English country-inspired basement bathroom REVEAL! And budget/costs

English country-inspired basement bathroom REVEAL! And budget/costs

• 5.30.2022

PHEW! Our basement bathroom is DONE--AND I am so, so happy with how it turned out! Sorry for all the caps. I wasn't sure for a while there if I would wrap this up in time, and how I would feel about it. Very happy to share this post today.

This is my final post in this One Room Challenge of this bathroom we're doing as part of our basement renovation.

• Week 1: Design, plans, and before photos
• Week 2: Choosing electrical locations and sconce placement
• No post week 3
• Week 4: Tub, drywall, and design
• No posts weeks 5-6
• Week 7: Tile, beadboard, and door
• Week 8: This reveal!

English Country-inspired bathroom renovation

I'm proud!

Remember this is where we started, after demo, seismic bolts, and framing...

Then it started to look like a bathroom once the tub was installed...

Then getting the tile installed was a huge accomplishment, and the wallpaper...

Then I got the beadboard and baseboards up last weekend and the plumbers came back and installed the sink, toilet, and shower fixtures Friday, so then I could hang the art, mirrors, and towel bars etc. The pretty stuff! And even though this room has some warmth with the warm blue beadboard (Sherwin-Williams Refuge in Satin) and charming wallpaper from A-Street Prints, adding the texture and softness of the shower curtain made a huge difference, and the sink skirt added even more! You'll have to see it... here goes.

The mirror above the sink is an antique I found at a small local antique store for $18 a few months ago and impulse bought. Then just happened to find a good use for it!

The pleated sconce shades were a fun DIY, using this tutorial. 

I elected not to do a built-in linen closet in that corner hoping to find a charming vintage cabinet with glass doors, but I foolishly didn't think about the sconce placement and thickness of the walls and after everything was framed there wasn't room for anything I was finding on Facebook Marketplace. So I found this antique dresser, which gives the character I was hoping for but is not as perfect for a bathroom. Ah well, it works great for now.

It is so exciting to have a full shower/bath in here! The bathroom is a standard 5' wide, and 10' long, and there was just barely room for that 5' width before hitting the window in the bedroom to the left. This tub/shower combo is a huge upgrade from the modular bathtub/wall combos of 90's builder basic houses. It sort of looks like subway tile, but has a great ledge!

I love the simple blue/white shower curtain. I found some similar ones for $60+ online and then took a chance on this $18 one (the photos look very different online) and turns out it's perfect!

Both art pieces are museum downloads that I had printed at Mpix (sponsored). I highly recommend their giclee prints in matte for sturdy, oil painting-like prints. The gold frame is from them as well; I just uploaded the art image and selected the size and frame. So easy, and affordable! This large size was less than $90. The little piece of sketches above the toilet is just a giclee print on paper behind glass but you can also order their giclee prints on matboard (single weight for smaller ones, double weight for larger) and frame it without glass. I did that on a couple pieces here. 

The wallpaper is so sweet, too. This was my first time using pasted wallpaper and it went pretty well! I really wanted something other than plain painted wall in here and this muted pattern is great. Neutral but still interesting. (Sponsored.)

I was seriously not sure where I was going to end up on this project since my inspiration photos are each so interesting and in some ways different from each other. I'm trying to use more color and pattern in my home and find my "north star"/identify my style, and I think it has a lot of classic English country vibes in it but is also simpler and more... modern? Historic, in this case (since we have an old home and I was trying to keep it somewhat appropriate?). I'm still figuring that all out. 

Point is I'm proud of this room and very happy with how it turned out (and very relieved it's done!). I put a lot of hard work into the DIY efforts, and a lot of coordination into working with contractors, my first time doing that at this level. The budget reflects that we hired out most of the big items, but there was no way we could have fit that in DIY and learned to do it all. That leads me to...

Budget (well, actual cost) and sources

I'm keeping track of our expenses for the basement reno as a whole and a lot of this was part of the basement efforts overall (like framing and drywall), but I split up those costs proportionally to just cover the bathroom for this summary. Here it is!

Contractor work: 

Demo labor $187
Dumpster/haul $0/included in demo
Seismic bolts $437
Framing $917
Drywall $1,560
Electrical $760
Plumbing $1,040
Concrete cut and patch $1,084
Bathroom vent $318
Wall insulation/fireblocking $500
Additional labor/materials $154
Install doors $155

Materials:

Toilet $25 Facebook Marketplace
Toilet tank lever $32 Amazon here
Sink w faucet $50 Facebook Marketplace
Vanity light(s) $52 Amazon here
Block print fabric for lampshades and sink skirt $15 Amazon here
Tile $104 Home Depo here
Grout $14 Home Depot here
Baseboards $180 Home Depot in-store
Door trim $28 Home Depot here
Faucet $0 came with sink
Towel bars $49 Home Depot here
Mirror $18 antique store
Bathroom fan $80 Home Depot here
Tub $631 Home Depot here
Tub faucet $150 Amazon here
Shower curtain rod $20 Amazon here
Shower curtain rings and liner $6 Ross
Beadboard - bathroom $72 Home Depot here
Door $75 Facebook Marketplace
Door knob - privacy $20 Amazon here
Door hinges $24 Amazon here
Painting supplies $7 Home Depot
Wallpaper (sponsored) $330 Niki Beige Country Kitsch Wallpaper by A-Street Prints
Art prints (sponsored): $91 (Art above toilet: Sketches | The Art Institute of Chicago, art above towel bar: Surf at Nervi (belvedere.at) (contrast reduced). Printed at Mpix)

Permits:

Building permit $183
Plumbing permit $78
Electrical permit $73

TOTAL: $9,600

Our most expensive bathroom by far (you can see the others here) but also, not really apples-to-apples since we created this room from scratch. We hope (and are pretty sure) we have added way more than $9,600 in value/equity to our home since now we have 2.5 bathrooms! Not planning to sell any time too soon, so in the meantime we will definitely enjoy having this bathroom for ourselves and our guests!

You can see more on my Instagram including story highlights on the basement project, and this bathroom!

Check out the other 8-week room reveals this One Room Challenge HERE!