Our Barn House “Murder” Bathroom Renovation

Ah… the downstairs bathroom in our barn house.

When we toured the house before buying it, the bathroom was one of those rooms that made your skin crawl instantly.

It was so grungy & gross and the floor looked like someone was murdered on it. We knew we’d have to gut the whole thing before we ever moved in.

It was ROUGH, but it really freshened up and turn out great!

See for yourself:

The bathroom was so gross. The cheap, vinyl shower surround was glued on with huge globs on caulk, the popcorn ceiling was falling off in chunks, all the wood trim was mismatched, the faucets leaked, and the floors were nightmarish.

The backside of the bathroom is where the laundry are was supposed to go. You can see how the floors had pretty bad water damage from the old washer leaking over the years. Whoever painted the walls painted right over the bubbling wall paper … but at least they kept the cow light switch plate!

SIDE NOTE: I’m kinda thinking that maybe the curtain above the toilet used to be white, but was now full of poop particles. I’ve never lifted such a heavy curtain in my life. Eww.

There was one of those gross curtains over the mirror too. And check out that cheesy vinyl sticker above. It says “Wash Your Hands – Mom Says So!!”  Let’s just say that washing your hands in this bathroom didn’t make you feel any cleaner. lol

This is the reason we called it the “murder bathroom”. It looks like someone took a hatchet to the heart and landed right in front of the sink. It just added to the dark, gloomy feel of the rest of the room. We needed to really brighten this place up to forget it ever looked like this.

So pretty! Look at the “gorgeous” sink faucet. Brass is in these days, right? lol  It was leaky and sure didn’t make you clean after washing your hands…

… but the tub faucet sure did! HA!!!! Looks tasty, huh? No wonder the previous owner globbed so much caulk everywhere. This was SO NASTY!!!!!!

The first thing to go was that soggy old shower surround. We found some “interesting” wall paper behind it. Also, note all the moldy drywall it was hiding.

We ripped out everything in the bathroom from the sink, to the toilet, to all the drywall. We went all the way down to the studs. It actually felt so much cleaner even with the huge pile of trash in the middle of the floor.

Once the trash pile was cleaned up, we installed a new, non-leaky washer hookup, added new outlets & wiring, and installed some of that blue, mold resistant drywall to help make our renovation last longer. We also reshaped the ceiling, so we could install a new light and a ventilation fan.

We had to pull out the tub to redo some plumbing and install new flooring. It was was so cruddy, with a bad case of “tub ring”. It drove us crazy trying to clean it, but we eventually got it looking like new again.

We installed cement board around the shower surround area in preparation for the new tile. You can also just make out the shower head pipe that we had to raise and the new tiles installed under the tub before we dragged that heavy beast back in place.

We decided to keep the flooring pretty simple & easy to clean, so we put down underlayment over the old subfloor and then installed new gray VCT tiles (similar to the black & white VCT tile flooring we put in the kitchen and dining room).

We also wanted to separate the laundry area from the rest of the bathroom, so we built this wooden 4″x4″ partition to hide a track for some sliding doors. That way we could block off the laundry when we didn’t want to look at it.

After the new VCT tile flooring was installed, we added a new low flow toilet and a smaller pedestal sink to open up the floor space and make the room feel bigger. We found that modern sink faucet on Ebay for $75 and it works great!

Here’s the new white subway and black & white marble tile we added to the shower surround area. We wanted something that looked bright & fresh and would never go out of style. We also added a corner shelf for shampoo, etc. You can also see the door we painted gray and the new stainless door handle we installed too.

This room’s a little awkward to get a good photo, but here’s an after shot of the backside of the room.

The subway tile was finished with black grout… we installed a new L-shaped curtain rod with the funky white & green curtain from Target… we installed a gray window shade from Ikea… and you can see the “barn” style light and ventilation fan on the ceiling as well as the board & batten trim, and the new laundry wire shelving.

SIDE NOTE: That Polaroid style toilet paper dispenser gets a lot of comment from people that use the bathroom. They’re usually creeped out a bit. lol

And here’s a shot of the front side of the newly renovated bathroom. We added those “barn” style lights next to the round mirror we got from Target (that we painted purple) as well as outlets on either side and a new double light switch (no more cow switch on the back wall unfortunately). We also added a glass shelf from Ikea above the sink, a donut tooth brush holder, and although you can’t see it, we found a really cool angled square concrete towel holder on Etsy for our hand towel.

You can also see how much storage space we gained after installing all that wire shelving. It was inexpensive and works great! We still haven’t installed the sliding door for the laundry area yet, but the room feels so clean & fresh now!

So there you have it! We went from the “Nightmare Bathroom from Hell” to a fresh, modern, more open feeling space that actually helps you still feel clean when you leave.

Here’s a video tour of the bathroom, too, if you want to check it out:

Later!

-Kevin