wait another 2 months to keep getting marble backsplashes until one was intact. So, we just carefully glued the backsplash in and caulked the cracks. Shhhhh.

We LOVE our new bathroom!

Here's the budget breakdown. I mentioned we bought some repackaged items, which saved a lot, and we didn't change the shower/tub situation which easily could have doubled the budget or more.

Vanity $893 (I had a coupon) Update: that one no longer comes with backsplash, but I found it here and here with.)
Vanity handles $19
Toilet $23 ($98 at the big box store, minus $75 rebate from our water district)
Faucets $121 total for both
Vanity lights $65 total for both
Ceiling light $25
TP holder $4 IKEA
Hand towel hook $3 (x2) IKEA
Towel bar $20
Mirror $50 IKEA
Mortar $5
Grout $18
Tile (~49 SF+10%) $233
TOTAL: $1,482
Not included: baseboards and paint, since we had them anyway for the rest of the house. Towels, etc. also not included.

Hope you're inspired for your next reno project!