Before & After: The Two-Week Bath Remodel for Less Than $5,000 - Remodelista
Photography by Meredith Swinehart. Several months ago, my close friends Serena Cameirano and Ron Keizer bought their first place together, a two-story 1930s row house in San Francisco. But two weeks later, having direly misjudged the time it would take, they quit to welcome houseguests and resolved to pick up the project after their company left. Knowing that Remodelista’s DIY Bath Week was impending, I suggested to my friends that we redo their bathroom together as a firsthand story. Feeling this just might be the impetus they needed, they gamely said yes. How did we do it on such a short timeline? (In addition to being affordable, it’s made in the US.) For the floor, we selected 12-by-24-inch natural slate tile from Ceramic Tile Design in SF for $5.10 a square foot. We knew the contractor could start on the shower in the meantime, so that was good enough. My friends’ sink was in fine shape, so we left it and the faucet alone. We had the contractor remove two rusted, wall-mounted soap dishes, a toilet paper holder, and a towel bar, and we replaced those with basics from Home Depot: a Lyndall 18-Inch Towel Bar for $24.98 and a Lyndall Single-Post Toilet Paper Holder for $19.98, both in polished chrome from Delta. We struggled with the mirror. In the end, we purchased a cheap mirror from Home Depot and tucked it into an Ikea Ribba Frame in medium brown; $19.99 for a 19-by-27-inch frame. Serena put in a special request for a few succulents perched in the well of a pass-through window (which for some odd reason opens into the garage). A new Ticking Stripe Shower Curtain ($59 from West Elm) now hangs from a 72-inch Tension Rod in chrome; $16.99 from Home Depot. The last of the accessories: an Acacia Square Plate; $6.50 from Muji, and a Mixed Weave Bath Mat–100 percent cotton and made in India–for $29 from West Elm. The existing bathroom was surrounded in 1970s-era, blue faux tile. The walls were covered in huge bands of plastic–the three of us had never seen this before, and we hope to never see it again. The showerhead and bathtub faucets were old and leaky, so my friends asked the contractor to remove them prior to installing the new tile. The floor was covered in dotted green linoleum. Serena and Ron wanted to keep the cost of their bathroom remodel under $2,000. Labor for two contractors at $40 per hour (removal of existing faux tile and flooring, installation of shower and floor tile, painting of walls and ceiling): $2,700.