Thrifty Thursday: bathroom remodelling on a budget...

So, our appraisal for our refinancing of our house is tomorrow.  I have the new master bathroom done enough for show, but nowhere near actually done yet.  And by that I mean, it all looks just fine, but it's completely useless, other than to (hopefully) boost the value of our house.  With any luck, we can shoo them through there quickly enough that they'll "ooh!" and "ah!" over the aesthetics, and not linger long enough to discover that the tile in the shower still isn't grouted, there's no base-board trim yet, and of course the minor detail of it being just a show-room bathroom right now with no actual working plumbing whatsoever...  So please, for the love of God, DON'T use the toilet in that bathroom if you come over.

This is what the new bathroom looked like as of my stopping point last night.

Anyway, for today's Thrifty-Thursday posting, I thought I'd share a few of the things that we pulled off in our master bath remodel for pretty cheap... 

I found the 2 wall sconces as a set on Ebay for a few dollars in a horrid shiny brass color and the ceiling light came from ReBuild for $5.00, and was also in a wickedly awful brass finish.  I had my husband work his magic with a can of spray-paint on all the fixtures, and they came out pretty OK.  Speaking of paint, I also saved a ton by buying Local Color paint for the walls and trim.  It's recycled paint made locally from discarded latex paint collected through a Hazardous Waste program.  A 5-gallon bucket is only $42.00!  

I scored this vanity cabinet at ReBuild for $25.00, made the vanity top out of a counter-top remnant we had in our basement (so, basically free), got the sink and faucet as a combo deal for $189.00 on Overstock (with free shipping on an insanely heavy item, thank-you-very-much), we found the medicine cabinet/mirror at ReBuild also for $15.00 (after having to return the new one we bought at Lowes because it was broken), and the towel bars were (if I remember correctly) about $4.00 a piece at Big Lots. 

I made the shower curtain out of some fabric I'd purchased for something else, and ended up not using all of (so, again, basically free), and that wide trim piece between the vanity and shower was left over from when we put some new siding on the back of our house 2 Summers ago (so, again, basically free).

   Also, it goes without saying (although, here I am saying it anyway) that doing the work ourselves saved us an absolute TON of money.  Hubby did the electrical work and the drywalling, I did the tiling in the shower, built the vanity top, and the painting.  Our dads have helped out a lot too, which we're very lucky for. I'll also toot my own horn a tiny bit over my developing skills with our table saw.  Making a new space in an already existing home calls for some tricky custom work.  I spent most of yesterday having some serious quality time with a myriad of tools in our basement making some custom trim pieces to fit around the shower pan, oddly-sized (recycled from what used to be my closet) door frame, and around a spot where I messed up the tile a bit in the shower (whoops!).  Most of these tasks we did on our own totally sucked, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who isn't 100% confident with rapidly spinning blades, high voltage, or messy substances that are hard to wash off.  For some folks it would be totally worth the extra coin to pay a professional to get it done right.  In the case of some of our projects, it would have been also, but what's done is done, and we learned a lot from out mistakes and successes.  


Thanks for stopping by,
-Lindsey