Home | Refreshing A Bathroom On A Budget

In case I haven’t bored you with pictures by now and you’re unaware, Gary and I have been doing up our house since July last year. It’s been both fun and a slog at the same time but we are on the home stretch now (famous last words) so it felt like time to start documenting some of our changes so I can look back and remember how much we did. If this kind of thing interests you, stick around. 

I’m starting with the upstairs bathroom mostly because it’s the only room in the house I currently consider ‘done’. A lot of the rooms are mostly finished but still lacking a blind or one piece of furniture, but the bathroom has a metaphorical green tick next to it and isn’t occupying any of my brain space.

When we bought the house, this bathroom was rather tired looking and had cartoon fish stickers on the wall which – shocker – wasn’t really the look I was going for. We originally had plans to basically rip it out and start again but when we considered our budget and all the other more pressing work that needed doing elsewhere, this room actually ended up being our how-can-we-make-this-nice-without-ripping-out-or-spending-money room. As I am the only bath-lover in the household (there is another bathroom with a shower), it sort of became my project. Hence why the walls are pink. 

Obviously we did spend money on it but it is definitely the cheapest room in the house so to speak.

The thing that made the most difference was changing the bath panel. The one before was bulky, cracked and yellowing; an eyesore. Our bath isn’t a standard size so I sought out a relatively cheap bath panel that we could cut down ourselves. Gary had to remove some of the backing and saw it down but we got it in and it immediately made the room look that bit fresher, and surprisingly bigger.

I wanted a pink/black vibe so we painted the walls a pale pink – I really like the sheen to this particular colour – and then added black and white prints (both from Desenio) in black frames and a black framed mirror from Marks & Spencer. We swapped the chipped mirror above the sink for a little shelf with black hook (£8 from Urban Outfitters), the old toilet roll holder for a black one and removed the hand towel rail for this rope back-of-the-door rail from Melody Maison for more towel-hanging space. After a lot of hunting, we found a unit that would fit between the sink and wall to give us some storage space. The pink-and-black towels were a bargain from George, and the flowers and bath bomb jar were both cheap from Wilkinsons and The Range.

I already owned the bath tray and the blind was left over from the previous owners, hanging in one of the spare rooms. Whilst it probably wouldn’t have been something I would have picked myself, it fitted the pink theme and didn’t cost a penny. Win win. 

Whilst admittedly I would love to re-tile and get rid of those bath handles, I’m pretty chuffed that we've managed to freshen the bathroom up without having to spend too much money. Whilst I'm sure we will want to refurbish it at some point in the future, it feels fresh enough for the foreseeable, and I love having a cute bathroom for my excessive bath bomb-filled baths.