This is the only bathroom on our main floor and is easily the most used bathroom in our home. We knew that this had to be our first bathroom that we tackle as we use it often and so do our guests! We wanted it to be a bold design since we painted our whole home white when we first moved in. This was the perfect place to play around with color.

This remodel was shockingly straightforward. We were intimidated with the thought of removing and reinstalling our toilet, removing the counter tops and having to install a new sink, but we found it to be surprisingly simple! Theo and I do not want to reinvent the wheel and create another detailed step by step tutorial, when there are so many amazing resources out there already. Instead, we want to share our experience, some steps we took unique to our bathroom and the resources that we used to help us learn. We will share a few tips and tricks that we learned along the way that may help you. Links and resources will be at the bottom of the post.

We started off by disconnecting the water line and disconnecting the pipes. We then scored the caulk on all sides of the countertop. The countertops were not connected to the cabinets with screws or anything so we were able to wiggle it loose and remove it.
Then we removed the cabinet doors and painted the cabinets. Removing the hardware to your cabinets is a MUST. It is so stinking easy to remove and reinstall and makes painting your cabinets much easier since you don’t need to tape off the hardware. It takes less time to remove the hardware than it does to tape off and/or carefully paint around. Take this extra step! It is SO worth it.

We then cut the IKEA countertop to size with a jig saw and installed it by laying it directly on top. We cut it perfect to size so it fit snug and did not budge at all. All walls are not perfectly straight so we measured the space (wall to wall) at the front of where the counter would be and then measured again (wall to wall) at the back. We found that the counters were not a perfect rectangle and the width of the counter was actually shorter towards the back wall where the mirror would be. Measure twice, cut once, people!!! (just kidding we typically measure twice, cut once, measure again, cut again, measure another time and cut again just for fun…. 🙄)

starting to tile backsplash

We then started to tile the backsplash. We wanted to do this before we installed the sink so we had plenty of space to work.
I read somewhere that if you know how to make a peanut butter sandwich then you know how to back splash… and it is surprisingly preeetty accurate! Schmear that baby tile and smush it on the wall and you are basically a pro. 😉
I am kind of joking but kind of not, watch the video linked here and you will see it is fairly simple, most of the work goes into getting the tiles cut to size for the edge pieces, but with a wet saw, those were easy breezy.

We let it dry for 24 hours and then went back to grout. The grout was where I messed up… (my dad would be proud of me for admitting that I have faults, my mom and I are basically flawless.. at least we like to think so). You want to take a float and really push all of the mortar into the cracks, I executed that part beautifully. Where I messed up is that I OVERfilled all the grout lines. So our 1/16 in grout lines turned out to be much thicker. If you do this when it is still wet, you can easily just push the float harder in these areas to remove the additional grout, but I did not catch this until it was all nice and dried. I tried scraping some out, but I am just so good at installing quality grout that my work wouldn’t budge!! (See dad, I brought it back to how perfect I am 😉)

Overall, no big deal! It still looks great for our first tiling job and we are really happy with how it turned out.

before grout
after grout

The next step was to install the cabinet doors back on and install the hardware. (This is where you are really happy you removed them in the first place because they are looking professsshhhh)
We then decided to spray paint the current light fixture to tie us over until we could budget to replace it. Not perfect, but better than before… gotta keep that budget tight, you knowwww.

We got a vessel sink because we found out they are very easy to install! We did a lot of research on sinks for bathrooms since this was the first sink we had ever replaced. The sink came with a template as pictured. This made it very easy for us to trace where we needed to cut, and then we took a jig saw and cut away! The sink dropped into the hole and rests right on top of the counter. Then we just used a clear silicone caulk around the seam to create a waterproof seam. After that it was just attaching the plumbing. If you need those steps, watch this video that helped us (linked at the bottom)!

Additionally, don’t forget the star of the show! Remember to reinstall your toilet, this link will show you how.

We then went to Lowe’s and bought some wood for our wall treatment and decided on a height we liked and cut them to size (most department stores will cut them in store!) We then installed them using our nail gun and painted the walls. We used this amazing tutorial by ChrislovesJulia. This is where you can adapt tutorials to fit the room you are working on, for example, Julia used much thicker pieces of wood, but the room they were working on was much larger. This powder bathroom is very small, so we used much thinner pieces of wood to make it more affordable, but also so it would not over whelm the room but still make it feel custom and beautiful.

We chose a moody green color for the top because we had all white in their before, but because it is a windowless bathroom, we found that it made the room look a bit dingy. You could also see every imperfection on the wall in the artificial light. A dark wall color is great at hiding imperfections and looks great in a room without natural light (contrary to popular belief).

A piece of art we brought back from our honeymoon in Hawaii. Our style is definitely not beach-y, but we loved the muddy colors of this fish and thought a bathroom would be a perfect place to put this little fishy. 😉
The shells were an extremely thoughtful gift from Theo’s grandparents. (Thank you Mimi and Poppy!) Some of the shells are from Hawaii which is where Theo was born and where most of his family still lives. There are also shells from a shell shop in Ogunquit, Maine where they had visited. They saw that we had the fish art and thought the shells would go well with it. They were right! (Fun fact, the shells that are from Hawaii were found by Theo’s other grandpa, who finds them when he is out adventuring in the water. Thanks, Papa!)
Cabinets are original to the home, we just removed and replaced the countertop, painted them and replaced the hardware.

C O S T B R E A K D O W N
Sink: $155
Faucet: $120
Tile: $50
Countertop: $24 (From Ikea’s clearance section!)
Paint: $16
Wood and caulk for wall treatment: $30
Spray Paint to update light fixture: Leftover from an old project! but is about $6 new.
Mirror: Shop your own house! We just re-homed this mirror from our dining room.
New Hardware: Leftover from our kitchen update! We found them on Nextdoor.

Below are the links of amazing videos and blog posts that helped us learn along the way!
Thank you to these amazing content creators.

Project Completed November 24, 2019