$5 Powder Bath ‘Renovation’

I know this isn’t really a renovation … but we managed to ‘disguise’ all of the previous ‘builder grade’ aspects of the small little room.

This is what the bathroom looked like when we first bought the house, 6 years ago. The craziest part to me is that this bathroom was built in 2005. That is LINOLEUM on the floor. And brass hardware on the doors/sink/fixtures. Linoleum and brass.

In 2005.

CRIME!!!!

So, a couple years ago, while my husband was on ‘forced vacation’ for 2 months, we upgraded the floors to 18x18 tile. Tile … which was free. Before my husband was laid off, he worked in the construction industry and was given all sorts of materials. He was also the only Spanish speaking supervisor (or employee, for that matter) at his company. Which meant that when it came time to have a little tile installed … my husband’s tile crew was there. And did it for … nothing. Who does that?!

Since then, we decided to change out all the hardware throughout the house. No more brass. Anywhere. I hate brass.

Problem is … it’s expensive to change out every piece of hardware. I know, because I shopped. And shopped. And shopped. The cheapest that I could change out JUST door handles for the whole house was $400. Ridiculous for something totally cosmetic.

Well, we got creative recently and bought a few cans of Rust-Oleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint. I’m telling you … that stuff is magic in a bottle. We got busy. And, here is the result.

 

My husband built that mirror frame a couple years ago out of some old flooring pieces he was given … but, we had painted it black, which didn’t match anything in our house. So, he took it down, along with the iron hanging above the toilet, and sprayed them to match the light fixture, faucet, toilet paper holder, towel ring, doorknobs, trashcan, and yes … step stool. That $3 step stool used to look like this:

And thanks to a little spray paint, it now matches everything and looks like this:

I know. I’m hysterical. Laugh yourself all the way to Walmart and pick yourself up some Rustoleum. :D
Here’s a few more pictures:

Like I said, yes, we painted the trash can … AND the toilet handle. Sounds silly. LOOKS awesome.

Oh. And the toilet paper holder. Can’t forget to spray paint that one. ;)

The light fixture (which doesn’t photograph very well with the lights on OR off), towel ring, faucet, and electrical plate:

The handles on the faucet used to be … you guessed it … brass, along with everything else. We simply unscrewed the handles and sprayed them along with everything else.

And, there you have a simple $5 bathroom ‘renovation’. Of course, you’ll want to budget a little more to lay tile. This was just one aspect of our overhaul that we lucked out on.

 

We found Rustoleum’s Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint to be the cheapest at Walmart: $5.77/can. (Although we also found it at Lowe’s AND Home Depot) Worth every cent!

Here’s one last side by side comparison:

Refurbishing Hardware

**** UPDATE to this post can be found HERE.

It finally happened. After 6+ years of living in this house with brass hardware everywhere … and cheap white plastic light plates and outlet covers … I decided to take the time to take off every single door handle, lock plate, dead bolt, outlet cover, switch plate, etc. and used Rust-Oleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint to give everything a face lift … for pennies. That’s what I call MAKING CENTS!

So, here is everything before:



Builder’s grade brass …



… and cheap white plastic covers on everything.



Superman set up the garage, covered everything of value with tarps, and went to work.



He had everything down to a science. He stuck all the screws through a shoe box lid so that the tops of every screw got painted as well.



But, he wasn’t about to stick bright white safety covers into those outlets … so he rigged up a few more box tops and painted all of the safety covers to the outlets to match. Here is the result:



Uncovered, I think they look great (sorry about the blurriness) …



Slap the painted safety covers on and they blend in well and look so sharp on the wall.



I am not going to lie to you … this project was intensely time consuming. Plan on about 2 full days of work. It takes lots of time to get every piece of hardware off of every door and wall … and then a couple hours to get everything painted evenly without drips.



Speaking of drips … see how the handles are lined up across the 2x4 in that picture? Yeah. Don’t do that. Drip. City. Instead, paint them while they are upright (as shown in the picture just above that one). Much better result … way less frustrating. (ps- Check out the mismatched frames hanging up … they all got a coat of paint to match. However, again, I would lay them flat/horizontal, not vertical. Way less dripping that way)



This is the hardware on the front door (please ignore the dirty paint … we’ll get there eventually). It was so weathered and worn out. It used to be brass. But, by the time we painted it (and made it look amazing again) it was looking really worn out. I had priced out hardware to replace it: $180 on the low end. Um. No thanks. How about 50 cents worth of spray paint instead? :D



The inside of the front door. Light plate, handle, deadbolts … all painted to match.
Don’t they look so sharp?!

In all, we replaced 29 door handles and probably 100 outlet covers and switch plates. Total cost? About $15 worth of spray paint. Total savings? About $1,000. Win.

Here’s the side by side, one last time:



And yes, everything is holding up GREAT!