$500 Scandi-Style Bathroom Redo | Apartment Therapy

When you only have one bathroom at home, it feels especially important to make it feel functional and inviting—no matter how small! DIYer and YouTuber Delaney Hoskins knew the bathroom in her 1943 fixer upper would need plenty of work, between the worn linoleum floors, beat up wood vanity, and cracked and rusted sink. “As soon as we bought the house, we knew we needed to fix the space up,” Delaney says. “It just felt gross every time we were in there, no matter how much we cleaned it. With it being our only bathroom, we knew guests would see it and probably be grossed out like we were.” Plus: the old toilet was inexplicably super low—not exactly comfortable.

Since it’s the only bathroom in the house, Delaney and her husband Cameron wanted to make sure it was a space they loved. “We didn’t feel good in the space and we wanted to make it somewhere that would would enjoy using,” Delaney says. They wanted to focus on making the space brighter and more modern, and helping tie it in with the colors in the rest of the house.

First, Delaney and Cameron cleaned and painted the walls and ceiling vent. “This was easy and made a huge difference in lighting up the space, and it felt cleaner,” Delaney says. After that, they swapped out the old shower head, curtain, and rod, and painted the dark wood vanity a glossy white.

The new white vanity makes the space look way bigger, since it almost blends into the wall. New gold pulls bring the vanity into 2020. Delaney and Cameron scrapped the busted and rusted old top, replacing it with a faux concrete one instead. A new high-neck black faucet looks super high-end and expensive—but at just $89 from Lowe’s, it was super budget-friendly. Delaney also used budget-friendly stick-on subway tile to cover the old backsplash and hung a new mirror from Target and new lighting from eBay.

The hardest part of the redo was the floor, which Delaney did with peel-and-stick floor tiles. The project required precise cutting around the toilet and vanity. “Although most of it was easy, the cutting around hard places was really frustrating and we wasted a lot of tiles that way,” Delaney says. But the payoff was worth it, giving the room a hit of mid-century design befitting the house.

Finally, Delaney and Cameron added floating shelves above the toilet and filled the room with decor. The space is unrecognizable, and the cost for the project came in at just $500. “My favorite part of the project was how it made me feel. Not only do I feel happy when I walk into the room, I feel pride,” Delaney says. “Knowing that I pushed through obstacles and did it on a budget makes me so happy.”

Inspired? Submit your own redo here.