bathroom

Bathroom Renovation

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We purchased a house in June 2022. Most of the house had been updated or was in good shape, but the master bathroom was the original from 1992. This isn’t a bad thing, but bathroom designs have changed a lot since that time. Aesthetically, the bathroom would have been fine. Functionally, I didn’t want to shower in a 2.5′ by 2.5′ shower stall, and the higher standard of vanity height is something I’ve gotten used to. The day we closed, we started gutting the bathroom.

BATHROOM EXPERIENCE

Our first ever renovation project was a bathroom that we gutted, redesigned, and rebuilt in our first home we owned, back in 2013. The house was a foreclosure, and it had been flipped by the bank. The place looked good, but it didn’t last. The bathroom shower tiles were cracking as soon as we moved in. We took walls down and rebuilt them because of mold, we moved the door to allow for a better vanity set up, and we moved the toilet so that you weren’t walking around the vanity to get to it. We had been quoted $25k for a contractor to do it. We spent $4k on materials.

Our last home was a new-build and had an unfinished basement with a bathroom rough-in. We had my dad’s help setting the plumbing, and then we finished it out ourselves. After we did the first bathroom, we said we wouldn’t do vertical tiling again. We really just learned not to use 12×12 tiles on the wall.

The bathroom cost us about $6k to complete. While everyone was being quoted $75k-120k for a finished basement with bathroom, we did almost all the work ourselves (dad’s help on bathroom and setting studs, hired a drywall finisher, and we didn’t lay our own flooring) for about $20k.

We also did a quick bathroom refresh in our current home. The basement bathroom here was forgotten. It hadn’t been cleaned or updated (most of the house had switches and outlets changed to white from yellow, but not this room). For less than $1,000, we laid a new floor, updated the trim, replaced the vanity and toilet, painted, updated the accessories and mirror, and replaced the switches and outlet. We didn’t touch the tub or the faucets in there.

BACKGROUND

The bathroom was an L-shape. There was a 114″ vanity with a full length wall mirror over that. It also had 2 5-light wall mounted light fixtures over each sink (excessive!). Then the shower was your typical plastic molded shower stall with a frosted glass door. It was 2.5′ x 2.5′. Around the L was the toilet (awkward positioning, really), and beyond that was the soaking tub with built-in molded steps. Oh, and there was a ceiling fan over the vanity.

THE PLAN

We needed to take everything out so we could see our options. We gutted the bathroom pretty quickly, but we dragged our feet on the rebuild. It worked out in my favor though; I’ll come back to that.

The L-shape encompasses the master bedroom’s closet. It’s a walk-in closet, but it’s not spectacular. We tried to make a plan where we knocked down the closet walls and reconfigured the whole space, but the window placement hindered us, along with some of the desired sizes of fixtures. Once we gave up on incorporating the closet space, it was clear we just wanted to make the shower more functional.

As we started laying blue tape to map out the size of the shower, we realized we were hindered by the closet walls. If we made it too big, we lost the ability to walk around the L-shape comfortably. The whole point here was that we wanted a bigger shower. We settled on as wide as we could make it, while still being able to fit around the corner (generally looking at 3′ wide, which is standard hallway width).

At the beginning, I mentioned that I wanted to washer and dryer moved from the garage entry. Mr. ODA said we’d do it “later.” But the walls were opened now… so why not now? He came around. We hired an electrician to move the dryer electric from the room off the garage, directly above it to our bedroom, and then up into the attic to move over and come down into the bathroom. That meant the width of the shower was now maxed at how wide our washer/dryer was to get through the hole.

We bought a waterproofing system to build the shower any size we wanted (versus a shower pan), and we ended up about 3.5′ x 5′. We dropped the vanity section to 7′, and dropped our lighting to 2 2-light fixtures. 🙂

We eventually will add glass to the shower area (there’s a curtain there for now). The master bathroom is the most infrequently cleaned area of my house (and I clean a lot!), so maintaining a glass shower enclosure that’s used daily is just not high on my priority list. Mr. ODA had built a shower bench for our last house’s shower, and by some miracle, it fit perfectly in this newly built shower. We also reused the floor tile option because we wanted a statement in here, but we were too scared to commit to a pattern and it not look right; we knew what this pattern looked like, so we kept it.

The plumbing for the washer and dryer was a concern. We were able to use the old tub’s drain to be the washer drain. We were also able to use the supply lines. However, since the supply lines were on an interior wall, and we were nervous about moving them to an exterior wall (so it would be behind the washing machine), we kept them there. The width of the room didn’t allow for clearance for the supply lines to be hidden down further, so the lines fall across the top of the washer. While not aesthetically great, everything else about this is so much more functional and makes me happy.

MUD ROOM

The washer and dryer moving to where the tub was in the master bathroom meant we could create a mud room. This was a really big deal to me. We park in the garage. Our garage door is basically always open and this is how people come and go. I wanted a functional space that wasn’t cramped by a washer and dryer that you were walking around.

Additionally, the previous owner had changed the closet function to be 2 shelves. There was no hanging room for coats, and there was no storage for mops or vacuums on the first floor. We moved the middle-of-the-closet shelf to be a higher shelf, added the dowel so we could hang coats, and cut the bottom shelf in half to still allow for some storage options, but also allow for vacuum storage.

We’ve since added shelving over mini fridge, and there are bins for shoes in the cubbies. In our last house, we had a bar area in the basement where this fridge was. We had originally planned for it to be in the basement in our current house also, but we don’t spend as much time as we thought down there. It was a perfect fit to include it in the mud room and build the bench to incorporate it.

By moving the washer and dryer from this room (for our own labor and about $400 worth of an electrician), we made our house significantly more functional. As I grow older (and move an absurd amount of times), I’ve learned how much more important it is for my house to function.

SUMMARY

A quick facelift to a bathroom is a pretty easy project. Moving plumbing, electric, and walls creates a few more levels of difficulty. However, it’s not impossible. We’ve learned over the years that if we act as our own general contractor (hiring out piecemeal), we can save a lot of money. In this post-covid-world, contractor costs are high. If we hired out this entire bathroom, I don’t doubt that we could have been looking at $45-50k with all the things that were to be moved. Instead, it cost us about $5,000 worth of materials and our time.

Our time was definitely at a premium. We dragged our feet on decision making, while focusing on other areas of the house. The kids’ bathroom is directly outside our bedroom, so it wasn’t a hassle for us nor was there an immediate need for us to be back in our own bathroom. We got the floor tile down as fast as we could before we officially moved in, since our washer and dryer would need to be placed. That lit the fire for our toilet and vanity to be installed too. But the shower was a different story. We got it framed out, but didn’t start laying tile and grouting until after our 3rd was born. I thought I would feel better doing that work once I wasn’t pregnant anymore, but I didn’t factor in the baby needing to be help all day long, so that created quite a challenge. But we did it.

We gutted the bathroom in mid-June, and we had it completed done (well, except for the shower glass that I just don’t even want) by Christmas. While we took our time doing it, the best parts are how much more functional and comfortable the house is, and how it cost us about 10% of what it would have been if we hired it out.

Prepping a New House

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I put more effort into this house than I usually do between the time that we bought it and the time that we got it rented. The house was almost double what we’ve bought any other house for, and I wanted to be sure we could get the rent we wanted for it. Looking back, I probably didn’t need to make it as good as I did, and it’s definitely not perfect. If I were listing it for sale, I should have painted baseboards and taken doors off hinges and sprayed them instead of cleaning them.

In the past, I’ve had to paint a room or two. We may have needed to replace an appliance. But typically, we’re buying houses that have recently been flipped at 50% effort and are good enough for a renter. Two houses have been in poor shape that needed more TLC. One we had to replace the carpet, clean heavily, and paint nearly everything. Another house needed an easy wipe down, but required everything to be painted, down to the trim. And truly, had the owner paid a few thousand to get the place painted, they probably could have gotten 10k more on the house (but the owner didn’t even pay their electric bill, so that’s not surprising).

NEW HOUSE

The house we just purchased wasn’t prepped for sale. It was an off-market deal. We came to an agreement that they wouldn’t need to come back to town to clean, refinish a floor that the dogs ruined, or paint. As such, we got at least 10k off the price. They were going to list at $250k, and probably would have gotten competitive offers and going higher than list, and we got it for a net $240k. I then put 14 hours of effort into the house.

The owners had a bedroom dedicated to the dogs. They didn’t do significant damage, but they did enough. The closet doors needed to be repainted, the baseboards and windowsills needed to be sanded, cleaned, and repainted. The floor was damaged and we thought needed to be refinished. The walls were covered in slobber, dirt, and scuffs. That was the worst room of the house. The kitchen was covered in grossness, and I put a lot of elbow grease into that. I was going to hire a cleaner, but the bathrooms ended up not being so dirty, so I figured I could glove-up and get it done.

PAINT

The whole house needed to be painted. I picked my battles and painted all of the 2100 sf except for the kitchen (which is covered by cabinets and I didn’t want to cut into all that or move the fridge), one bedroom that had the least amount of scuffed walls, and the upstairs bathroom. I chose painting over cleaning the walls because I didn’t see the benefit of cleaning. I would have eliminated some dog slobber and a few scuffs, but it wouldn’t have gotten the two years worth of dirt and rubbing and splatter of whatever off the walls. So I kept a rag with me and wiped the dust off where I could see it, but I just painted over everything else because I thought that would be the most efficient use of my time.

I repainted the closet doors in the dog bedroom. In the hallway, I repainted the attic door and the floor molding. Most of the other floor molding needed to be wiped down, and in some rooms, I painted the wall paint along the top of the molding instead of getting the white paint out or cleaning it. All of the closets needed to be painted, but I wasn’t going to put that effort in just for it to likely get scuffed again.

REFINISHING THE FLOOR

Mr. ODA handled this and did awesome. We thought the floor needed refinishing in this one bedroom. We researched how to do it and everything. Then my mom mentioned “Rejuvenate” floor product. Mr. ODA looked at the floor and concluded it was the top coat that was roughed up, and that the stain and coloring was still there. He saw such a difference, that he actually used it on the rest of the hardwood flooring! It’s not perfect, but it was the most bang for our buck in the process to address something that definitely needed to be addressed.

CLEANING

I was going to hire a cleaner, but I ended up needing a break from the hand position of holding a brush one day. I started using some degreaser to get through the dirt. The kitchen was disgusting. It’s one thing to leave some debris behind because you didn’t do a final clean as you got out the door, but this was two years of food splatter caked onto the cabinets and backsplash. The refrigerator had been cleaned, but the freezer still had food and left over explosion remnants.

I’ve never cleaned an oven. I may have wiped a couple of things out after the initial mess got made, but have never had a dirty enough oven to need to really clean it. This was horrendous. I put 45 minutes worth of effort into. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. In the first picture, I had already cleaned two layers off the door and scrubbed half the bottom of the oven. Then the second picture is where I left it. I’m sad I didn’t get a true before picture to show just how awful it was. The right side of the first picture is actually the dirt that was in there and not the cleaner yet.

The bathrooms were pretty clean and just needed a wipe down. I swept the whole house and mopped the floors. I cleaned multiple windows because they were bad enough that I didn’t even want to look at them anymore.

YARD WORK

I don’t know if the people who flipped the house in 2019 didn’t fix up the yard, or if this mess was really just 2 years worth. The driveway was covered in mud and leaves. I swept it all up to be sure that there wasn’t any broken glass (there was glass in the yard) and to give the new people a fresh start of clean. I didn’t take a before picture, but you can tell where there had been piles of ick sitting in this picture. I filled the yard waste container with everything that was built up on the long driveway.

Before I could mow the yard, I had to pick up a lot of twigs that had dropped. There were a few big branches that I need to come back to, but I filled the fire pit with all the twigs that I got out of my way. The grass in the backyard is in good shape, and I was able to get it looking good with the mower. The front yard is lacking on grass. I laid some seed and hoped for the best, but hopefully it will be in good shape one day.

RANDOMS

The front bedroom light wouldn’t turn on. I went to replace the light bulb, and it’s all one unit, as in you can’t get to the light bulb! We had replaced some flush mount lights with fans in the kids’ bedrooms here, so I brought one of the lights to the house. Turns out, mounting brackets aren’t all created equal, and I couldn’t install the new/old light fixture. I bought a new light to install and got that done on my first attempt.

I had to wipe down the shiplap wall that goes down into the basement. It’s a pretty feature, but it was covered in more yuck. A few trim pieces weren’t painted well by the people who flipped the house, but I didn’t want to break out my different color white paint and fix it. Hopefully it’s small enough of an issue that you don’t notice too much. If it were me living there, it would drive me crazy.

The pantry had two shelves that were stained by cans. Instead of cleaning it or trying to repaint it white (over caked on debris with white paint that always requires 3 coats), I put contact paper over them. Is it necessary? No. Does it give a little extra step to make your tenants appreciate the house and want to take care of it? Yes.

The kitchen flip wasn’t done perfectly, and the caulking was cracked everywhere. I recaulked everything along the backsplash in the kitchen. Then I also caulked the bathroom tub, which really made a difference in making a clean, fresh look. There were a few pieces of shoe molding that came apart from the baseboard, so I caulked a few of those areas too.

SUMMARY

We spent under $300 and 14 hours worth of time. Two of those hours were spent showing the house to about 10 prospective tenants during an open house. The house looked in good shape when I handed it over to the new tenants. I’m hoping that they’ll love it like a home and take good care of it, since they saw the effort I put into it. It was definitely worth putting that effort in to save the 10k+ on the cost and to avoid anymore bidding wars in today’s crazy market.