Farmhouse Bathroom Makeover on a Budget!

See how we transformed our entire bathroom in just 6 short weeks for under $1200! This master bathroom makeover on a budget will give you the ideas, inspiration and motivation you need to give your own bathroom a face-lift!

Chris and I finally gave our master bathroom (the last room in our house that hadn’t been touched in over a year and a half) the makeover it deserved!

Having over a year and a half to dream about this room meant I truly couldn’t wait for it to come to life. 😉

In today’s post I’m going to walk you through the entire makeover process, from before pictures, to our initial plans, to each major step in the transformation.

I hope this tour of our 6-week project is inspirational for you!

We did this project as guest participants in the Fall 2017 One Room Challenge – click here for more information on the ORC.

This was a series of post that were originally published between October 5, 2017 and November 16, 2017. They have since been consolidated into one post.

The Bathroom Before

Here is what the bathroom looked like when we bought the house and before we started our bathroom makeover project:

It’s a rather large bathroom, with the deep soaker-tub and separate shower.

We’d done absolutely nothing to update this room since we bought the home and as you can see, it still had pink flowers on the tile around the tub, the light fixture above the tub and every cabinet knob.

Did I mention before how much the previous owner loved pink flowers?? So much so, that every flowering bush on the property is pink too. 😉

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The Original Makeover Plans

I really wanted this bathroom to continue the modern farmhouse vibe we’d created throughout our house.

At the time I was loving the neutral color schemes – mostly white, cream, and linen with pieces of black, gold and green sprinkled in.

We planned to leave the layout of the bathroom mostly the same, with the minor adjustments being moving back the “privacy wall,” putting in a furniture style vanity rather than a cabinet, and installing open shelves beside the toilet.

We had a green/gold buffet we got for $50 at an estate sale years before we started this project (it had actually been sitting in the garage since we moved) that was PERFECT for a bathroom vanity!

I purchased the vessel sink and aged bronze faucet shown in my mood board below.

Oh, and the mirror!

We got a huge wood-framed mirror at a garage sale for just $1!! And the plan was to paint it black before it went up.

I also got some awesome vintage items to hang on the wall – a hand painted clock face and an old board with “Portland” impressed on it.

I planned on using our same black wicker hamper and possibly our gold metal table too.

Here was my original mood board:

There was quite a bit to the project, and pulling it off in 6 weeks was a stretch!

To start, we had to remove the “privacy wall” from the middle of the room back to the shower door, as well as all the existing cabinetry.

Then, we needed to paint the tile around the tub white, the floor tiles in a black and white faux cement tile pattern, and the shower door frame black.

Next we had to install a beautiful new vanity, cover the walls in faux shiplap (like we did in the guest bath), paint the shiplap white, install new lighting and hardware, install built-in wood shelves and a new toilet, and decorate!

While we knew it was going to be a lot of late nights and long weekends, we were SO EXCITED.

Our 6-Week Bathroom Makeover on a Budget

Week 1: Demo

The first week was dedicated to demo and started out with removing all of the old cabinetry.

We had intended to donate the vanity and reuse the full length cabinet in Chris’ closet, but the previous owner had installed the toe kick and tile floors after the cabinets were installed, so getting them out without damaging either them or the tile wasn’t possible.

And since we were hoping to salvage the tile, that meant taking a hammer and saw to the cabinets to get them out…

It didn’t take Chris much more than an hour to get the entire vanity and cabinetry taken out!

Unfortunately, we found some black mold behind the floor-to-ceiling cabinet, which meant more drywall work for me…

I had to cut out the moldy patch and replace it with new sheet rock.

This didn’t matter much on the walls since we were covering them in shiplap, but on the ceiling I have to tape and texture the patch.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, sheet rock work isn’t my favorite… That may be why I love shiplap so much! 😉

One of my favorite things about the first week was discovering a patch of vintage floral wallpaper behind where the mirror was hanging.

Did you see it in that first picture??

I was able to salvage about half of the section and plan to put small pieces in frames as decor for the room!

I thought it would be a fun way to honor the history of the home. 🙂

In addition to demo’ing the room, we made a list of all the materials we needed (that’s right, we don’t shop for materials until we’ve already torn the room apart… 😉 ) and got most of what we needed to complete the project.

In the last few days of the week, we made good progress on the electrical work as well as finished up removing the awkward privacy wall.

Our electrical changes involved moving the shower and tub lights to be on a switch next to the door (they were previously on the wall we removed) and installing all new light fixtures.

Chris picked out the new shower fan/light and got one with a Bluetooth speaker built in so I was excited to try having music play through my phone while I shower!

Here is the light we got for above the tub:

I liked that it was still a chandelier but wouldn’t take up much of the head space when getting in or out of the tub.

I’ve also decided to put a shelf at the top of the tile behind the tub like the one Bre did in her bathroom over on Brepurposed.

Here are a few wider views of the room as we stood at the end of the first week:

On our to-do list for the second week was finishing up the electrical and plumbing, building in the new short wall next to the toilet for our shelf nook, and starting on the floors.

Week 2: Rebuilding

Chris and I were hard at work almost every night (our normal remodel working hours are after the kids go to sleep from about 8-11pm) of the second week and we got a lot done.

While the rebuilding phase wasn’t a pretty one, it was essential to getting the room to it’s new, lovely state.

Chris’ first task that week was installing the in-wall faucet plumbing.

In order to get its placement, we brought the vanity in, cut the legs down to the right height and traced its silhouette on the wall.

RELATED: 22 DIY VANITY IDEAS ON A BUDGET

We decided rather than moving the shut-off valves for the faucet we’d just run the hoses straight through the drywall and into the faucet.

Why not make it easy since the vanity was going to be flush with the wall, and you’d never see any of it!

BTW – isn’t that faucet beautiful?! 😉

After the faucet was secured and finished, Chris built the wall next to the toilet for our open shelving unit and I moved on to sheet rock patching.

I’m hoping the open shelving unit turn outs as great as these from Chris loves Julia.

I also removed and replaced all the moldy sheet rock and got all the walls patched and ready for shiplap.

In addition to the drywall work, I got some spray painting done and started working on restoring the mirror.

My plan all along was to paint the mirror black, but as the room was starting to come together and I thought through its placement on the white shiplap, above the green vanity and between the black pendant lights, I realized I’d much rather have it be a nice wood finish. (Most of my Instagram followers agreed!)

So, I took to sanding the entire thing down to raw wood and re-staining/sealing it to match our shelves.

Did I mention I got this mirror at a garage sale for just $1??

 Chris also prepped the floor for me to paint it with our fancy stencil. 😉

When we removed the vanity and partial wall there were sections of tile missing, so Chris cut out all the partial tiles and replaced with new full ones.

Since we were painting the floor, we weren’t worried about the tiles matching exactly, so we decided to use some random extra tiles we had in the garage! I mean, why not? 😉

The last little bit of progress we saw this week was painting the interior of the window black.

The paint color I used was Sherwin-Williams Iron Ore, because a lot of the decor bloggers I followed rave about it.

We ended up loving it and using it to paint the interior bathroom door as well!

I had fun buying a few decor items for the room during the second week too:

I found some perfect sized sea-grass baskets at TJ Maxx for the open shelves, a few greenery items, a cute sign and a fancy soap dispenser.

The first two weeks were a whirlwind of demo and rebuilding and then it was on to”prettifying” the room. 🙂

On our docket for the third week was finishing up the ceiling patches, installing the pendant lights and finalizing the electrical, installing window and door trim, installing and painting shiplap, and painting the ceiling.

Week 3: Shiplap

Let me just start by saying, installing shiplap (late at night, in addition to your normal jobs and raising young kids) is not for the faint of heart… 😉

Our third week was a tiring one!

As my husband would quickly tell you, I tend to underestimate the time it takes for projects.

In my mind, installing shiplap shouldn’t take more than a few hours, right?

Wrong…

And yet, while it was a lot of work, I knew without a doubt that I’d be head over heels in love with it when it was complete, so it was all worth it!

Ok, let’s take a look back at what was completed in the third week.

We started out by wrapping up the final sheet-rock work and installing the last few lights to finish up the electrical.

Then came the window and door trim and painting the ceiling.

My husband and I have an unspoken agreement that all painting is done by me, so I took care of the painting the trim late one night before bed and he installed the next day during nap-time.

I also painted the ceiling – like I said, Rachel = Painter. 😉

We went with the simple farmhouse style trim for all the windows and doors in our house.

 Another thing we had to do before we could start in on the shiplap was install my jewelry closet.

We installed a cubby between the studs on the wall to the right of the vanity for me to hang all my jewelry in and it’s one of my favorite parts of the room’s design!

We eventually installed a thin door over it with shiplap to match the wall around it so it blends in and a few pieces of art on the door to disguise it even more. You can see the tutorial for this part of the project here.

I wanted it to be super functional and not very noticeable, and I think that’s exactly how it ended up!

Our Saturday night that week was spent at Home Depot purchasing all the wood for the shiplap.

In our last bathroom, we chose to cut the shiplap wood into strips ourselves, but this time we decided it would be easier to have them cut it at the store.

It was a nice idea, but not very precise, so Chris still ended up trimming all the wood down to exactly the same size strips…

RELATED: HOW TO INSTALL SHIPLAP IN 4 SIMPLE STEPS!

By the end of the week we were about 2/3 of the way done with the shiplap installation.

We still needed to finish up going around the shelving cubby and the shower.

I was hoping we’d have it all installed and painted by now, but that was a long shot.

The following few weeks were going to be really busy for us (in our normal, non-project lives) so we knew we were going to have to do our best to squeeze in bits of progress as we could…

Here’s what was still to come at the half-way point:

• Finish installing and paint the shiplap
• Paint the tub’s tile surround
• Stencil the floor
• Paint, modify and reinstall the shower door
• Install a new toilet
• Paint the door and door-jam
• Build, stain and install the floating shelves
• Modify and install the vanity and sink
• Refinish and install the mirror
• Decorate

Week 4: Paint

By the fourth week, my dreams for the space were finally coming true!

The room was looking SO PRETTY – especially after all the painting that went on in that week!

We started the fourth week by finishing up installing the shiplap.

It took us a solid week of working every evening and weekend to get it all installed. But, IT’S TOTALLY WORTH IT!

So, if you’re thinking about doing shiplap, do it.

Here’s a shot of Chris installing the last wall of shiplap:

The next big task was sanding it all down.

As you can see from the picture above, we filled the nail holes with spackling and caulked all the corners as we went, so when we were ready to sand everything was done and dry.

It took Chris approximately 2 hours to sand down the entire room.

While he did the sanding, I took on the task of painting the door and door jam.

The jam is white to match the trim, but (like I mentioned above) we painted the door the same SW Iron Ore as the window.

I really like the color – it’s a dark charcoal gray, almost black, but still warm.

I got this fun little vintage bathroom sign to put on the door too. 🙂

RELATED: 5 BEST FARMHOUSE PAINT COLORS FOR HOME INTERIORS

Then it was on to painting the shiplap!

We started by priming all the wood with Kilz 2 Latex Primer.

It’s our fave, we use it on everything…

Then we gave the shiplap two thick coats of paint.

RELATED: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PAINTING SHIPLAP

We use the Behr Pure Ultra White because I worry about color tints in white causing it to fade in the long run…

I’m sure it wouldn’t, but I have a silly fear.

Plus, I love the crisp, pure white!

Isn’t it beautiful??

I knew, as soon as it was painted, that I wanted to do my entire house in white shiplap…

Chris laughed at the idea, but I was actually a bit serious. 😉

Our next big painting task was the tile around the tub…

We got an epoxy paint made specifically for tile and Chris spent two nights doing it.

We weren’t quite done with painting by the end of the fourth week – I still needed to paint and stencil the floor and then paint all the base trim and crown moulding before Chris installed it.

This bathroom ended up with paint on every square inch of it by the time we were done! 😉

We also finished sanding and sealing the mirror and got three of the four shower door support pieces cleaned and spray painted, so just the doors were left.

Here was our to-do list updated with the fourth week’s work:

• Finish installing and paint the shiplap
• Paint the tub’s tile surround
• Stencil the floor
• Paint, modify and reinstall the shower door
• Paint and reinstall the tub fixtures
• Install base trim and shoe moulding
• Install crown moulding
• Install a new toilet
• Paint the door and door-jam
• Build, stain and install the floating shelves
• Modify and install the vanity and sink
• Refinish and install the mirror
• Decorate

Week 5: The Floor

The fifth week of our farmhouse bathroom makeover was a BUSY week!

Not only with bathroom remodel stuff, but in our normal activities too.

We had multiple “Friendsgivings” that week – one of which we hosted at our house.

To me, there’s nothing better than having 16 people gathered around my table eating yummy food and building relationships!!

Ok, back to the reason you’re here – the bathroom! 😉

We did a ton of stuff in the bathroom that fifth week…

The biggest task was definitely painting the floor.

I love the look of cement tile, but the cost of replacing our existing tile with real cement tiles was just too much.

So, I took on the task of painting ours to create a faux cement tile floor!

This project sounded easy in theory, and was relatively simple, but was extremely time consuming.

I chose to use chalk paint because of its quick dry time, but even at that the floor was being worked on from Saturday morning until Monday morning.

I used a tile painting stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils – it was great quality and worked really well.

I’d definitely recommend them if you’re taking on the task of painting tile!

This photo was taken before I did my 7 hours of touch-up, but you get the idea. 😉

And a close up of the finished floor:

You can read more about our floor painting (and the fact that now, after having them ruined by basic use, I DON’T recommend doing them the way I did) in this post.

Other things we checked off our list during the fifth week include installing the vanity and mirror, installing base trim, painting the shower doors, staining and installing all the wood shelving, and just about finishing the crown moulding.

The last few things we needed to finish up when heading into the final week were installing the last bit of the crown moulding, installing shoe moulding, final spackle and caulking of all nail holes, installing the shower doors, and finishing up installing the wood shelves.

Then it was final touch up paint and installing the toilet!

Week 6: The Reveal!

Are you ready to see all the details of the completed room?!

Welcome to our new bathroom… (eek!)

Isn’t it fabulous?! 😀

Thank you to everyone that chimed in on my Instagram stories about what to do with the mirror – most people encouraged me to restore the wood, rather than paint it, and I’m so glad that’s what we did!

The wood color on this wall was just the touch of warmth it needed.

And I love the way the dark stain stayed in the grain and gave it an old, antiqued look.

The vintage buffet was an estate sale purchase from years ago. We only paid $54 for it, can you believe it?!

I love the green paint with the aged/gold wax.

I actually ordered this faucet for our other bathroom last year in an oil rubbed bronze finish, but it incorrectly came in this aged bronze finish.

So rather than send it back, I just decided to save it for this bathroom. So glad I did – it’s perfect in here!

I gave the old brass shower doors a makeover with spray paint and trim.

You can hardly tell they’re the same doors!

These built-in shelves give us plenty of storage space.

You can’t even tell the tub tile surround is the same tile after the white, epoxy paint!

RELATED: DIY WOODEN BATHTUB TRAY

I love the way this tub nook turned out – so cozy!

I framed and hung the salvaged wallpaper above the toilet.

Over on the vanity I added simple bits of functional decor to give it some style but not take up all of the counter space.

It’s the small details that matter most – like this gold leaf jewelry tray and this glam-style soap dispenser!

The little nook to the right of the vanity eventually ended up being my hidden jewelry storage. We just didn’t quite get to finishing the door before the reveal, so for these pictures it simply housed a sweet sign and traditional farmhouse tobacco basket. 🙂

I still can’t get over these floors!

Budget and Sources Breakdown

Lumber = $310

2×4 / Underlayment / Veneer / 1×3 / 1×8 / Crown Moulding / Base Trim / Quarter Round / Shower Trim

Paint & Painting Supplies = $230

Gallon Satin and Quart Gloss White / Quart Black Chalk / Quart Polycrylic / Trays / Plastic / Tape / Black Spray Paint / Stain / Tile Paint / Stencil

Fixtures = $380

Toilet / Mirror (Thrifted) / Faucet / Chandelier / Pendants Cages / Bulbs / Sink

Miscellaneous Hardware = $85

Nails / Plumbing Supplies / Sheet Rock / Nuts / Screws / Shelf Brackets

Accessories/Decor = $130

Baskets (Similar) / Boxes (Ross) / Orchid (Similar)/ Succulent (Similar) / Clock (Similar) / Black and White Print (Similar) / Frames / Soap Dispenser (Similar) / Leaf Tray / Robe Hooks / Fig Tree (Similar) / Tree Basket (Thrifted)

= $1,135 Total Cost

Before and After Pictures

And just for fun, I always like to show side-by-side before/afters so you can envision how we restored what was already there. 🙂

Pretty amazing transformation, huh??

Big thanks go to Chris, my amazing husband that made all of this possible, my step-dad Bob for helping me with the reveal photos, and of course to Linda of Calling it Home for hosting the One Room Challenge which is always such an inspirational collaboration of home design.

And of course, thank YOU, our supporters, for checking out our first ORC journey!

It was a huge learning experience for us!

You can check out our other ORC projects here:

• Backyard Patio Makeover (Spring 2020)
• Traditional Living Room Makeover (Fall 2018)
• Dining Room Makeover (Spring 2018)

As always, let us know in the comments if you have any questions about this project!

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