Bathroom

This family got the best of both worlds: a fresh new bathroom with a classic old-school look.

Some clever DIYing turned this bathroom into a space you won't even recognize.

A few high-impact, low-cost swaps totally transform this builder-basic bathroom.

One UK couple DIYed the meh away, and might make you want to paint your tub orange.

A layout switcheroo plus some fresh new finishes made this bathroom way more spacious and relaxing.

This beige-on-brown bathroom wasn't pretty, and it definitely wasn't practical.

Like many half baths, Jo Char's powder room is tiny and windowless. Logically, she initially went with a light wall color, but all that did was make the room feel "sterile and anemic," she writes.

It took about three weeks and cost around $6,400 to complete this bold black and white bathroom renovation.

Get ready to see a lot of plant action.

As soon as Hope Mendes and her husband saw their Cobb, California, cabin, they knew it was the place they'd been searching for.

When we see a bathroom renovation roll in for under $200, it gets our attention because, let’s be honest, a light fixture alone can cost well over $200!

At first glance, Nidia Serrano’s monochrome bathroom seemed like one we’d all love to come home to at the end of a busy day.

Lucinda Mitra and her husband inherited a bathroom from their UK home's previous owners that was "completely livable, but somewhat tired and dated," she writes.

The powder room didn’t quite make it to the top of Laurel list of must-immediately-make home improvements—until she found out that a wall had to be taken out completely and rebuilt for proper support.

When Katie and ​David​ purchased their home in Memphis, the house had all of the charm of the 1940s—but the bathroom left much to be desired.

Got a bathroom or kitchen with an outdated colour palette? That burnt umber and avocado green tiling not floating your boat in the kitchen or bathroom any longer? Tiling around kitchen backsplash, floor tiles non-sink countertops, fireplace tiles and wall tiles all can be repainted even if they have a shiny finish (continually and regularly wet tiling require an epoxy formula). You might want to consider repainting those eyesore tiles rather than replacing them.

When I moved into my home, the bathroom in the studio over the garage was sad and depressing. When I embarked on my very first home improvement project to update it, I was really proud of the work I did, but it only held up to daily use for two years. The subfloor wasn’t level, so the composite floor was cracking, and the cheap composite counter top on the vanity had a corner chipped off.

Budget is the name of the game, but you’d never know after taking a peek at Andi and Dean’s newly renovated bathroom. Following the purchase of their San Francisco Victorian last year, the couple has taken on the remodel room by room. Check out the amazing transformation of their master bath!After falling in love with an Anne Sacks tile that was slightly over budget, the couple did some research and found a similar Italian porcelain for less.

BEFOREJenny had long wanted a chair to sit in as she gives her girls their baths, and with $4.50, paint, and elbow grease she transformed a sad seat and vanity into something that stylishly fit the bill. AFTERJenny of Little Green Notebook picked up the vanity for free from an auction house that wasn’t able to sell it in its beat-up condition. Jenny realized midway through that it wasn’t worth refinishing the wood, and she refreshed the vanity with her Dremel and a coat of paint.

Although most of us have big plans for our bathrooms (someday!) sometimes big long expansive vanities with oversize mirrors can seem like a hindrance and leave you with less of a personal feeling. Want to see a neat trick to not only add storage but a bit of a custom built-in look as well?Over at Home Talk, there’s a great example of what a little trim can do for your bathroom. It’s a simple way to get a customized look on the cheap.

This before & after renovation stars a once messy, chaotic laundry area in the home of four small children and their busy, creative parents. What’s truly wonderful is that they took an area that’s usually an afterthought, the laundry room, and turned it into a well-organized, cheerfully stylish space.According to Katie from Potluck Love, her old laundry room wasn’t a proper room, but a “hot mess of laundry” crammed into a hallway in the back of their home.

This bathroom had lots of color in all the wrong places prior to its renovation. Old cabinetry and cheap teal tile made this bathroom makeover a must. Check out the fresh and modern facelift that this bathroom desperately needed after the jump… When selecting materials for a bathroom, the most important material to start with is the stone or tile, along with the cabinetry.

Sean has been transforming his white box of an apartment into a stylish and personalized home. In one of his recent blog posts Sean shows off this DIY bathroom lighting makeover that works around an existing awkward location in a creative way.This lighting over the double basin sink in Sean’s bathroom was unattractive – both as a light fixture and in the shadows it cast on the folks under it.

A key element of renovating a room is knowing when to say when. If you have a limited budget or limited time then the most helpful thing you can do is to be realistic about what you can achieve. This is especially true when you purchase a house that is a ‘fixer-upper,’ because then you are in danger of succumbing to project fatigue, when there is so much to do in every direction that it is difficult to focus on just one thing.

When Josh, Lauren and their twins moved into their new townhouse in Washington DC’s historic Mount Pleasant neighborhood, they knew right away they had to change the bathroom. The retro pink, peach and black tiled bathroom, while quaint and vintage, was not their style. And in a smallish townhouse the room felt too busy and crowded. (Perhaps they also knew that once their daughters got old enough to talk they would fall in love with the bathroom’s perky pink: time was of the essence!

With some rehabs you want to strip away all the years and start over with clean, modern space. With others, you want stay true to the home’s original design period. For those times, there are stores out there that offer antique and reproduction hardware and lighting. These are a few of our favorites. House of Antique Hardware This Portland, Oregon-based company stocks everything from door and window hardware to lighting and electrical supplies ranging from Colonial to Mid-Century.

You may have seen the kitchen in this West Village apartment, which got a modern update courtesy of designer Carly Yates. One of the apartment’s bathrooms also got a much-needed facelift. Check out the transformation after the jump.This bathroom renovation is all about the details. Lots of clever choices keep the room spacious, modern, and very functional. From Carly: The large and light feeling of the bathroom was achieved by wall mounted fixtures that allow the tile to flow underneath.

This relatively plain bathroom got a major face lift with something that looks as good as wallpaper, but is actually impeccably painted, DIYed stencil handiwork. While that has a huge impact on the space, there are a few other east improvements that A Pumpkin and a Princess implemented that helped transform the room — can you spot them?Crystal from A Pumpkin and a Priness set out to makeover her guest bathroom, all on her own.

Charlotte Turtle and her husband didn’t have a master bath in their home and wanted to find a way to remedy the situation. They did, however, have a large laundry room attached to their bedroom that they thought just might do the trick. Follow me after the jump to see what they came up with…They began this renovation with planking the walls, leaving one wall with exposed brick. For Charlotte, the design element key to making this rustic bathroom a success was the sink basins.

This was a transformation from a minimally heated, dark, unlivable attic-like space to a bright, modern master suite. The main features include the headboard wall with wall hung sinks on the back side, gas stove, library, skylight, built in bench seat, walk-in closet, and the spacious bathroom. One of the primary design goals was to keep the space wide open while still offering subtle boundaries and separations between functions.

From Megan:  Our whole house was a mess when we bought it. Nothing had ever been updated properly. The bathroom was our first major interior project and not being very handy, we hired someone to do it for us. It was completely gutted because there were rotten joists in the floor and there wasn’t anything salvageable in the room. It also had a very cramped feeling, so we changed the layout at the suggestion of our contractor.

This bathroom isn’t terribly awful — but it isn’t terribly interesting, either. Come see what some new lighting, a framed-out mirror, and some board and batten walls can do for a rather ho-hum bathroom.Jenny from Project Maddox was determined to tackle her kids’ bathroom and make it just a little less “just moved in” and give it a more custom look.

House & HomeMandy used the Ace Hotel in New York as inspiration, and chose vintage-style fixtures and finishes, with warm brass accents and black trim. The result is classic and dramatic and befitting the home’s history.Traditional sconces, and the weathered wood vanity, add to the old-school vibe.See more photos, and the rest of the step-by-step house renovation over at Canadian House & Home.

When we first saw this basement bathroom at the open house before we purchased our home, my first thoughts were, “that’s gotta go”. For the next six months after the house was ours, this bathroom renovation sat on the back burner until we finally had the time to tackle it.Once the time came to jump into it we were faced with problem after problem (isn’t that how all renovations go?).

You can see more angles over at Rebecca’s blog, Mid Century Modern Remodel Thanks for sharing your project with us, Rebecca!

When you buy a house with a pink, mauve, salmon and coral bathroom, it might be time to renovate. Some people like that kind of thing, but Katie isn’t one of them. She and her husband tore out the carpet the day they moved in. Soon after that, they made a plan and got to work on the rest of the renovation. You might be surprised to learn that this beautiful bathroom update only cost $3,500. Katie and her husband did a lot of the work themselves, and made some smart choices.

Before there were loofahs and washcloths, people used an old fashioned bar of soap sewn into a felted wool covering. The wool was exfoliating and had antibacterial qualities, and the soap created a nice lather without wasting its suds. In the last few years, felted soap has come back into fashion (it’s popping up in lots of Etsy shops as well as Anthropologie, and is a popular gift item this season). Today, we show you how to make it!