Swift Demo-Free Bathroom Makeover

This bathroom came together so swiftly, we nearly cannot believe it ourselves (and we witnessed it with our own four eyeballs). If we hadn’t watched it fly along ourselves, while everything simply seemed to line up perfectly, we likely would not have thought it was possible – especially after the longest-bathroom-reno-of-our-lives that we began way back in October. (Yes it is still going, but next week we will have a full reveal & budget breakdown! AT LAST!).

Meanwhile, in less than a week, this upstairs hall bathroom went from looking the way that it has looked for years (old painted double vanity, two yellow-beige sea-shell shaped sinks, bare white walls, old seams in need of some fresh caulk around the tub, etc) to a totally fresh & updated room! We are THRILLED!

And we did it with in short zero dust/reno! We reused a ton of what we had, and although we brought home a bunch of other floor tile options (at this point we are pros at tiling a bathroom floor in an afternoon or two, so we assumed we’d do that to freshen up this space too) we realized we liked the cute vintage yellow tile better than anything else we brought home! So we returned all the tile and worked with what we had. And we are so glad we did!

This bathroom truly is a combo move of adding a few fresh new things to make it feel crisp & updated (new counters, new cabinet doors and drawers, a swift wall treatment, and some new mirrors & accessories) while many of the old elements got to stay thanks to the other updates elevating them so much. The vintage yellow tile adds so much sweetness to this kids bathroom – and what can we say, we have a soft spot for yellow tile (remember we kept the old yellow tile in our second house’s bathroom and updated that room for a mere $51?!).

Let us rewind to the before of this room, as it looked when we picked up the house seven years ago:

We gave it a swift paint makeover a few years back, which in short simply involved painting the walls this crisp white color along with the double vanity, and doing our best to ignore the seashell shaped sinks. Have I mentioned this house came with five of them and these were the last remaining two?!

That swift and extremely low-cost room update worked wonders on making the space feel less dark & dated, even with those seashell shaped sinks still in the mix! We even made those wood frames to go around the stock low-cost mirrors that were screwed into the walls (scroll up to the before to see what we mean) and a cute stool and some new hardware on the cabinets helped too. So truly, if $100 is more your budget for a work-with-what-you-have bathroom makeover, this phase hopefully demonstrates simply how far you can take a room with some paint and elbow grease and a few accessories alone!

Could we have simply left the bathroom that way and still sold our house?! SURE!! We totally could have! The reason we hoped to do more of an update was that the whole house is more updated, and that bathroom would have been the glaring exception to that statement. Plus we had some ideas that gave us the confidence that we’d be able to do it swiftly and well – which we knew would elevate it to the rest of the house’s level of finish, which not only makes us glad but it is strong for resale. Plus we like closure and we leave two seashell shaped sinks here they win. WE CANNOT LET THEM WIN.

So let us go through what changed, how the heck it changed so fast, and we will even share a full budget breakdown for this room update at the end of this post.

New Counters

These were the old yellow-beige seashell shaped sinks. May they rest in peace. Also those crystal knob faucets (they leaked all over the counter when you turned them on). May they also rest in peace.

About a week before this bathroom’s miraculous glow-up, we went to our local stoneyard (we like Capitol Granite for any locals here in Richmond) and asked to see their remnant pieces. We measured the width and length of our existing counters before we went there (they are nearly eight feet long!) to ensure that we could find a remnant that was big sufficient – but there were at least five options that we could have happily used!

The good news about remnant pieces at our local stone yard is that they are all the same discounted price per square foot, whether you choose corian, granite, marble, or quartz. We enjoy polished quartz for how durable it is, and it is a truly strong choice for resale (marble in a kids bath can stain from toothpaste and soap, etc) so it was an straightforward decision for us. The only other choice we had to make was whether we hoped round or square sinks, which the stone yard adds and installs right along with the counter. We went with square solely because it felt the least reminiscent of the old seashells. Yeah, we are petty like that.

The process likely differs from store to store and the timeline certainly varies, but although we were told it might take a few weeks between picking our remnant piece, getting them to come to the house to template it (they measure it themselves using special equipment to be sure the piece they cut is the right size), and then getting them to install it – it only ended up being about a week from slab selection day to install day! They were out templating especially fast and it all simply happened in the blink of an eye. Lucky for us, it was a slow week for other orders, which certainly worked in our favor! The name of the quartz is Journey and the maker is HausPro.

Oh and you can see that we chose a widespread faucet for each sink. It is our go-to of all the bathroom faucet options because it looks so crisp and is especially straightforward to clean when it does not have the components clumped closer or sitting on a backplate that collects mineral deposits from the water. The faucets are $140 each, which is not nothing, but $280 for a totally elevated sink hardware situation to complement our new quartz counters felt like a good call – and we enjoy the result.

New Cabinets

If you listened to last week’s podcast you heard me gush about this local carpenter named Billy who creates vivid new doors and drawers that he adds to existing cabinet frames (remember when he redid our friend Teresa’s kitchen as well as our friend Carey’s kitchen and her rental kitchen?! He’s a MASTER!). For anyone local to the Richmond, Virginia area – here is his contact info: Harper & Taylor Custom Woodworks, LLC (804-467-7014). Billy is the best thing that could have ever happened for the timeline of this room is that we somehow had the foresight to hire him in November to come measure the doors and drawers so he could start building them as we worked away on our bathroom. We simply had bathrooms on the mind, and it felt like a smart thing to get rolling in the background since we figured we’d tackle this room next. Little did we know how much that would assist our “ahh-we are-in fact-moving!” timeline a few months later!

I am sure if you listened to me say “new doors but old frames” on the podcast it sounded like some sort of low-cost cop out or something, but the results are SO CUSTOM and SO ELEVATED!

He spares no detail, makes new solid wood drawer boxes with dovetailed joints, adds new slides and hidden hinges as well as soft close doors and drawers, and creates a ideal and polished inset fit. They look like a million bucks! Plus you get to save yourself the demo and waste that ripping something out simply to replace it with something else.

So last November Billy came over to measure all the openings and quote us for the 12 doors/drawers that we needed (yes, this double vanity is 8′ long! It is LARGE!) and said it would be $750 for him to build all of those custom drawer boxes and doors. We screamed SOLD because it would be three times that much for a new 8′ custom fitted double vanity with inset doors like the ones he makes, and then we learned the rest of the process, which is fairly plain.

We were in charge of removing the old doors and sanding the frames smooth and priming and painting them the color we hoped (we simply used a small foam roller – they are especially straightforward to paint because they are flat). And we simply had to email Billy the final paint color we chose (the exact brand and finish) so he could spray the doors and drawers that he was creating to make it a ideal match. And boy was it a ideal match. You’d never guess the frames are old and the doors are new!

Especially because the drawer boxes are so so lovely. Solid wood, and look at those dovetailed joints on the side. We enjoy that they are all soft close too (so helpful in a kids bathroom to keep anything from getting slammed). We simply could not be happier with the way they turned out. We joked on the podcast that I am already plotting ways to convince Billy to come to Florida with all of his tools for a vacation but also to assist us redo the new kitchen or bathrooms – ha! He truly is remarkable.

Oh and as for the timeline of all this, although we ordered them in November, they take a while to craft, and Billy contacted us right around the time that we had been out to the stone yard to pick our quartz to ask what color we hoped him to spray them! So we literally picked this color about a week ago and then he called and said he could install them the day after our counters went in! Talk about a photo finish!

And speaking of the paint color, the one that we chose for the cabinets was Contented by Sherwin Williams (in a satin finish). It is a quite soft greeny-gray color with a compact hint of blue. It is soft and subtle and although we debated doing basic white in here (I mean for resale that is consistently a especially safe choice), since it is a kids room and it has that soft yellow floor tile, we simply hoped something a little more lively. It was a little nervewracking not to simply panic and scream “SIMPLY WHITE BY BENJAMIN MOORE AGAIN!” we are so glad because this feels like such a charming space now – and hopefully feels extra special to whoever buys our house too.

New Backsplash

Here is where we changed our original plan for this bathroom after realizing that we were going to sell our house. For the last few years I thought a tiled backsplash on this wall would be lovely behind the vanity mirrors – like perhaps white fish scale tile? But when we realized we hoped to fast-track this makeover and put the house on the market we made like Ross Gellar and screamed “PIVOT!”

The answer? A plain wood wall treatment that we have done before (for the duplex kitchen backsplashes). It is Especially AFFORDABLE but looks so crisp and clean, and it is pleasant and wipeable, simply like a beadboard backsplash. This time we in fact simply picked up interlocking shiplap planks from the store instead of cutting our own, because the whole wall only cost us $90 and time was of the essence.

It is especially straightforward – simply cut each shiplap piece to length in the store (Home Depot can do it!) or at home using a miter saw. If you have any obstacles like outlets or lighting boxes, carefully measure and mark those obstacles onto the shiplap board and cut them out using a jigsaw. Then use a nail gun to secure each plank to to the wall (find your studs ahead of time so you can nail into them for the best hold). When all the interlocking boards have been nailed in place, all you have to do is run a thin line of caulk vertically up the wall in each corner and along the ceiling crack and the bottom line where it meets the sink (we used silicone bath caulk for that spot to make it extra water-sealed down by the faucet). And voila!

The pleasant thing about using this exact shiplap product that in fact interlocks is that you do not need to use any sort of spacers, and you do not need to caulk the cracks between each board. This was a much faster route even though it was more pricey than our previous technique.

Oh and at this point in the project we chose to repaint the whole room a bit of a less warm white (we went from Simply White by Benjamin Moore to Extra White by Sherwin Williams). It looks so fresh and truly brightened the whole room. We reused the existing lights and towel holding hooks on each side – but some new mirrors ($50 Target ones – we already had one so we simply needed to buy one more) and new hardware on the cabinet doors brought in up to a fully new looking space.

Oh and the art above the toilet! That has been in this bathroom fairly much since we moved in. They are some cute ocean-themed prints we have had forever! I enjoy that the one on top is a little wider than the one below it (feels a little less expected than putting the wider one on the bottom) and that bottom piece of art is in fact a page from a magazine (Real Plain I think!) that I framed like 8 years ago!

We also updated the shower/tub handle since that used to be one of those crystal ball things and we simply needed to ask them kindly to leave. That along with some fresh white silicone caulk around the tub and top/side of the tile helped revive that whole side of the room – along with the new white paint on those walls and ceiling.

Oh and the rug in here is simply stolen from our new closet since I hoped to give you an idea of what kind of rug I’d add if we were staying here longer. It felt weird to buy a cute little decorative rug for a bathroom a few months before we leave, especially since we have a white bath mat that we put down when the kids use the tub/shower. As a side note, I consistently put those bath mats away for showings whenever I stage a house so people are not stomping all over a white bath mat, which 100% of the time ends up looking so grody and bad. So this room feels ready for showings! Which is fairly dang remarkable considering that about a week ago it had seashell shaped sinks!

The Budget

• 8′ Quartz Counter with 2 Sinks: $1120 (including install)
• New Cabinet Fronts/Drawers: $750 (including install)
• Cabinet Paint: $22 (Contented by Sherwin Williams)
• Cabinet Hardware: $42
• New Faucets: $280
• New Tub & Shower Handle: $79
• Shiplap: $90
• Wall Paint & Shiplap Paint: $42
• Mirror (already owned one): $52
• TOTAL: $2,477

Certainly not dirt low-cost, but the whole room feels SO NEW! And we did not have to jackhammer anything or move any walls – and it came together so so fast! So under $2500 for a bathroom makeover with a large quartz countertop & custom inset cabinet doors?! I will take it!

I hope this post not only shows how you can work with things you have instead of ripping everything out every time, but also demonstrates how a swift phase one update with simply a gallon of paint and some new hardware and accessories can yield a MUCH MORE refreshed space for years until you can afford a deeper reno! Heck, it took us seven years to get around to this update thanks to the low-cost tide-us-over step working so well for so long. And perhaps you will like your phase one updates so much that if you do not have two seashell shaped sinks taunting you, you will might simply do that and enjoy it forever!

P.S. To see some truly low budget updates, here is one that covers our $51 bathroom refresh with more vintage yellow tile, and here is how we brought in board & batten to a hallway for $57.

*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.