My Big Bathroom Makeover

I’m incredibly proud to say that my bathroom is officially DONE.

I just put the final tweak on the bathroom vanity last Saturday and it’s ready for its big reveal.

The bathroom is actually the room that underwent the most changes, so it’s really exciting to see it all done!

If you’re buying an older condo and are thinking of doing renovations, I highly recommend renovating the bathroom! Almost every time I’ve moved into a new apartment, someone else has lived there. If it’s a rental, people tend to be pretty disgusting. It’s never as clean as you want it to be. Even if the landlord has tried to fix it up a bit, the buildings I’ve lived in have always been old, so a lot of the time they just paint over dirt instead of cleaning first.

SO, because we ripped out the bathroom, we got rid of ALLLLL of the dirt from the previous owners/tenants and the bathroom feels 100% new and 100% clean, which I absolutely love.

This is what we were dealing with when we bought the condo: dark, dingy and dated.

Look how gross those floors are and the grout in the shower! And that clunky dark vanity with the weird off centre sink and mini backsplash? Not to mention that terrible brown colour that the entire apartment was cloaked in. I shudder to think of it.

The toilet and the tub, along with their respective fixtures, were in good condition. We decided to keep those, but everything else was gone!

My dad is a contractor and is the best person ever because he ripped out all the tile and the vanity for me and made it all sparkly and new with tiles that I picked.

I’ve been in love with marble hexagons for a long time, so I splurged a little on the bathroom floor and did a cararra marble hexagon tile. It was a small space, so I figured why not?! The tile that I chose can be found here. It’s the 4″ hex in bianco carrara. SO gorgeous!

The bathroom floor was one of the first major things that my dad did, so I remember squealing with delight when I first saw it.

Next to go in was the tile for the shower. True to form, I debated over this for a really long time. There were so many tiles that I liked, but I didn’t want something that clashed with the floor. My friend Natasha was renovating her condo at the same time and suggested a large white tile similar to what she was doing. After thinking about it for a few days, I knew this was the way to go. It would be simple and minimal, plus a bigger tile would mean less grout to clean, which I’m always a huge fan of. Cleaning the shower is quite possibly my least favourite cleaning task.

The tile in the shower is also from Sarana and it’s a 12″x24″ glazed white porcelain. Super basic and inexpensive, but looks great. I also had my dad lay the tile vertically to give the small shower even more height.

After the floor and the shower were properly grouted and cleaned, it was up to me to start painting. I chose to use Benjamin Moore’s chantilly lace throughout the entire apartment, which was an amazing recommendation from a friend! It’s the perfect crisp, clean, cool white without being too sterile. For the bathroom and the kitchen I chose a semi-gloss so that it would be easier to clean.

That’s only one coat and already I felt like it made such a huge difference! Everything got brighter and the space started to feel larger.

After the paint was done, my dad installed the vanity (which is this one from IKEA). I liked this vanity because it was plain, simple and floated. It’s quite large, so I think the fact that it’s floating keeps it from feeling too heavy and grounded. Then the toilet was reinstalled and the baseboards were put on. At that point I was able to start decorating!

I debated wallpapering the bathroom for a while because it’s such a small space, so I figured it would be less expensive to do. But then I hit a stroke of genius and realized that if I found a patterned shower curtain, that was basically like having the biggest wall covered in wallpaper.

Luckily, I found an amazing shower curtain with bright pink flamingos! It’s by far one of my favourite apartment purchases to date. It’s from H&M, which actually has some stunning home items. They don’t have the flamingo one anymore, but this one is pretty fun as well.

My bath mat is also from H&M, and they currently have the white one available. Or a green if you wanted to go with that leafy shower curtain I linked to 🙂

For the art in the bathroom, I wanted to keep some subtle pink and tropical accents, so I hung up some cactus photos that I took in Spain. I edited them so that the sky looked more of a dusty pink/mauve kind of colour and I love how they turned out. You can print off your own here!

The art over the toilet was a simple watercolour I did using pink, green and grey watercolours, a bit of salt and some patience. So simple, but so pretty!

As I said, the vanity is from IKEA, but I wanted to upgrade it a little bit with some more substantial/aesthetically pleasing handles. I got 2 of these drawer pulls and installed them myself. I think it’s a small change, but it helps to elevate and change up the cabinet just enough so that it doesn’t look super basic IKEA.

The mirror that was originally over the vanity was a dated medicine cabinet. Since I had so much storage in the new vanity, I decided I could just go with a simple mirror. I debated for a long time about the shape. In the end, I went with this square one because I didn’t have a ton of height, the vanity was pretty wide and I have a circle mirror just outside the bathroom. Oh and I didn’t want to pay a crazy high price. Mirrors are expensive!

The candle that’s on the vanity is from one of my favourite candle companies - Vancouver Candle Co. and it just smells SO good. I’m slightly embarrassed to say this, but I feel like I love it because it smells kind of like Abercrombie cologne. Please don’t judge me TOO harshly.

And last but not least - let’s talk lighting! The light fixture that was in the bathroom was missing a shade and then my dad broke another during the renovations, so a new light fixture was inevitable. I went with this globe light fixture from Lowes to match most of the other light fixtures in my apartment and it wasn’t obscenely expensive.

So, that’s the big bathroom makeover and I’m beyond thrilled with it! Renovating the bathroom and getting rid of all the dirt from the old tenants went a long way in making this apartment truly feel like my own.

xo, tess.