1977 Half Bath Makeover- Farmhouse Style

This is not a sponsored post.

Hello everyone! I have taken a break from mountain bike adventures to bring you a new home project blog post! It was way past due, but honestly, when you're juggling 3 kids, home, fitness & projects that's kinda how it works when you're trying to be balanced. A lot of time between posts and a lot of wine.

Well I'm so excited to have one more project down. We still have a long way to go but we have done so much. Woot!!! We had nearly completed the half bath project a while back, but it was still in need of caulk and trim paint as well as a couple of other things. I bought a new mirror and tried to secure it using Scott heavy duty command strips. That didn't work out so well. It seemed to hold up just fine for about a month before suddenly, in the middle of the night, it came crashing down. Luckily it didn't break the mirror, only the mirror trim, which I was able to fix with super glue and a new paint job. Ughhhh. It had seemed like a great idea initially. I thought I would easily be able to adjust it in case it wasn't level. In my defense, he command strips said they'd hold up to 17 lbs and I used 4 of them.

I wound up using this method to hang the mirror back up after the new paint job. It was super easy & worked out great! Now I have no worries of the previous problem happening again.

So this is what we started with:

The half bath is so tiny that this was all they could manage to put on the house listing. Image via HAR. The door actually can't open all the way because it hits the toilet. You kind of have to squeeze around it.

Let me tell you that pictures can be deceiving. This halfbath doesn't look so bad, right? What you don't see is the cracks around the sink drain. You don't see the gaps of missing caulk or how dirty the walls were. You don't see the lack of window trim, or peeling 1970's floral wallpaper under flesh colored flat paint. Seriously... my kids friends were afraid to use it when they were over. One little girl said it was creepy and was afraid to change her clothes in there.

So the fun begins:

Here is the nice man at Lowes ripping plywood into 12" strips for the planked walls for us. 12" strips is all they would do for us. I had initially wanted 6" strips but they would not allow it. I settled for 12" strips to save us some work. 

 Here you can see how un-even the lines were. Partly due to the cuts being imperfect but also because nothing in this house is even close to square. Cursing didn't help so we used a piece of wood trim to hide this big unsightly gap. We used liquid nails on the the back of the planks and secured them with a nail gun.

 We used tile spacers for the gaps, but there were places we had to wing it because the space was either too tight or too far apart, thanks to a very not square room and un-evenly cut planks. Adds character, right? Yes. Let's go with that.

A part of this bathroom redo you don't see is that we discovered mold in the walls about 1 foot up around the entire bathroom and had to cut it out and replace that sheetrock. Which is how we decided on planked walls. Neither hubby nor I are good at mudding. So we decided to cover up our bad mud job with planked walls. It was a much cheaper option than calling in a professional and much less time consuming than mudding ourselves. 

A little glue for boards on the wall. A little caulking. A little paint & I think it worked out ok.

After:

 We decided on DIY wood counter top & under mount sink to replace the old cracked combo. Find tutorial here. We chose to use polycrylic on our counter top instead of tung oil.

 I won't miss that old white linoleum! We used resilient vinyl wood planks to replace the old linoleum.  It's waterproof, budget friendly and easy to install!

The new faucet was an AMAZING score. I seriously recommend shopping Amazon for you fixture needs. They are WAY less expensive than your local hardware store and you can see customer product reviews before buying. 

We painted the cabinet with Sherwin WIllaims Summer White in semi gloss, and the hardware with Rustoleum auto primer and spray paint in Dark Walnut. 

You'll notice stacked wood for the counter top. This is because  once we took out the old counter top there was no support for our under mount sink. We had to improvise.  Overall, I'm much happier with this look than what I had originally. 

We added  farmhouse window trim to the bare window. This little addition is cheap, easy and makes a HUGE difference! 

How do you like my wine jug on the back of the toilet? For 12 bucks I bought the jug of wine @ Kroger for the holidays and scored a jug of wine AND a vase for cheaper than buying @ Hobby Lobby. I do LOVE Hobby Lobby (in fact, I bought the new mirror there with birthday money my sister sent me) but they don't include wine in their glassware. 

The total cost for this cozy little half bath makeover was $450 for flooring, paint, supplies, trim,  plywood planks, counter top wood, new mirror, new faucet, sink, and decor. Not exactly what I wanted to spend on a half bath makeover, but you live and learn, I guess. 

Overall, I can't say I would spend that again... but we had a lot of work to do and I really am happy with the outcome. Sometimes I read other blogs and what people say the cost for reno is and all I can think is, "HOW?". I read numerous tutorials and blogs on half bath makeovers and the costs were well under what I spent. Maybe it's the area I live in. Who knows. It's done now and I'm really happy with not having a creepy half bath.

Thank you for reading! Until next time I wish everyone happy adventures in project land! Please share any questions, comments or your own half bath projects in the comment section! :)