Well good morning y’all from my striped Magnolia sheets. John literally was an angel of mercy today and let me sleep until the audacious hour of 1:00 pm!!! I know it sounds totally wild but I am pretty sure my body was in desperate need of some decent rest because I NEVER sleep that long! We did the math and I traveled more than 10 hours yesterday with work and the commute back to “small-town-USA,” otherwise known as Clinton, SC.
I have been MIA lately on this little blog of mine. If I am being completely honest, when the time came to renew I almost hung up the towel. Time is a precious commodity these days, and every day there just seems to be less and less of it. Honestly, both of us have been so busy with work, setting up the new house, and settling into our new routine that there is hardly time for anything else. So when the time came to say yes or no to Inflight and Fabulous, I was leaning towards no. John was the one who ultimately convinced me to keep going. So here I am… for now.
As far as married life is concerned, I have honestly never been so content. It is so nice to have a built-in best friend for life! After the wedding, we booked a luxurious all-inclusive resort for a week for our honeymoon in Turks and Caicos. As luck would have it, an airport employee decided to run off with my purse right before we left and we were forced to cancel because I had to get a new passport. So we decided last minute to go to Key West. Key West has always been one of the destinations on our travel list so we both figured let’s just kill two birds with one stone. We were literally in Key West for 24 hours when a tropical storm moved in… and John and I drove through the night in hurricane-force winds to get on a flight out. So it was definitely an interesting first week of marriage. The whole situation was so far-fetched it was literally almost out of a romantic-comedy movie. I know one day we will laugh about it, and I really can’t complain because the 24 hours that we did have were pretty much perfect. Y’all better believe though that I am calling for a redo!!! 😉
We moved into the Clinton house right after our honeymoon and I have been in full nesting mode ever since. If you know me, you know that I am literally chomping at the bit to get a new project and a new house is FULL of them. I have had so many ideas – poor John is quite overwhelmed. He told me, “Okay well why don’t we finish this project and be content before we start another one…” *Crickets. Little does he know we will be bouncing from one project to the next for the next sixty years – so he had better just sleep in his paint clothes 😉
The first project that I tackled in the new house was the main bathroom. It wasn’t bad… just very gray, and VERY boring. It didn’t do anything for my soul when I walked in there so I knew that it needed a little something. A little paint, a little wallpaper, a little blood, sweat, and tears… Okay, okay, MAYBE it wasn’t that dramatic. But it needed a little something-something, and I found the inspiration one-day scrolling through Wayfair.
There is just something about a bathroom y’all that just cries out for wallpaper. I have been trying to go really neutral with design in the whole house because I tend to lean towards the “feminine.” All the florals are just calling my name y’all. They are just callin’ my name… but it’s safe to say they aren’t calling John’s. So when I saw the peel and stick twigs wallpaper by RoomMates on Wayfair I knew that was the one. It is a clean, neutral pattern and I felt like it would totally transform the room. The bathroom kind of designed itself from that point on. I tried to keep the whole project as affordable as possible because we do live in a VERY small, one-stop-light kind of town and I know that for resale purposes we have to be very thoughtful. The wallpaper was the most expensive part of the project. I spent $241.52 to wallpaper the entire bathroom, and if I had been a little more careful with matching the pattern I would have spent more. The Twigs wallpaper claims to be a 1:1 match but it was definitely not, so you end up using way more wallpaper to match and wasting a good part of each roll. In full truth, by the end, I had to throw out my perfectionist spirit and do the best I could because I would have had to order several more rolls to finish if I perfectly matched the pattern, and it was starting to go over my budget. The reviews all claimed it was an easy paper to hang and match, but I definitely struggled in some areas. I think it probably makes a significant difference if you are doing one wall vs. a whole room. The corners were the hardest part as you have to cut off the paper at 1/4 of an inch after it wraps around because of the adhesive. If you don’t… eventually the paper will fall, so in the end, that threw off my pattern matching even more and frustrated me to no end. I worked through my frustrations and finally was pleased with the end result. It is perfectly imperfect, just like the best of us.
The rest of the money that I spent was on paint, new hardware, and some new globes to update the dated light fixture. For the paint to do the vanity I used a Valspar cabinet paint, which I will link below, in the color of Midnight Fog. It only cost me a whopping $25.98. I also updated the cabinet hardware with some clear glass pulls from Hobby Lobby for $4.99 a piece. The paint and new hardware made one of the biggest impacts on the room, and the whole project was cheap and easy. I did all the painting over the span of three days! It really gave the vanity a more custom, updated look. All that I had to do to give the light fixture a new look was replace the dated, frosted globes. I found some clear schoolhouse globes at Lowes for $10.98 apiece and for about $35.00 it totally updated the light. I finished off the bathroom with a new mercury glass mirror from my Mom’s goodwill pile (always browse through your family Goodwill pile that is all I have to say – one man’s trash is definitely another man’s treasure), some art that my aunt was getting rid of (again my point…), some new pieces from our wedding registry, and an antique bronze metal towel ring from Hobby Lobby. I will link all of my products at the end of the post!
In the end, I finished giving the entire bathroom a revamped makeover for less than $300, and I can’t even believe the difference! There were definitely some hiccups along the way… cough cough like RoomMates claiming that the wallpaper was a 1:1 pattern, and having to go back and reorder more THREE times! Nevertheless, after some time, and some muscle I finished the bathroom almost entirely by myself and I am so happy with it. It’s by no means perfect, but it’s perfect for this little house. You know what they say, “Little house, lots of Love.” Now let me stop my jabbering about the process and get to the cream of this crop: the photos!
So there you have it! Our budget makeover was a total success, and we were both so happy with the end result. A little bit of wallpaper and a whole lot of love took our very boring bathroom from bland to beautiful. Now it’s time to find something else to flip! I’m sure that won’t be too big of a problem 😉 I already have a few ideas…
XOXO,
Wallpaper: Twigs by RoomMates in Gray and White
Paint: Valspar Cabinet and Furniture Paint tinted to Midnight Fog
Shower Curtain: Woven Stripe Knotted Fringe Shower Curtain – Hearth & Hand with Magnolia
Glass Cabinet Pulls from Hobby Lobby
Antique Bronze Hexagon Metal Towel Ring from Hobby Lobby
Design and Combine Clear Clear Glass Vanity Light from Lowes
Window Frame Paint: Behr Antique Tin in Satin
I love it!!! Are you sure it’s the same bathroom? I may need to steal some of your ideas.
Joanne it is definitely the same bathroom! Let me know and I will come down and we can redo something!!
Great post! A DIY on a dime budget bathroom makeover can be a cost-effective way to update a tired or outdated bathroom without breaking the bank. Simple and affordable upgrades such as a fresh coat of paint, new hardware, and a statement shower curtain can instantly give the space a facelift. DIY projects such as refinishing a vanity or reglazing a bathtub can also save money while adding value to the room. It’s important to prioritize updates that have the most impact, such as lighting and fixtures, and to shop around for deals on materials and decor. With some creativity and resourcefulness, a budget bathroom makeover can be a great way to transform a space and increase its functionality and value.