I completed a quick bathroom remodel the weekend on the guest bathroom with the help of my fiancés mom, (Cindy) and one of my roommates (Alex). I kept the existing vanity and shower, but gave everything a nice touchup. The changes included new paint on the walls and vanity cabinets, new towel and toilet paper holders, new mirror, new vanity light, new baseboards, and a new curved shower rod curtain. Both the shower rod curtain and vanity light are the same model as in the master bathroom we remodeled recently. I kept the existing over the toilet wall mounted storage, since it’s in good shape. Here are the before pictures:

The vanity top was pretty nice, but the cabinets were yellow (WHY) and the hardware was bad. I took the vanity doors and hardware off, and painted everything with 2 coats of primer (Kilz) and 2 coats of a white finish coat (Behr). I bought new hinges and handles to finish it off, along with lots of caulk and wood fill to mask the previous imperfections in the cabinets.

Before painting, I took off the old school toothbrush holder, toilet paper holder and towel holder. They were plastered in, so I did as good a job as I can with re-drywalling and patching. We bought 1 gallon of a green paint, and didn’t even use half of it. Cindy was a huge help with the painting. Notice the blue outlines on the mirror - that’s the size of the new medicine cabinet mirror.

There were also 2 hooks on the ceiling, maybe for hanging plants? They were above the old vanity light. I took the hooks down and plastered and painted over them.

Since we painted before installing the new vanity light, it was dark in the bathroom. There are no windows! We used a work lamp to paint.

This bathroom doesn’t have pull out drawers in the vanity, they’re blanks, so there isn’t much storage. I decided to buy the biggest medicine cabinet I could find, which was 48” x 30”. It’s almost as big as the old mirror was. This gives more storage and a more modern look. A new vanity light helped as well. I installed a dual curved shower curtain holder, so you can hang towels on the outside and people can still shower. The toilet paper holder has a storage spot on top for baby wipes. Alex was helpful in installing all the new wall hanging hardware.

The old shower tile doesn’t match great with the new bathroom, but it’ll get retiled…eventually… This is nice for now. There’s enough storage for my roommates to keep their stuff off of the vanity so that guests can have a nicer bathroom, and the room seems so much bigger now that it’s actually nice.

As for the costs, I bought most of the smaller items off Amazon, the Mirrored Medicine Cabinet was bought in person from Home Depot, and the Vanity Light was bought online from Lowe’s with a coupon. I already had the primer and white paint, tools, paintbrushes, drywall, etc. Here’s the breakdown.

Final Expenses:

• Mirrored Medicine Cabinet $150
• Vanity Light $100
• Paint $38
• Caulk $6
• Cabinet Hardware $50
• Towel Bar $19
• Hand Towel Holder $17
• Toilet Paper Holder $12
• Double Shower Curtain Rod $35

Total: $428!

It was under $500, sweet! As a bonus, here’s a picture of a 48” x 30” mirrored medicine cabinet in the back of the Corvette. The guy at Home Depot who helped me load it in was skeptical, but this car is as practical as any truck.